Errors with FreeNAS 9.2.1.5 setup on VirtualBox

[Marth]

Hi everyone,

I recently learned about FreeNAS, so I was curious to see if I could get it running on VirtualBox to have a play around with it. I downloaded the 9.2.1.5 64-bit .ISO image and followed these two guides in the documentation to get it installed on my machine. However, during and after start-up I come across seemingly-unrelated errors which have left me stuck.

Firstly, during the start-up it appears to hang a bit, slowly showing these errors:

DHCPDISCOVER on em0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7
DHCPDISCOVER on em0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 9
DHCPDISCOVER on em0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 14
DHCPDISCOVER on em0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 16
DHCPDISCOVER on em0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 9
DHCPDISCOVER on em0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 6
No DHCPOFFERS received

As far as I'm aware these errors have got to do with the DHCP setup on my local network, but I don't know what to make of them.

Secondly, it outputs the following before showing me the IP address I should connect to:

May 9 14:55:46 freenas mDNSResponder: mDNSPlatformSendUDP got error 51 (Network is unreachable) sending packet to 224.0.0.251 on interface 0.0.0.0/em0/1
May 9 14:55:46 freenas mDNSResponder: mDNSPlatformSendUDP got error 51 (Network is unreachable) sending packet to 224.0.0.251 on interface 0.0.0.0/em0/1
http://0.0.0.0

Thirdly, shortly after it prints "Enter an option from 1-11:", it goes on to print some more messages, a small selection of which are shown below:

May 9 14:58:38 freenas ntpd_initres[1932]: host name not found: 0.freebsd.pool.ntp.org
May 9 14:58:38 freenas ntpd_initres[1932]: host name not found: 1.freebsd.pool.ntp.org
May 9 14:58:38 freenas ntpd_initres[1932]: host name not found: 2.freebsd.pool.ntp.org

Finally, when I attempt afterwards to connect to http://0.0.0.0 on Google Chrome on my Windows 7 PC running the virtual machine, I get a message saying "This webpage is not available".

Could someone kindly give me some advice or explain to me how I should go about resolving these various problems?

 

[DrKK]

yeah ok, so, I can't speak to VirtualBox, but the problem here appear to be how you're sharing out the network. On VMWare, you can use the "NAT" setting for the shared network, and it works fine. You probably have similar configuration choices for the VB network setting, so you probably need to do that. Take it off "bridged" or whatever, and run it in "NAT" mode, and you'll get the DHCP replies you're missing etc.

 

[Marth]

Hi DrKK, thank you for your response. I've changed the network setting to "NAT" and restarted my VM, and all of the error messages disappear and it gives me a different IP address of http://10.0.2.15.

However, I'm still having problems connecting to this address. Google Chrome now says, "Oops! Google Chrome could not connect to 10.0.2.15. Try reloading: 10.0.2.15". I've tried refreshing the address as well as connecting to localhost, but each time I get similar error messages.

Do you have any ideas as to what I could do now?

 

[DrKK]

Sorry, I don't know squat about Virtual Box.

I suggest you try this with VMWare "Player", which is free, and I know for a fact (since 1000 of us use it for FreeNAS) works great for everyone who is messing around with FreeNAS. Then, if the problem persists, we can try to address it.

Unless someone with virtualbox expertise wants to chime in.

 

[alexg]

That's because NAT will create new private network and you will not be able to access it from host. Your options are do port forwarding from your host network or setup in bridge mode so it is exposed to your host network. If you decide to go with port forwarding, here is the link

http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch06.html#natforward

 

[DrKK]

I assumed he *WAS* accessing it from host.

:(

Sorry. Normally, when I'm using this kind of overlay virtual machine, I just access it from the host OS.

 

[Marth]

@DrKK: You were right to assume that. I was indeed trying to access my guest FreeNAS virtual machine from its host. :)

Thank you for making the suggestion of using VMware. Although it isn't my favourite VM program, I've successfully managed to install FreeNAS using it, I've figured out how to add a new virtual hard drive for storage, and it appears I can now access the web GUI through my host's Chrome browser.

However, I'd still be interested to see if I can get it also working on VirtualBox, since it's the program I prefer.

@alexg: I'm having a look into using your suggestion of port forwarding, however it seems rather complex to me. I don't know what values I should use for my Guest IP, Host port number and Guest port number. Furthermore I suspect my Host IP would be localhost, but I'm not sure if it would work. Could you explain to me how I can determine what values I need?

