Utility: Unraid Spin Up

[SageDonkey]

This may exist (or maybe there is a better way to do this), but it took me 15 minutes to put together and so far has been working great for the past couple of days, so I thought I'd share:

I just moved all my Movies, Music, and Pictures to a new Unraid server. I did it pretty quietly (parts shipped to office, assembly done in secret), but the wife did notice 1 thing - whenever she went to watch a movie or listen to music, there was an extra long pause before it started (the time it takes for Unraid to spin up the right disks). After taking a short look, I wrote a quick utility that would spin up the disks (using an HTTP call to the Unraid admin screen) anytime someone went into the Video Library Screen, Music Library Screen, or Picture Library Screen. By the time she makes a selection, the disk has spun up fully and the start is instantaneous - crisis averted.

Requirements:
- Java 6 (not completely required, but as packaged, its compiled to Java 6)
- Sage MC using the Dynamic Menus

Installation:
- Download the attached zip and copy the jar into the JARs directory
- Open your sagemc_menu.xml file (if you don't know where that is, goto the Sage MC home screen, click Options, Select "Main Menu Options", select "File", and there should be a "Current menu file: ...path_on_your_machine/sagemc.menu.xml
- Find the screen that you want to trigger the Spin Up and add (example below is to spin up the disks when video library is selected from the main screen):

<internalScreenMenuItem icon="hover_my videos.png" screen="Video Library Folder View" title="My Videos">
   <evalExpression>DebugLog("UNRAID Spin Up Result:" + unraid_Utility_SpinUpDisks("192.168.1.100","unraid_username","unraid_password"))</evalExpression>
</internalScreenMenuItem>

-Restart SageTV (including the server if you have extenders that want to use this)
-Goto Videos screen, then check you Unraid management page - you should see all disks spun up. If not, turn on debugging and see what HTTP response code you got back.

Other Thoughts
- You don't need the DebugLog call, its just handy for troubleshooting. The code will spit back the HTTP response code.
- Yes - I know the password is in plain text...unraid's admin stuff isn't that secure anyway (especially if you have unmenu installed)
- Yes - There are other ways to the video/music/pictures screen, but we tend to always go Home Screen -> Movies. The best place would probably be a hook on the screen itself, but then I would have to hook in all the possible screens (Movie Walls, etc).
- Source code is in the jar. Its not much - change it, burn it, whatever - its yours to keep.
- Also included a Spin Down method. Not sure when I will use it, but its there.

[reggie14]

Do you have any plans to update this plugin for Sage v7?

I have an unRAID server sitting in my closet with all my media already on it, but because I've been concerned about spin-up times I have re-pointed my server to unRAID for imported media. I know when I browse the the shared folders on the unRAID server it can take several seconds for the drives to spin-up, or at least I have to wait several seconds until I see the files in the folder. Before you created this utility how bad was it?

I suppose its easy enough for me to try. I don't know why I haven't done that yet.

[madpoet]

Following up on this... any possibility of a v7 update?