First, I know that Unraid is not FOSS and I’m a month late, just to get that out of the way. But for those that are running Unraid and haven’t updated to >7.3.0, there’s good reason to (other than for security patches): internal boot and TPM licensing.

This update allows you to boot from an internal drive, no more chewing up flash drives. As a long time Unraid user (for over a decade), this was a long time coming. My server ate several flash drives. Setting it up was a breeze, once I updated to 7.3.x, the wizard to configure it came up and I was able to move it to one of my internal SSDs. All I had to do after that was go into the BIOS and set the boot priority correctly.

Internal boot works without a TPM, however you’d still need the flash drive with your license on it plugged in at boot. If you have a TPM on your server, though, you can migrate your license from your flash to your TPM, with another simple wizard. After migration, you no longer need a boot flash drive.

I had to get a Supermicro AOM-TPM-9665V TPM chip for my motherboard, but I’ve got it all set now. It’s a relief to no longer have to rely on flash drives now - my server’s rear exhaust fans were blowing directly on them, causing them to overheat and eventually crash my server.

Unraid posted about this in their blog here: https://unraid.net/blog/unraid-7-3-0

  • dan@upvote.auEnglish
    0·
    16 hours ago

    I had to get a Supermicro AOM-TPM-9665V TPM chip for my motherboard

    How old is your CPU that it doesn’t have onboard TPM? It’s been a standard feature for quite a while now

    • CorrectAlias@piefed.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
      0·
      16 hours ago

      My Epyc 7702 does have onboard TPM, but my supermicro H11DSi-NT doesn’t pass it through to the OS, for some reason. It seems like it’s a common thing for supermicro boards - the enterprise ones like mine have TPM headers instead. I do wish that weren’t the case, though.

      On my second Unraid server (which I use for transcoding), the i9-12900T’s TPM does pass through properly and I was able to use it, no external TPM needed.

      • dan@upvote.auEnglish
        0·
        15 hours ago

        My Epyc 7702 does have onboard TPM, but my supermicro H11DSi-NT doesn’t pass it through to the OS, for some reason

        Huh… That’s interesting. At my workplace we have Linux EPYC servers with working TPM (it’s mandated that all computers, both clients and servers, must have TPM 2.0), but I’m not a hardware person and don’t know exactly how they’re configured.

        • CorrectAlias@piefed.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
          0·
          15 hours ago

          Yeah, I’m guessing it’s a Supermicro thing for sure, and maybe they’ve changed that now that TPM is completely commonplace, because my Epyc does support TPM, 100%.