Can't access jail web interfaces

[D G]

So I've been trying to troubleshoot this for hours and haven't really gotten anywhere, so I thought I'd try my luck on here.

I have CouchPotato, Transmission, and Plex all installed in jails. The first two are done as plugins, but Plex I have installed from ports so that I can more easily keep it up to date. For months, I've been able to access their web interfaces just fine, no issues. Smooth sailing.

Starting yesterday, after I replaced a drive that I had RMA'd, my ability to connect to the jails is hit or miss...most often miss. At first, I could at least ping their respective IP addresses, but after rebooting the server, starting and stopping the jails, rebooting my router, refreshing the leases, now I cannot access them through my browser, or even ping them from any of my computers...I am at a complete loss as to what would be causing this. Networking is not my strong suit...

I also did notice that when I rebooted the server after swapping the drive, it switched IP's from xxx.40 to xxx.41. I wouldn't think that would change the internal routing for the jails though...?

Right now, Chrome reports this back when I try to access them: Error code: ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[D G]

So I made sure that the IP addresses for the jails were set in FreeNAS and in my router and set the server back to xxx.40, and rebooted the router and the server, and I could access them just fine....for a bit. I came back to it maybe half an hour later and now I can't access them again. What is going on??

(Maybe this belongs in another part of the forum, but I don't know how to move it)

 

[dlavigne]

Is the range IP addresses being used by the jails set as a DHCP reservation on the DHCP server?

 

[D G]

I believe so, yes. I limited the range of IP addresses for the dhcp server to not include the range used by my jails.

 

[dlavigne]

Hmm, that's usually the culprit. The other thing that sometimes fixes this is to tie down the MAC address in the Jail's edit screen to match the value that the network's router expects. Or, it could be an ARP issue. If so, running arp -ad from Shell would fix it. If service is intermittent or only lasts for a bit, there's some IP or MAC conflict somewhere on the network.

 

[D G]

Last night when I got it to work for half an hour it was after I defined static IPs for the jails based on their MAC addresses...maybe tonight I can grab a screenshot of the config to show what I did.

 

[D G]

Hmm, that's usually the culprit. The other thing that sometimes fixes this is to tie down the MAC address in the Jail's edit screen to match the value that the network's router expects. Or, it could be an ARP issue. If so, running arp -ad from Shell would fix it. If service is intermittent or only lasts for a bit, there's some IP or MAC conflict somewhere on the network.

I tried the arp -ad command and it didn't seem to fix anything...

Here is the router config:

Here are the jail config settings...

Do I need to have NAT enabled in each jail's config? I haven't before.

 

[krikboh]

You have static ip's set on your router in your jails range.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[D G]

Yes, those are the static IP's for my jails.

 

[D G]

Bump...

So I've been trying to troubleshoot this for weeks and have gotten nowhere. If I reset the server then I'll usually have access to the jails for a few minutes, but after that, they become unavailable. I tried creating a new jail, and it immediately had the same problem, although I couldn't access its web GUI at all (the other ones had already gone down).

I've checked the MAC's and IP addresses dozens of times, so I'm assuming that isn't the issue. This is also seen from any OS and platform I try it from. Ultimately, I can't even ping the IP's of the jails. They are still accessing the internet, as I can still see the Plex server on my account and stream movies to my clients, and I can tell that Transmission is still working in the background on some files I added while it was up. Things seem to be running normally within the jail, but for whatever reason, they are blocked off. Since it is the same across all jails, it seems like the problem is within FreeNAS and the networking to the jails, not the jails themselves?

I even tried reverting to an old Config backup I had from before the issue started, but no dice. What is going on??

 

[D G]

Well, it appears the solution was a nasty little bugger to figure out. After trying to troubleshoot all kinds of network problems, I came across a handful of unresolved posts that tied back to bugs related to driver issues.
Turns out when I replaced my drive, I plugged the ethernet cable into the second LAN port, rather than the first. On my motherboard (X10SAE) the two LAN ports are run by different chipsets: Intel i217 and Intel i210. The former works great, but apparently the second...does not.
After shutting down, swapping the cable to the first port, and rebooting, things seem to be working great. I'll have to see over the next few days if the jails go down again, but usually they have died long before this. Crazy that it was all just related to driver issues, even with an Intel NIC.

dlavigne, thank you for the help at first. I noticed you'd been a participant in some of these driver-related bugs in prior months. Hopefully it can get rolled into a future release so others don't suffer from similar problems.

 

[cyberjock]

LOL. And I was just discussing with another forum user that the Intel i217 doesn't seem to be well supported in FreeBSD/FreeNAS and nobody seems to have noticed. Apparently someone has now noticed. :P

 

[D G]

cyberjock, actually, if I read the user manual for the motherboard correctly, it was the i217 that DID work well for me, and the i210 that was giving me problems. Maybe the manual has the ports labeled incorrectly, though. It did seem weird to me that a newer chipset would work better than an older one...

Edit, I did just check the manual, and LAN 1 that I am using is the i217 in their documentation...

 

[cyberjock]

I don't know. I'm as confused as Eric was because nobody seems to have mentioned this little tidbit of info. Maybe nobody is trying to use both simultaneous or maybe both are supposed to work and you have a defective board. I really don't know. Makes me wish I had one just so I could find out. :P

 

[D G]

I don't know. I'm as confused as Eric was because nobody seems to have mentioned this little tidbit of info. Maybe nobody is trying to use both simultaneous or maybe both are supposed to work and you have a defective board. I really don't know. Makes me wish I had one just so I could find out. :p

Could be any or all of the above :p

I wasn't trying to use both at the same time, though. I just plugged the cable in to the second LAN instead of the first like I had done previously, apparently. I hadn't ever paid attention before. I sure will now!

This is already the second board I've had. The first had a bad temp sensor and ran the fans at full blast 24/7 lol

 

[Ericloewe]

I'm betting on a bad board or something along those lines. The i210AT is probably the most popular GbE controller around here, so to have one not work is rather weird. Never had problems with mine.
The X10SAE has an i217-LM, which is the expensive (for lack of a better description) model for which Intel claims server OS support, so it makes some sense that it'll work.

Of course, if they're mislabeled (should be easy enough to find out in software which controller is being used), we're back at "no i217 works", which leaves the mystery of where all the complaints about it are...

 

[D G]

I'm betting on a bad board or something along those lines. The i210AT is probably the most popular GbE controller around here, so to have one not work is rather weird. Never had problems with mine.
The X10SAE has an i217-LM, which is the expensive (for lack of a better description) model for which Intel claims server OS support, so it makes some sense that it'll work.

Of course, if they're mislabeled (should be easy enough to find out in software which controller is being used), we're back at "no i217 works", which leaves the mystery of where all the complaints about it are...

I am inclined to agree with you. How can I check in software which one I am using? I dug around a bit last night, but couldn't figure it out.

 

[Ericloewe]

I am inclined to agree with you. How can I check in software which one I am using? I dug around a bit last night, but couldn't figure it out.

The only thing I can come up with is disabling one of them in BIOS and seeing if it matches the documentation.