RAID support

  • Hi,

    I was really shocked, after i installed LE and found out, that LE does lack RAID support 8|

    Now i am not able to acces my data on my big RAID5 array.

    Please add at least the required kernel modules and mdadm for the possibility to configure/access RAID on the console.

  • I was really shocked

    So which part of the term "Just enough OS" convinced you that there would (or should) be RAID support in LibreELEC?

    LibreELEC / Kodi is a CLIENT application, and we have no intention of picking up loads of baggage to support whatever RAID you prefer. Can you already hear the complaints when users start to lose their data because somehow LibreELEC f**'d up? We're certainly not going to pick up that challenge.

    If you want RAID, build yourself a dedicated file server or get a ready-to-go NAS, and have Kodi/LibreELEC connect to it.

  • Now i am not able to acces my data on my big RAID5 array.

    Why not? If they are both on the same network, just set up a user account on your array and allow LibreELEC to access it using that username and password (it can be read-only if you want to be safe). I don't use RAID5, but I have a 28TB Unraid server sharing media to my network, and LE works with it just fine.

    As for being shocked, I find that strange to say the least. It's a media player, and is very clearly not intended to be a protected mass storage system. Even then too many users expect too many features to be supported by the lowest price hardware they can find. Adding RAID support would only make that problem worse. I think you need to re-adjust your expectations.

  • I'm having a HTPC tower with many disks in a RAID5 array, which is connected to the TV.

    I prefer "All in One" instead of the requirement for many devices for one single Video Player

    I don't expected that LE will offer server functionality, NAS or something other exotic.

    Not evan a GUI for configuring RAID or disk partitioning, but at least access my data on my disk(s).

    Distributing fdisk, rm and other such tools does include the same risk as including mdadm.

    If i am entering commands on the console and break stuff, like deleting partitions or files, it is only my own fault and can't blame LE for this.

    What does so differ mounting an ext4 filesystem on a normal disk partiiton from an RAID array?

  • I'm having a HTPC tower with many disks in a RAID5 array, which is connected to the TV.

    I prefer "All in One" instead of the requirement for many devices for one single Video Player

    I can understand when people want to have everything in one 'box'. But, again, we are not going to add specific server stuff to LibreELEC.

    Why not try Ubuntu 18.04+, Kodi runs fine on it. There you should be able to add the RAID support of your choosing.

    If i am entering commands on the console and break stuff, like deleting partitions or files, it is only my own fault and can't blame LE for this.

    We've heard enough sob stories over time where users trashed their Windows setup because they installed LibreELEC on their (only) HDD or SSD drive. The unfortunate trashing of an OS is one thing, but trashing someone's entire data collection (videos, music, photos) is next-level. RAID support not gonna happen.

  • I already did run Kodi on Fedora for about 6 years, but had random problems which i wanted to give LE a try.

    Also updates would be easier with LE and thought Kodi would be best optimized.

    Since LE is linux based, i never ever thought it could lack RAID support.

    Why should RAID be so risky?
    I mean most RAID arrays has some parity, so they can evan survive a disk outage.

    What is so different mounting a filesystem on the partition from LE installation (.storage) and from an RAID array from your perspective....or saving/accesing files from there....

    What has RAID to do with "server stuff" anyway?

  • Refusing to support RAID (and disk encryption) is about keeping our distro images small and keeping what our all-volunteer team has to provide user support for simple. RAID is not "risky" but there are 20+ flavours of RAID and based on user requestts there isn't one thing we can add, so we end up being asked for many things and many tools and .. we have always tried to avoid "the death of a thousand cuts" where we keep adding little things that cumulatively lead to LE being yet another bloated general purpose Linux distro instead of the focussed and minimal Kodi client distro that we are (and always have been).

    There are many distro choices that support Kodi so there's probably another with package management so you can add the RAID and other thingst you are interested in. You also have the option of taking our codebase and modifying it any way you like. That's the fab thing about open-source.

  • I've just found out that there is no mdraid support in the default Generic LE kernel. Is it still a NO GO ZONE for LE in 2023?

    At least you could add the kernel modules, so we can build the userspace as an addon and we don't have to keep custom LE build just to add a few lines to the kernel config. Of course including the mdadm package as well would be awesome.

