Doccumenting me experimentation and use of HexOS

[Red]

Hello all, I have been using HexOS since the beta started as a simple for storage server. Make a folder, put my "legal game dumps" into it and using the apps to run an Immich backup. However, unfortunately for my server (named "Wheatley"), I broke my arm 2 weeks ago and so now I'm bored as HELL... So now I'm taking it out on my toys. I want to watch movies, but I want to burn my Blu-rays to a Plex server to watch at any screen in my house. But I want to do it in a Windows VM. So I started trying to poke around in the TrueNAS UI and trying to teach myself how to spin up a VM and use it for my needs. But making a network bridge has been the "Jesus nut" that has caused everything to explode. After I restarted my server, it stopped being recognized on my network, and therefore the hexOS deck. After many restarts of the network and system, I eventually went and reset the network settings and that allowed me to access the server again... But now the HexOS dashboard is freaking out 😅

i will be poking at it more here soon, luckily I exported all my data so it's not gonna get lost by re-installs and whatnot. I will be posting more as well, as my learning continues and I find more funny problems, thank you for reading 🙂

 

 

Hardware:
cpu; ryzen 5 5600g
gpu; gtx 1050ti (for passthrough)
Memory; 64 gig (gib?) gskill ddr4 3600 GAMER RAM
storage; nvme boot drive, 2 WD blue 4TB hard drives. (might drop in an ssd to speed up transfers, dunno how that works tho.)

Im a mild tech hoarder, to the chagrin of my wife, but it comes in handy when i can just cobble together machines from my scraps 😅

Edited January 16 by Red

[Mobius]

since you wanna use vms and you got time to tinker, take a look into proxmox

adding a ssd shouldn't help transfer speeds afaik.
to the best of my understanding how truenas/hexos works is
transfers go to your ram first then to your hdd, bottle necked by the hard drive speed.
if you add a slog ssd it would go ram -> to both slog drive and hdd but unfortunately it is still bottle necked by the hard drive.

slog drives only copies whats still on the ram. This is mostly for in case of power loss nothing on the ram is lost.

[Red]

7 hours ago, Mobius said:

since you wanna use vms and you got time to tinker, take a look into proxmox

adding a ssd shouldn't help transfer speeds afaik.
to the best of my understanding how truenas/hexos works is
transfers go to your ram first then to your hdd, bottle necked by the hard drive speed.
if you add a slog ssd it would go ram -> to both slog drive and hdd but unfortunately it is still bottle necked by the hard drive.

slog drives only copies whats still on the ram. This is mostly for in case of power loss nothing on the ram is lost.

After many, many many hours of self learning (Google-fu) I came to that same conclusion. Truth be told, I figured hexOS for my tinkering and went straight to true NAS. I'll find a use for hex later. I tested with an SSD mounted to my pool in a few ways and it never changed much. My big bottle neck is network mostly, pinging off that 1 gig redline pretty much. As for my VM stuff, i got a Windows VM up after many hours, but found it I can install a makemkv docker instead of struggling to pass through a sata device to the VM.

Overall, I rate my experience... Cry/10

Spent hours trouble shooting to get miniscule victories. The dopamine from problem solving wasn't "woohoo! I figured it out!" It was "f**king finally, I can stop googling this obscure garbage and not deal with it anymore"

I'm still having fun, deep down, just exhausted from making the same VM settings 100 times lol

[Mobius]

I completely get the struggle. I've also spent more time than i would like to admit troubleshooting vms

[jpadgett]

There is docker program that will rip a DVD or Blue Ray then eject it when done Its called Ripper here is the GitHub site. https://github.com/rix1337/docker-ripper#readme What i did id was buy a eSata plate and cable on Amazon install it in to my R530 and then get a external flashed Blue Ray Drive off eBay about 150 you might have one that works but I wanted a real Blue Ray reader as well so i order it. It might be on TureNas as a app but you can install it as a docker app to.

Edited January 22 by jpadgett