Free & open source · a plugin for Unraid 7
A team of characters, each looking after one part of your server — snapshots, the nightly backup, restores, logs, security, tidying up. They tell you what they noticed and, where it makes sense, let you act on it. You just ask.
Runs on your own server · GPL-3.0-or-later · five languages
What usually gets in the way of looking after a server — and how it goes with the office.
Usually: A plugin here, a script there, each with a page of its own
With the office: One office in Unraid’s menu bar — everyone at their desk, one place to ask
Usually: Backups nobody ever tried to bring back
With the office: A restore drill proves on throwaway copies that they come back
Usually: A restore worked out under pressure, from scratch
With the office: Mr. Restori shows first exactly what will happen — and never deletes what he replaces
Usually: Tidying up means guessing what is still in use
With the office: Ms. Dustdevil finds what nobody uses and puts it in a storeroom first — nothing is thrown away at once
Usually: Changes on the server go unnoticed
With the office: The Night Watchman learns what is normal and tells you only what is different
Usually: Logs you scroll through alone
With the office: Ms. Protocolli counts and groups what sounds like an error or a warning
Usually: Every check wakes the sleeping disks
With the office: Sleeping disks stay asleep unless you ask
Usually: Someone else’s cloud, an account, a subscription
With the office: Your own server, behind Unraid’s login — free, open source
A fresh office has only the Team Lead. He asks around who would suit your server — no Emby, no Jack Emby; no ZFS or btrfs, no snapshots — and you hire whom you need, or let them go again later; their data and settings stay.
Leads the team — whom to hire, what the office needs from your server, and what’s left for you to do
Collects what every desk needs and lists what is missing — still to do, recommended, good to know — each with a link into Unraid. Pairs your office with a partner office. Read only.
Knows every corner of the server and sees dust in all of them — tidies up, but never throws anything away at once
Where is what: shares, containers, VMs, disks, plugins, and advice on keeping things in order. Tidying up: templates, appdata folders and VM leftovers nobody uses — into a storeroom you can put back from. Gives containers without a picture a logo.
Looks after the nightly backup — a bit scatterbrained and anxious, so he checks everything three times
Runs the office’s backup engine: consistent snapshots, database dumps, a package per app and VM, Kopia offsite, partner offices. Set up in the browser — he reads the server and proposes, you decide.
Italian by birth — keeps an eye on every snapshot: ZFS, btrfs and VMs. Con amore.
Create, delete with an estimate of the space freed, rename, hold, unmount. Schedules with a simple retention that only ever clears away her own snapshots — and they run even when the office isn’t open.
Brings back what is gone — careful as a restorer in white gloves
Per app and VM: what can come back from where, with dates. Brings back databases, folders, whole shares, templates and VM configurations himself — and practises it in his drill. «Piano, piano.»
Reads every log out loud — sadly she understands none of it
The office’s logs, Unraid’s, every User Script and every container: live like tail -f, filtered, copied or downloaded. Her tour counts what sounds like an error and how full /var/log is. Read only.
The office’s security: how it stands, and what is different from normal
Tips on what he would set differently, and a watch book: new logins, changed containers and plugins, the flash, cron lines, unusual data flow, snapshots gone. Every five minutes, also with the office closed. Read only.
Intern and film fan — fetches coffee, entertains everyone and gets ready what you’ll watch next
Looks after helmi1987’s EmbyCache — what you are about to watch goes to the fast pool so the array disks can sleep — and «Consolidate folders», which brings each film folder together on one disk.
From outside — knows the externals the office relies on, and how to get them in
Fix Common Problems, Files Viewer, Kopia, Stream Viewer, and monitoring with Prometheus and Grafana if you like: what they are good for and how to install them — or he does it, with a preview first.
Mr. Backupsy runs the backup every night; Mr. Restori proves that it comes back. Between them, every app and VM knows where its copies are.
What a run is doing right now and when it will be done, how the last nights went. Stop the array and a run stops cleanly at once — the next one continues.
ZFS and btrfs snapshots as the base of every night. Which containers stop for them is part of the setup; VMs are held for the moment of the snapshot.
Templates or compose files, database dumps, consistent copies of the databases of media servers that keep running; for a VM its XML, NVRAM and TPM state. Nextcloud goes into maintenance mode meanwhile.
Small and important first: the flash, the apps, then the shares and VMs. The Consultant sets up the repository if you like — with S3 Object Lock against ransomware where your bucket offers it.
Two servers with the office copy their nights to each other through a door: only the ZFS blocks changed since the last night, always encrypted on the way. The sender can never delete anything at the partner.
He reads the server and proposes, with reasons — you change what you like and apply. Whatever turns up later stays local and keeps running until you decide.