    Having a disk with multimedia data in the HTPC is a common practice. LE already can automatically mount such disk, we can even share the disk in the network, but we are missing the option to have the data protected against the disk failure by having a mirror (mdraid1).

  • sky42 shares images that have all the RAID modules/tools and encrypted disk stuff included. Last time I looked there were ~20 active users of those images and it's been fairly consistent around that number for a few years; so I think we're justified in continuing to release without features that aren't in general demand.

  • Maybe i will build a LE11 with raid and LVM, but i am very busy this year so far and that will most likely not change soon.

    Sorry not enough time.

    I still use LE10 and some LE92, so my motivation ist not that high.

  • I'm probably able to create the build myself, no problem. It is just pain to maintain custom LE build only to add a few kernel modules that are already there, just disabled and not being built. I'm currently in the planning process for my next HTPC setup, so I've not decided yet. I really like the idea of all-in-one device, but the missing mdraid support is holding me back a little.

  • sky42 shares images that have all the RAID modules/tools and encrypted disk stuff included. Last time I looked there were ~20 active users...

    With due respect to everyone, that's because most of the users prefer to use the official builds since a) typically, we want to be able to upgrade from LE instead of the manual process, b) most importantly, usually, the devs of custom builds tend to release their build for some limited period of time, and after that, they just disappear (which is entirely ok, don't get me wrong).
    I'm actually surprised as well that LE does not support simple raid 1 (mirror). Although I understand the "Just enough OS" approach, I think raid 1 and partition encryption sound like a basic/essential requirement. Anyway, this is my imho

  • I'm actually surprised as well that LE does not support simple raid 1 (mirror). Although I understand the "Just enough OS" approach, I think raid 1 and partition encryption sound like a basic/essential requirement. Anyway, this is my imho

    Pretty dated comment to respond to, but my question to you is where does it stop though? I don't want to use mdraid, I want zfs, or I want bcachefs, or I want <insert next great thing here>. Before you know it it's a full blown Debian install with all of the support requirements of it.

  • where does it stop though?

    It stops after raid support. It's up to the devs to decide how this will be implemented and how to make it simple to fit into a "Just enough OS" approach. We, users, can just share our thoughts on what we'd like to see, but in the end, it's up to the devs to make the final decision

  • it's up to the devs to make the final decision

    Seems like it was already made with the comment that only 20 users seem interested in these features, so at this point it's just trying to sway positions. The way I see it, since we are swaying positions (or sharing thoughts), for a media center device there is no use case (at least for me) for disk encryption, mdraid, or lvm2. But I also just use a NAS with ZFS, and I use the built-in NFS client in Kodi to access the media and don't want to deal with trying to plug in 9 drives via a USB hub and then wonder why it's so slow moving a file. Basic works well.

    In any case, not sure I agree with the argument that it stops with raid support. But it would be interesting if features were upvoted/downvoted to see what the community interest was.

  • frakkin64 Please read again my post #13 . My point was we have potentially many more people than 20. Here's the "use-case" that happened personally to me: my hard drive died - all data were lost. I have no intention/interest in having NAS in my apartment. I'm not forcing you or anybody to use this feature; in fact, this could be disabled by default. What I'm saying is that it would be cool to bundle the tools with the image so that people who are interested could use it. Judging from sky42 commit diff, it's not a lot of new dependencies

  • my hard drive died - all data were lost

    I hear you, just playing devil's advocate, and at the same token you should re-read post #16 as a counter to your argument of no big deal doesn't bother anyone. I can just imagine the users coming in asking how to grow/shrink their array, how to replace a disk, how to expand the array, how to reshape the array (i.e. RAID 5 to 6), hey I did something stupid why doesn't my RAID assemble, etc. Not to mention the feature parity complaints on low-memory footprint devices, have to imagine most of the devices are less than 2G ram and pretty limited I/O bandwidth.

    Frankly, raid isn't going to help you with data loss. RAID is not a backup, there are many cases where a RAID can also result in a complete failure with a single drive failure, it's not unusual to have drive failures in pairs or at the same time or while recovering the RAID. So now your talking a minimum of having 2 or 3 disk redundancy to cover for that, but in reality you really need a backup. You can go wander on the RAID-specific forums on reddit and all they preach about is the 3-2-1 rule.