First experience with FreeNas - Boots off USB and then crashes and reloads.

[Floyd]

Hey guys,

First off , I'm new to FreeNAS so please be gentle. Also I'm using slightly older hardware (but not ancient) and my intention for now is to use UFS not ZFS.

Here is my set up.

• I have 4 1TB drives (two brand new WD Reds, and two older WD Greens)
• I have 6 gigs of DDR2 Ram (2 x 2gb dimms, 2 x 1gb dimms). All set up in dual channels
• My motherboard is an ASUS M2R32-MVP (it has four SATA channels on it, and Marvel 88E8001 Gigabit LAN adapater on board)
• Video card is a Nvidia Quadro FX 1700 (512 mb -- this machine used to be used for 3D modeling)
• The processor is a AMD Athlon 64 x2 +6000
• Power supply is a 500w (I don't know the brand)
• And i'm using an 8gig USB for the OS

So I downloaded the 9.2.1.4 and burned it to a DVD. I then boot off that and install the OS on the USB drive. (So far so good) Then when I boot off the USB, the OS loads and gets as far as obtaining an IP address from my network. I see that part working, but the next parts a blur because, as soon as that finishes it begins to run some other commands (start up some services I guess), but then the screen goes black and the machine just reboots. It will just keep doing this.

So far I've tried a couple different things. In cluding swamping out the USB Drive, Turning off AHCI in the bios (i'm not sure I'll need it right now any way) and upgrading to 9.2.1.5 (made no difference).

Any help here would be appreciated. Is my hardware not compatible or too old? Also how does one trouble shoot something like this?

Thanks so much in advance,

Floyd

 

[Starpulkka]

Have you tried older freenas like as freenas 8 does it boot?

Well.. if you must play... (as on side note, machine what uses ddr2 memory its old machine, ddr4 its making its way).
For freenas 9 take hdds off, take c states off from processor etc. rip everything extra off and see will freenas 9 boot. Might be nvidia what crashes or might be that your hardware isnt meant to be for freenas 9 .

Edit: Well that nvidia card is professional business card and i quessed it might have bsd drivers what if it can mess booting up and its in that take everything extra off advice category.
As for nas4free i dont have any opinion (i have tryed it but thats all).

 

[Floyd]

Thanks for the quick replay.

Yeah I'm getting the impression that my hardware won't work, which is a little shocking to me because everything I read had said you could use almost any old machine, but maybe that was for older versions of FreeNas.

I've also read Nas4Free is better for older hardware. Do you have any opinion?

Anyhow I like your recommendation for of trying FreeNas 8, which I'll download as well tonight. By the way why do you think the Nvidia could be causing the issue. I'm curious what you think this could cause a problem.

Floyd

 

[gpsguy]

Even with FreeNAS the minimum memory requirement for ZFS was 6-8Gb. It might have been 6Gb for 8.0x and changed later on.

Those articles about using old hardware were for FreeNAS 0.7, which later become NAS4Free. Although I've never used the product it would be better suited to work with your hardware.


Sent from my phone

 

[cyberjock]

8.x seemed to be "ok" with 6GB. There wasn't much evidence of RAM being a problem(but we weren't looking for it back then). But in 9.x, you are taking risks by going with <8GB of RAM-up to and including sudden loss of the zpool.

NAS4Free is allegedly better for older hardware, but I won't put words in their mouth. I'd check out their hardware requirements and see for yourself.

 

[Floyd]

Hey guys,

So after trying for days to get FreeNas to run, I downloaded the latest version of Nas4Free and got it installed and up and running on my first try. As easy as that really. I guess there was a misconception on my part that it would work with my older hardware, but I swear I feel like ever video I watch said I could use anything. It seems FreeNas does require slightly newer hardware and as you guys keep pointing out 8gigs of ram at the minimum. The funny thing is my motherboard will only allow up to 8gigs (no more), so it's not well suited for this OS.

Anyhow, I'll try this out for a bit and see if I like it. I'm mostly interested in using it for a backend for my XBMC / MythTV setup. I use MythTV to capture and record video from my Cable provider and as you can imagine uncompress video takes up a lot of storage.

Floyd

 

[cyberjock]

The old FreeNAS project(which was owned by the same guys as NAS4Free) was "sold" as a "ZFS server using spare hardware". When iXsystems bought the FreeNAS name they rewrote everything from scratch to be an enterprise-class solution. If you look at old stuff that refers to the old project, it's totally accurate. Unfortunately a lot of people are *still* convinced that the new FreeNAS OS still fits those requirements and it doesn't.

 

[Floyd]

Hey guys,

Thanks so much for all the help. I have another question. I finally got my home server set up this weekend and was surprised to see that Nas4Free also supports ZFS (which makes sense i guess) but I was curious since it doesn't require as much hardware power is it the same ZFS that FreeNas can deliver.

What are the disadvantages of using ZFS in Nas4Free is what I'm trying to say.

Thanks so much,

Floyd

 

[cyberjock]

What are the disadvantages of using ZFS in Nas4Free is what I'm trying to say.