 

[DrKK]

@DrKK: You were right to assume that. I was indeed trying to access my guest FreeNAS virtual machine from its host. :)

Thank you for making the suggestion of using VMware. Although it isn't my favourite VM program, I've successfully managed to install FreeNAS using it, I've figured out how to add a new virtual hard drive for storage, and it appears I can now access the web GUI through my host's Chrome browser.

However, I'd still be interested to see if I can get it also working on VirtualBox, since it's the program I prefer.

@alexg: I'm having a look into using your suggestion of port forwarding, however it seems rather complex to me. I don't know what values I should use for my Guest IP, Host port number and Guest port number. Furthermore I suspect my Host IP would be localhost, but I'm not sure if it would work. Could you explain to me how I can determine what values I need?

Cool.

Well, what I recommend you do, make a number of (equally sized--say small ones, 5GB) virtual drives in this VM, MAKE SURE YOU GO TO SETTING->ADVANCED AND TURN OFF THE 2GB SWAP PARTITION (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), and practice using the ZFS volume manager to create vdevs/pools/datasets, and to simulated failed drive (e.g., yanking the virtual disk) etc. This is the kind of thing I did for about a month before I even dreamed of putting FreeNAS on cold iron.

Practice setting up shares, services, jails, all that stuff.

You'll thank me :)

 

[alexg]

If you still want to try VBox and want to use NAT, here you go

Go to VM setting, select Network, and click on Port Forwarding. Set up a route showing in my picture and now you can access using localhost and port. I picked port 2280, you can pick whatever you want. If you setting up HTTPS, you will need rule for port 443

 

[Marth]

Wow, thank you for going through all those steps, alexg. I've managed to get my VirtualBox set-up working now. :D

And thank you again DrKK for your advice. I look forward to discovering more of FreeNAS. :)

 

[david kennedy]

Hi DrKK, thank you for your response. I've changed the network setting to "NAT" and restarted my VM, and all of the error messages disappear and it gives me a different IP address of http://10.0.2.15.

However, I'm still having problems connecting to this address. Google Chrome now says, "Oops! Google Chrome could not connect to 10.0.2.15. Try reloading: 10.0.2.15". I've tried refreshing the address as well as connecting to localhost, but each time I get similar error messages.

Do you have any ideas as to what I could do now?

Change it to "bridged" and use your primary interface. It will then DHCP from your main server and get an IP visible from anything on your network (including your PC).

 

[Marth]

Hi david kennedy. I don't know if your suggestion works in VMware, because I've not tried it yet. I however wanted to say that, for some reason I've not understood, your suggestion doesn't seem to work in VirtualBox, at least with the version I'm using (which is 4.3.10).

When I followed the guides in the FreeNAS documentation which I linked to in my original post, I set the network setting to "bridged" as one of them suggested. This, I believe, is at least one of the causes why I had those funny errors in the first place. I don't know why it did that, since I also expected it to use DHCP to automatically retrieve an IP address from my home network router.

Edit: Re-worded slightly.

 

[gpsguy]

Ensure that you have the virtual NIC configured correctly. Follow the example on the PDF user guide. Have you checked the box "cable connected"?

If you have more than one physical NIC in your computer, make sure that you selected the correct one in the drop down list.


Sent from my phone

 

[david kennedy]

Hi david kennedy. I don't know if your suggestion works in VMware, because I've not tried it yet. I however wanted to say that, for some reason I've not understood, your suggestion doesn't seem to work in VirtualBox, at least with the version I'm using (which is 4.3.10).

When I followed the guides in the FreeNAS documentation which I linked to in my original post, I set the network setting to "bridged" as one of them suggested. This, I believe, is at least one of the causes why I had those funny errors in the first place. I don't know why it did that, since I also expected it to use DHCP to automatically retrieve an IP address from my home network router.

Edit: Re-worded slightly.

I checked my own VirtualBox and it is the same as yours (4.3.10).
I use Mint Linux and mine is set to "bridged" and eth0 as the bridge interface.

When I start up my Freenas VM my dhcp server assigns one of the addresses and i can access it from my PC using the assigned address (192. vs the 10.)

I still keep a VM to check things out before i do them to my real FreeNas mahcine and started my VM up while typing this without issue.

 

[Marth]

How funny. I've successfully managed to obtain an IP address through DHCP on VirtualBox under "Bridged Adapter" mode when I'm connected to my university's network, rather than my home one.

It looks like I'll need to investigate what happens when I try all of this on my home network again.

 

[Marth]

As it turns out, I get DHCPDISCOVER errors when I run my FreeNAS VM at home with the same "Bridged Adapter" Network settings I used at my university.

I'm not going to pursue this issue further, since I now know I can use either VMware or VirtualBox with "NAT" Network settings.

I would like to say thank you to everyone who posted for helping me. :)