As the title suggests, I wanted to explore some of the features of the new myservers plugin. My Unraid server had been online for the best part of 9months and was running 6.8.X. In order to play with this new plugin, I needed to update the server to 6.9.1. This was easy enough. I stopped the array, then headed over Tools > Update OS. I am on the stable branch, I clicked check for updates and within a few seconds 6.9.1 popped up. I hit upgrade, and after about 2 minutes the server was rebooting into the latest version.
Next I went over to the Apps tab (make sure you’re running community apps) and installed Unraid.net. This is currently still in beta, but you know… yolo!
Once installed, nothing appeared to change on the screen. I needed to go into Settings > Management Access to find what I was looking for. Below are the steps I went through, with some issues and solutions I had to work through.
1) I signed in with my Unraid.net account. I already had this as I am an active forum member. I used the app authy to scan the QR code to add 2fa (a nice touch).
2) As soon as I was signed in, I could see my server in the top right of the Unraid GUI. I clicked on the account details and there I saw an exclamation mark next to the server name. I believe a reboot would fix this, but given I didn’t fancy wasting a couple of minutes, I just brought up a terminal window and entered the following command: unraid-api restart
Within moments, the service had been restarted, and we were in business.
3) I returned to Settings > Management Access as I needed to provision an SSL certificate. I clicked on this, but was met with a DNS rebinding error which pointed to my router blocking it.
Full Error: “Sorry, as error occurred in processing your SSL certificate. The error is: Your router or DNS server has DNS rebinding protection enabled, preventing XYZ.unraid.net 192.168.X.X resolution. See Help for more details and workaround.”
This remote server is sitting behind a BT homehub, however, it’s not possible to change the DNS on it. The work around was to stop the VM manager and Docker service on the server and then go to Settings > Network and change the DNS entry from auto (which was pointing at 192.168.1.254 the BT default) to static. I used 1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8 as DNS Server entries. I applied the change, restarted the VM manager and Docker service, and went back to provision the certificate. I received the DNS rebind error again but on trying a second time, it worked, and I received the cert. Immediately the status bar changed from 192.168.X.X/Settings/ManagementAccess to “a_really_long_string.unraid.net/Settings/ManagementAccess.”
4) I then wanted to back up my flash drive, so I hit Activate there. Within a few moments, the back up had gone through, and I instantly felt a little more secure!
5) Next I logged into https://forums.unraid.net/my-servers/ via a different machine, and there were the stats I was looking for. I could see my machine was online, some stats about containers running, and also my accessible Flash Backup. First thing’s first, I clicked on the Flash Backup and downloaded that on to dropbox.
6) One thing that wasn’t online though was Remote Access. I have decided against using this for remote access. I already have OpenVPN and Wireguard set up in case I need access to the server. Also as a last resort, I have access to a windows machine on the network via Teamviewer if push comes to shove. Essentially, if you did want to expose this, you would port forward on the router to your machine. Then you would access that via the new URL you have in the menu bar, i.e. a_really_long_string.unraid.net/Settings/ManagementAccess. As I didn’t want to go down this route, I decided to come away from the machine, happy with my 2fa authenticated, flash drive backed up page monitor!
7) I forgot to update a couple a couple of dockers. I went back in over OpenVPN, which connected to the server perfectly, only this time I was faced with an issue. Everytime I typed in the local IP address I was previously accessing it on (192.168.X.X/main) the URL was instantly changing to a_really_long_string.unraid.net/main and I was unable to enter. It didn’t matter what I did. I also tried this with Wireguard, and found the same issue. This wasn’t good. It meant that I effectively had knocked myself out of remote access, aside from Teamviewer (via a local machine on the network).
8) In order to fix this, I Teamviewered in, and on the local machine browser to a_really_long_string.unraid.net/Settings/ManagementAccess and proceeded to switch the Use SSL/TLS to No, and made sure that Local TLD: was set at local. I hadn’t changed it, but make sure that is.
This in effect switched off the SSL certificate I’d received, and bounced me back on to “local” addresses. The URL immediately changed, and I was back on 192.168.X.X etc. I closed the Teamviewer connection, fired up OpenVPN to verify that we were back to normal.
9) Finally, I rechecked to see if I could still see the status, and I could, it just now shows Local access, as opposed to “Remote access” or “access unavailable”. For now though, am fine with that. Maybe in the future, I’ll use this way to access the GUI, but for now, am happy to use it as a flash backup and a system monitor.
Hopefully this will help if any of you are suffering from the same issue. Believe it or not, I did all this whilst sitting in a different country, so was thankful I had a back up method of connecting in. I’m a huge fan of Unraid, I have several servers/licences and I look forward to seeing what new features they bring out next!
If you did find this useful, and would consider supporting the blog, please take a look at my most recent book. If you’re considering a renovation or looking for home-automation ideas, you might find it useful. More details can be found here.
If your interested in sharing your own solutions, tips and tricks with like minded people perhaps you’d consider joining our facebook group. The aim of this group will hopefully be more show and tell rather than support, but that’s not to say we can’t lend a helping hand!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/386238285944105
Cheers!
