ZVM and access to host (specifically shares)

Operating System ZimaOS
1

In my efforts to find the easiest homelab platform ZimaOS seems really darn close. I’ve tried Proxmox (no easy way to do NAS-like functionality, UnRaid (okay but confusing/ugly UI), TrueNAS (overkill for my needs), and just raw iron Ubuntu (too much upkeep).

My requirements are pretty minimal.

  • Simple Raid or Raid-like management to ensure redundancy

  • Timemachine

  • Docker Plugins
    → ZimaOS handles all the above “good enough”, knowning that it will get Better…

  • Last one: VM support with way less features needed than Proxmox – again Check.

However for the life of me I can’t figure out how to access shares (or anything else for that matter) from a VM, as there is no route to host.

I’m using “bridge to eth0” networking.
– Is there something I’m missing, a known issue, and perhaps a workaround?

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2

Good to hear your preference on ZimaOS. And thank you for choosing Zima.

To better serve users like you, may I ask: what were the three main things that made you decide to go with ZimaOS? What do you do with ZimaOS for work and life in the real world?

Regarding connecting the sharing from ZimaOS, try to switch the networking from bridge mode to NAT after shutting down the VM.

Look forward to your feedback.

3

If I change to NAT networking, will I be able to ingress from my local network to the VM? I’d assume NOT correct?

Three main things on why I’m considering choosing ZimaOS:

  • nice, easy UI
  • meets my core requirements (Raid/Raid-Like; Timemachine; Docker plugins)
  • doesn’t have bloat
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4

Thanks for the feedback.

Yes, based on my experience, a virtual machine’s network can only be configured to connect either to the host machine(NAT) or to other devices on the local network(bridge), but not both at the same time.

Hope this is helpful.

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5

I was also getting the “no route to host” message. I changed the Network to NAT and that allowed me to access the login dialogue.

However, I cannot log in successfully. I have three different SMB accounts on the ZimaCube and none of them are working.

My main account mounts all of the ZimaCube’s subfolders, and if I go into /media I can find my hard drives, NVME, and RAID. But I cannot access the RAID, only the NVME and hard drives. Very strange.

The other two accounts require me to login once, then enter the account password a second time, then says “You don’t have permissions.” Even though I created the third account specifically for Ubuntu, to access only the RAID.

Note, in the Ubuntu Files app there is an option for “ZimaCube (File Sharing)” and “ZimaCube (Remote Login).” Only the Remote Login option allows me to enter account details. The File Sharing option doesn’t load anything. (In the toolbar it says it was looking for Windows Shares, which should be the SMB?)

When I delete the password in the Password Manager to try again, I also noticed it’s trying to use sftp:// for the login. Not sure if that’s right or wrong. Technically it works to load the subfolders when using my main account, but not the RAID.

What am I missing? I saw that 1.5.4 introduced and SMB bug, could it be related?

6

OK, I got this working but it’s not pretty.

With the VM set to Bridge, I used a 3rd server to act as router then added a static route on the VM and on the Zima Host pointing at the 3rd server.

Example

=======

Zima Host - IP 192.168.0.100

VM on Zima Host - IP 192.168.0.200

3rd server - IP 192.168.0.50

On the 3rd server enable IP routing

sudo apt install bridge-utils iproute2

sudo sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1

Note: This will not survive a reboot add to the root crontab or a SystemD timer

On Zima Host add a static route to the VM via the 3rd server.

sudo ip route add 192.168.0.200 via 192.168.0.50

On VM add a static route to the Zima Host via the 3rd server.

sudo ip route add 192.168.0.100 via 192.168.0.50

Again the static route will no survive a reboot so you can add these to the root cronfile. On the Zima Host I created a SystemD timer. See this link for example (Pablo Ovelleiro Corral). I create all my script in /DATA/scripts

More Notes…….

The 3rd server will be a bottle neck, as the traffic will go in and out of it’s single NIC. So you’ll need a good NIC. For this I ran the Zima Host and it’s VM on a ZimaBoard 2, connected to a 2.5Gb switch. The 3rd server was a Debian VM run on a second Zimaboard 2. Performance was good.

As I said at the beginning not a pretty solution, but hopefully this will soon be fixed in ZimaOS.

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