FreeNAS crashes

[NiceTry]

I've been using FreeNAS for several years now with few problems. When I updated to 9.2.1.X, I started using minidlna. After a few tries, I got it all going and it worked great.

Recently NAS began to lock up and stop at random times. I added a cron job to reboot the system every day at 3AM and that helped for awhile. Now it stops in a few hours.

It sounds to me like a log file or some other log-type file is running out of room and crashing the system but I am not knowledgable enough to actually say. Are there files that can use up the USB resource? Is there a way to clean them out if that is the case?

I get no indication that the ZFS disks are having any trouble.

See the attached photos of the servers' screen when it crashes. Also note the rebooted screen that shows two jexecs executing the same minidlna command. Is that normal?

To address what I thought was a USB stick going senile, I replaced it with a 16GB stick (a "dd" copy). That seemed to help when the system first started acting up. Now I think the success of the USB replacement was a fluke and something else is going on.

Any hints/ideas/help appreciated.

FreeNAS-9.2.1.5-RELEASE-x64 (80c1d35)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E4600 @ 2.40GHz
4GB RAM 4 1GB SATA disks in ZFS RaidZ

 

[gpsguy]

You missed the obvious - you have ZFS running with 4Gb of RAM. For FreeNAS 9.x the minimum requirement is 8Gb, with 8.x it was 6Gb. I'm not surprised that you are having problems. Upgrade to 8 and see what happens.

As far as the USB flash drive size is concerned, 4Gb is adequate. FreeNAS only uses ~2Gb of space. Installing it on a larger stick won't help - the OS can't use the space, nor can you use it for other things.

That being said, hopefully you haven't changed it from readonly and written stuff to it. It's designed to be an appliance.

 

[NiceTry]

Thanks, gpsguy.

I'm rebuilding using UFS. Although I had a great experience with 8.x, ZFS and 4GB, apparently I was just lucky. 8GB for my old machine will cost about $200US. I'll be looking for another hardware solution.

The download note says, "Minimum Requirements for 64-bit is 4GB, but we recommend 8GB for better performance." But, as you state, the hardware requirements in the Wiki documentation state 8GB for ZFS.

 

[cyberjock]

Keep in mind that UFS support is ripped out of FreeNAS's trunk, so UFS support is already dead. If you can't(or won't) upgrade your box to better handle ZFS you are better off looking at other OS options that are better suited for your need.

 

[NiceTry]

Yes. I understand. Thanks.

 

[NiceTry]

Performed a clean install on the assumption that somehow my system USB had been corrupted. Server returned to its normal, cheerful, ZFS-based operation.

I also replaced a drive that had been identified as having bad sectors through SMART. Although the volumes still showed "HEALTHY" and the drives remained online, I figured the bad sectors were an indication of future failure. BTW, how many bad sectors can a 1TB drive typically tolerate?

 

[diedrichg]

You will want to create a few SMART tests that perform both a short and long test. Cyberjock has a good post with a SMART test scheme that he uses.

 

[NiceTry]

Thanks, diedrichg & cyberjock. I found cyberjock's smart test post and set up a long test for each of the four drives on successive days (one a day for four days). I hope this will provide some insight to the disk status.