my unraid server project thus far

[charleslam]

Tried countless times about 7-8 months ago where i was running into an issue with windows updates completely ruining windows 7 and 8.1 VM's.  eventually i gave up on it.  figured i'd give it another go after the software had more time to mature.  i have run into less errors and less problems this time around.  whichever dev.  fixed this issue, i salute you good sir.  

 

Regardless, ive run into problems with real estate on my current motherboard.

 

I am running:

E5-2640V2

EVGA x79 FTW

16gb (4x4gb) Gskill Ram

3xr9 270x

anker external powered usb hub

 

Now i have been watching youtubes/reading about GPU passthrough.  and i have been reading in the forums that people have done this with Nvidia GPU's and it automatically starts into a VM and you access the unraid config through a web browser of that VM.  I have also read that AMD gpu's do not have the same problems that the nvidia's do.  is there a better tutorial than what that space invader dude has?

 

any help would be appreciated.  

Thanks,

Charles Lam

[DZMM]

I don't think you'll find a better tutorial for Nividia cards than Space Invader's!  It's very easy to do and has worked perfectly for me with a GT710 in my primary slot

[charleslam]

so i follow the exact same steps as the nvidia cards tutorial?  because there surely has to be something different about setting up AMD/ATI graphics cards vs. nvidia's. 

Edited September 26, 2017 by charleslam

[DZMM]

oh lol it's an ATI card.  Try Stubbing:

 

https://forums.lime-technology.com/topic/50150-unraid-server-release-62-stable-release-available/

Edited September 26, 2017 by DZMM

[charleslam]

well just for grins and giggles i thought i would try just choosing the videocard on a new VM and starting it up.  its working-ish.  it still shows remnants of the GUI.  its really weird.  i see the boot time in the upper right and that the array is started in the lower left.  but everything else is what is viewed from the VM.  

[charleslam]

well it appears to be working correctly.  once i set up automatic VM startup the artifacting of the GUI is gone.  now the weird thing im running into is benchmarking.  im trying to run 3d mark on both VM's.  it appears that either 1 or the other fails upon starting up of 3dmark.  

 

any advice on that?

 

[charleslam]

just retried it a couple more times.  seems its a luck of the draw if systeminfo from 3dmark causes a VM crash or not.  

[DZMM]

Have you stubbed the card?

[charleslam]

no i didnt.  it is working without stubbing. 

[DZMM]

I didn't think so. Stubbing should fix the ghosting you mentioned

Edited September 29, 2017 by DZMM

[charleslam]

yeah the ghosting went away when i stopped booting unraid into GUI mode.  now it runs headless and doesnt effect the VM.  

[charleslam]

i am running into stability issues.  i believe it might be with hyperthreading being enabled.  im curious if i should disable it, or if i should find out the pairings.  obviously the latter seems a tad more complicated.  

[charleslam]

*update*  i have found my stability issues were caused due to a faulty hard drive.  it runs stable (albeit super slow on platter HDD's).  i have purchased SSD's to assist with this.  i tested it with a spare 64gb ssd, and speeds were acceptable.  

 

i am having a pesky issue with a asmedia usb controller.  keeps dying while the computer is on.  sometimes i can switch ports and it works but, i think i need to find a pci-e usb card that has 2 controllers on it that support pass through.  suggestions?

[charleslam]

finally got the last bits tidied up.  added a usb slot adapter and rearranged which usb controllers go to what.  i only use the asmedia usb controller to boot unraid from as it was incredibly unreliable and would give dma read request errors all day long.  i still havent gotten to the bottom of that.  people say that its this or its that or try this command.  all of which never seem to work.  kind of sad though i purchased to usb controller cards and they havent come in the mail yet.  one of which is a 6 port usb dual usb controller.  one via, one asmedia.  and i also purchased a pcie 1x riser ribbon and board with a separate TI usb controller (was told they worked the best). 

 

Now the only thing to work on is getting SSD's loaded on this.  we shall see how this goes.  

[charleslam]

SSD's definitely fix the speed issue.  they are operating like normal barebones systems.  what i have also discovered.  things seem to be faster with hyperthreading turned on, but the cpu pairs being dedicated to the appropriate vm's.  VM's dont like macrium reflect and rescue disks.