Monthly, right after a nightly backup that went well (or weekly, or when you press Practise now…), Mr. Restori proves on throwaway copies that what Mr. Backupsy keeps really comes back — and writes down per app and VM which level is proven, from which copy, and when.
No warranty for your backups either. The office does its best, but a backup can be faulty or incomplete. You stay responsible for your data: test a restore now and then, and keep more than one copy — for example 3-2-1: three copies, on two kinds of storage, one of them off site.
The office lives inside Unraid’s web UI and looks like it.
Finds a desk, a section, a setting, a guide — and what the desks know right now: a share, an app, a VM, an entry of the watch book. In all five languages at once, forgiving a typo.
English, German, Italian, French and Spanish — your browser’s. Where it tells you what to click in Unraid, it names Unraid’s menus as Unraid shows them.
Black, white, azure or gray — the office takes Unraid’s. A switch at the reception can keep it light or dark for your browser.
The pages fit a phone’s width — a look at last night’s backup works from the sofa, too.
Click a picture to see it large — browse with the arrow keys.
The reception
The Team Lead: what is left to do
Ms. Snapshotini: every snapshot
Mr. Backupsy: the nightly backup
Set up in the browser
Mr. Restori: what can come back
The Night Watchman: his rounds
Ms. Dustdevil: where is what
Ms. Dustdevil: tidying up
Ms. Protocolli: every log
The Consultant: the externals
The search
The office is an Unraid plugin: a page in Unraid’s menu bar, in Unraid’s look, behind Unraid’s login — and a small service of the plugin that does the work on the host.
Shows what the desks know and asks before anything changes. Every change carries Unraid’s CSRF token.
The page drops a request into a mailbox folder and rings the agent’s doorbell — a pipe in RAM — so the agent looks at once.
Accepts only the actions the desks define, checks each against a fresh look at the system, runs commands without a shell.
It starts with the array and stops within seconds when the array stops — it never holds it up. While the array is stopped, the Night Watchman keeps watch from RAM and the flash.
In Unraid: Plugins → Install Plugin, paste the address below and press Install.
Sekretariat in Unraid’s menu bar, between Apps and Tools — under ⋯ → Entry in Unraid you can give it another name or place.
The Team Lead welcomes you and suggests whom to hire. For backups: Mr. Backupsy → Set up…, then Schedule….
https://github.com/dropnook/UnraidSecretaryOffice/releases/latest/download/unraid-secretary-office.plg
Unraid 7.3.2 or a newer 7.x. Older versions are refused at install. Unraid 8 is not supported for now — support follows once it is released and tested. Updates come like any plugin’s, under Plugins; your data stays.
The office is free and complete — nothing is locked, now or later. If it is useful to you, a tip is welcome; a share goes to helmi1987, who wrote Jack Emby’s tools.
Yes — free and open source under the GPL-3.0-or-later, and complete: nothing is locked, now or later. A tip is welcome; the supporter key you get for it unlocks nothing, it just says thank you.
Unraid 7.3.2 or a newer 7.x — it was built and tested on 7.3.2, and older versions are refused at install. Unraid 8 is not supported for now; support follows once it is released and tested.
No. The office runs on your server, behind Unraid’s login, with no account anywhere. Backups leave the server only where you set them up: Kopia to your own storage, or a partner office you paired.
No. A fresh office has only the Team Lead. He suggests who would suit your server, you hire whom you need — and you can let them go again later; their data and settings stay.
No, not unless you ask — for example when you want the size of an array share measured. A pool whose disks sleep at night can even be left asleep by the nightly backup, if you choose so in the setup.
The office does its best — and the restore drill proves regularly that what it keeps comes back. But a backup can still be faulty or incomplete, and there is no warranty. Test a restore now and then and keep more than one copy, for example 3-2-1.
Kopia, in a container. The Consultant tells you whether it is there and can install it and set up the repository — S3-compatible storage or a folder, new or existing — always with a preview first. Or a second Unraid server with the office as a partner office.
English, German, Italian, French and Spanish — your browser’s language, or another one picked under ⋯ → Language. Where it tells you what to click in Unraid, it names Unraid’s menus as Unraid shows them, in the language Unraid runs in.
Yes. The office takes Unraid’s theme — black, white, azure or gray. The switch Auto · Dark · Light at the reception can force a dark or light look on the office’s own area for your browser.
Under Plugins → Remove the code and the schedules go. Your data in appdata, the share UnraidSecretaryOffice, the setting on the flash and whatever the desks set up on the server — snapshots, Ms. Dustdevil’s storeroom — stay; delete them yourself if you no longer want them.