I won't try to answer that as I'm not too familiar with NAS4Free. You'd have to check out their forums, documentation, IRC, etc.

 

[Floyd]

No problem. Thanks so much

 

[Hyperion]

ZFS is a storage protocol on devices, like HDDs.
Its incredibly accurate, but really fussy.
The jury is out if it its worth it.

 

[no_connection]

The ZFS versions aren't compatible so Nas4Free won't import pools created with FreeNAS (at least not for me).
Compression is not on by default and it was configured a little differently.

While Nas4Free does have some advantages, especially showing disk temperature in GUI (why does FreeNAS not do that?) and easy access to SMART data (again why not?)
Not to mention practical log and advanced information like open files from CIFS.(again very useful) And it has a built in file manager (although not sure how secure it is now days).

I found that it lacked features like Jails (rather easy installation of for example Plex) and didn't behave as easily as I'd like. I have a v7 NAS that I am now replacing with the latest FreeNAS so I am familiar with how Nas4Free looks like (the same as v7).

 

[cyberjock]

The main reason I'd say for temps not being displayed is that it doesn't really matter. It's foo-foo stuff that makes things look pretty but doesn't actually add value. If your a good FreeNAS admin and you've set up everything properly you'll get an email if your hard drives get too hot. Big picture, they're either 'too hot' or 'just fine'. There's even rumors that next-gen CPUs won't even give you a temperature. They'll just return "fine" or "too hot". Why? Because in the big picture it doesn't matter if the CPU is 30 or 35C. What does matter is if it's 'too hot'.

My Supermicro board IPMI doesn't display temp. It's either green, yellow, or red. That's it.

 

[Floyd]

Hey no_connection,

I appreciate the feedback. But I'm also curious if the hardware requirements are still the same then? It doesn't seem to be the case since I'm using ZFS with Nas4free and its appears to be working fine. Perhaps a bit slow, but i can't really tell to be honest. As I mention above I couldn't get FreeNas working with the same set up because it seem to require much newer hardware then I had.

Floyd

 

[no_connection]

I have had FreeNAS work "just fine" with 512MB RAM in a VM with a single disk ZFS. So having something work now is not the same as having it work tomorrow.
Which is kind of why stickies and almost every post is telling every one to get good hardware that has been tested and therefor recommended.

I would say that hardware requirements have increased due to increased storage and the NAS doing more things. Same can be said for XP over the years.

And with ZFS you can't really do anything if something where to go wrong due to hardware, so that does increase the leeway or headroom needed somewhat.

 

[Hyperion]

You don’t seem to ask a question

 

[cyberjock]

Hey no_connection,

I appreciate the feedback. But I'm also curious if the hardware requirements are still the same then? It doesn't seem to be the case since I'm using ZFS with Nas4free and its appears to be working fine. Perhaps a bit slow, but i can't really tell to be honest. As I mention above I couldn't get FreeNas working with the same set up because it seem to require much newer hardware then I had.

Floyd

Not sure why you are comparing 2 different OSes. Windows 2012 R2 makes for a reasonable file server. So does Linux and so does FreeBSD. But the hardware requirements for each vary... widely. Just because NAS4Free and FreeNAS are both built on FreeBSD doesn't matter one iota.

Not really sure why you are even questioning this. Sounds to me like you are questioning it just to question it and aren't just accepting that the people that design this stuff have given you recommendations you should, for most intents and purposes, blindly follow. The should know better than you what kind of minimal requirements you should have, right?

 

[Floyd]

Hey Cyberjock,

I'm not trying to be difficult, I was just trying to find out if I run the same risks using ZFS under Nas4Free using my current build (since it doesn't meet the recommendations of FreeNas). That being said I should probably be asking these same questions on that forum moving forward. Sorry about that.
Anyhow, I do appreciate your feedback.

BTW I read your guide for noobs and found it really helpful. Definitly filled in a lot of gaps for me. Thanks so much for sharing it with everyone.

Floyd

 

[cyberjock]

NAS4Free's design is totally different than FreeNAS'. If you want to know the differences you'd have to dig into how each side expects the OS to work. NAS4Free seems to be aimed at a lower-end market. Small home users and perhaps small businesses. FreeNAS is designed for Enterprise class users that want to build huge servers. With those different markets targeted you get totally different expectations. For a small home user, 8GB of RAM might be a lot. But for Enterprise-class users, having a "minimum 8GB of RAM" is laughable as they will likely have 20x that.

 

[MikeSuede]

Hey Floyd,

I had the same problem you did booting-up and I'm using a machine with less resources than yours, I think. It's a Dell Optiplex 745 stock. Just something that I could use to learn the basics of FreeNas, before I build my real server. And like you, from what I read you could use it on almost any machine. (Of course without ZFS) Anyway, after trying with 2 different discs, I remembered that last year I burned a copy of 9.1.0 and never did anything with it. So I gave the older version a try and it booted up 1, 2, 3. And then instead of a fresh install of the latest version, I just tried an upgrade and it's been smooth sailing since (for the most part). I've been running for about a week. I think it's worth a try.

Mike