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In the tossing soft routing this road, you never know where the next step will lead to no end, life is tossing. As long as the home bandwidth is large enough, NAS, routers, virtual machines, bypass routing ...... can finally become a “whole-house digital laboratory”. Many friends may also be like me: obviously the performance of the main router is very strong, but once encountered Wi-Fi coverage, began to “soft legs”, why do we need to use AC + AP, one is to facilitate the management, and the second is that we set a good threshold we can achieve low-latency non-dropout whole-house roaming, non-sensitization of the use.

To be honest, the wireless capability of the soft router is really not very good and the current housing structure, including 5G-wifi6 penetration is not 2.4G and run not enough bandwidth at home, which also leads to a large number of players will be the wireless part of the hand over to the professional AC + AP processing, at present this is the optimal state of affairs, of course, wiring is not in place, we can also use the MESH group network, wireless MESH.

Hub AC + AP unified management and seamless roaming test detailsMany people don't realize: in addition to the free Collector AP system, Collector actually offers a Standalone x86 AC controller system --Faster and more complete roaming in multi-AP scenarios. It so happens that Unraid is inherently suitable for virtualization deployment of course, including our previously shared Flying Cow ah pve ah ah all kinds of nas virtualization we install VM virtual machine can be achieved, “virtual a set of collector AC manager” has become the most secure, the lowest cost option. Currently my LAN also has a Lenovo mini brush AC manager, but the number of X86 settings will be more.

So the tutorials will be based on the latest experience, hand in hand with you in the Installing the Collector AC Gateway in Unraid (x86 Edition), and comes with full details on image creation, boot order fixes, NIC compatibility, and more to avoid stepping in the pits.

I. Preparation: Getting the boot image

The official package provided by Tibco is a USB flash drive installation package, which needs to be written to the boot sector before it can boot properly. If you use a physical USB stick directly and then passthrough to Unraid, it often will:

• Failure to lead
• USB recognition exception
• Installation disk type detection error

This tutorial therefore recommends using the IMG boot imageThe

You can make your own, or you can quickly use an already-organized lazy bag.

Available resources:

✔ Lazy boot image (recommended, can skip making steps)

Download address (20251130 Lazy Pack):
Google cloud drive

Download and jump directly to Chapter 2: Unraid Installing the Collector AC GatewayThe

If you need to create your own mirror (optional)

The official resource of the Collector:

• Tibco X86 Firmware-AC Installer:
  http://file.cnrouter.com/index.php/Index/index.html?model_id=48&device_type_id=2
• Tiburon X86-AC upgrade package:
  http://file.cnrouter.com/index.php/Index/download/id/115.html

The production method can be used:

• StarWind V2V to IMG

• Load as removable disk
• Select “Physical Disk Emulation” for the emulation mode.”

Once this is done, you will have a bootable IMG image.

II. Installing the Collector AC Gateway in Unraid (core steps)

1. New virtual machine

In Unraid → VMs → Add VM → Linux

Suggested Parameters:

⚠ BIOS must select SeaBIOS or it will report unbootable.

2. Creation of a dual disk structure

The disk layout must be met:

• The first disk (system disk) is SATA
• The second disk (boot disk) is USB

Otherwise it will appear:

• “No bootable device”
• The installer does not recognize the installation package

3. Adding a second NIC

Add an additional NIC to Network Interfaces and click the Refresh icon on the right to generate a random MAC for it.

Upon completion.Do not check the box“Start the virtual machine immediately after creation”.

4. Editing the VM XML: setting the boot sequence

Go to the virtual machine → Edit → Switch to FORM VIEW → XML VIEW

Find the code segment for both disks:

• Main Disk (System Disk)
• IMG image (USB boot disk)

The adjustments are as follows:

The main disk is modified:

<boot order='2'/>

Bootstrap mirror additions:

<boot order='1'/>

Purpose: To give the virtual machine priority to boot from the USB installation disk, otherwise it will not be able to enter the installation program

5. Modify the NIC model to e1000.

Find the XML location of the two NICs that will:

<model type='virtio'/>

Replace with:

<model type='e1000'/>

Reason: Tibco installation program Not recognized virtioThe e1000 must be used. just save and exit.

Start installing the Collector AC Gateway

6. Starting the virtual machine

About 30 seconds after startup, you will enter the installation screen and select:

3 Installing the AC Controller

Enter afterward:

y

Confirm writing to the system.

7. When the installation is complete, prompt to pull out the USB flash drive.

Since we don't have a physical USB, we naturally can't follow the instructions, so we need to proceed to the next step.

Remove the installation disk and enter the system

8. Force shutdown of virtual machines

In the list of Unraid virtual machines, click Force Stop.

9. Modify startup sequence and remove IMG

Edit the virtual machine again:

• Change the primary disk boot order to:

<boot order='1'/>

Delete the entire block of code for the USB image (i.e., the second disk)

Save and exit

10. Activate the collector AC controller

At this point the VM will successfully enter the Hub AC Manager X86 SystemsThe following is an example of the use of the "N" type of the "N" type of the "N" type.

You can access it in your browser:

http://集客AC的IP地址

Log in to the background to configure APs, manage KVR roaming, set up mesh networking, and so on.

V. Additional Notes: About AP Brush & Video Tutorials

If you've swiped the Collector AP system before (e.g. my tutorial:Xiaomi Redmi AX3000 Flip into Setter AP Nanny Tutorials), then now with the X86 AC gateway deployed by Unraid, you can form a complete enterprise-class wireless network system:

• Seamless multi-AP indoor roaming
• KVR Quick Roam
• Mesh Backhaul Link
• Large Wi-Fi coverage

This is a very cost-effective combo for home gamers.

summarize

The advantages of deploying a Collector AC Gateway with Unraid virtualization include:

• No additional equipment required, saving costs
• Highly stable, independent of physical USB flash drive compatibility
• Can be co-located with soft routes, NAS, Docker
• Combine with Brush APs to build enterprise-class wireless networks

If you're running soft routing or a high-performance NAS, running a collector X86 AC controller with a virtual machine is definitely the optimal choice.

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