FreeNAS freezes…

[Youri Andropov]

Hello all,

I'm using plex media server (PMS) in a freenas jail, and I have some problems, which I believe more related to freenas than to plex.

The problem is that the plex web GUI may be unresponsive, some requests get no answer.
To illustrate my problem, I logged on freenas, and pinged the PMS jail :

$ while :; do date; ping -c 1 -t 60 192.168.0.101 > /dev/null; sleep 1; done

with such a result :

Wed Sep 3 20:40:01 CEST 2014
Wed Sep 3 20:40:02 CEST 2014
Wed Sep 3 20:40:03 CEST 2014
Wed Sep 3 20:40:04 CEST 2014
Wed Sep 3 20:40:05 CEST 2014
Wed Sep 3 20:40:06 CEST 2014
Wed Sep 3 20:40:18 CEST 2014
Wed Sep 3 20:40:30 CEST 2014
Wed Sep 3 20:40:42 CEST 2014
Wed Sep 3 20:40:43 CEST 2014
Wed Sep 3 20:40:44 CEST 2014
Wed Sep 3 20:40:45 CEST 2014
Wed Sep 3 20:40:46 CEST 2014
Wed Sep 3 20:40:47 CEST 2014

As you can see, there are "holes" in the ping. It seems that even the putty console freezes during theses "pauses".

[root@freenas ~]# uname -a
FreeBSD freenas.local 9.2-RELEASE-p4 FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE-p4 #0 r262572+17a4d3d: Wed Apr 23 10:09:38 PDT 2014 root@build3.ixsystems.com:/tank/home/jkh/build/9.2.1/freenas/os-base/amd64/fusion/jkh/9.2.1/freenas/FreeBSD/src/sys/FREENAS.amd64 amd64

There is nothing in freenas /var/log/messages that could give any clue.

Any advice ?

 

[dlavigne]

How much RAM? Which NIC driver (from ifconfig)?

 

[Youri Andropov]

[root@freenas ~]# sysctl hw.physmem
hw.physmem: 8545161216

I'm working on em1 because of the IPMI interface.

[root@freenas ~]# ifconfig
em0: flags=8c02<BROADCAST,OACTIVE,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
options=4219b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,TSO4,WOL_MAGIC,VLAN_HWTSO>
ether 00:25:90:72:2e:5d
nd6 options=9<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED>
media: Ethernet autoselect
status: no carrier
em1: flags=8943<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 9014
options=42098<VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,WOL_MAGIC,VLAN_HWTSO>
ether 00:25:90:72:2e:5c
inet6 fe80::225:90ff:fe72:2e5c%em1 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x3
inet 192.168.0.100 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.0.255
nd6 options=23<PERFORMNUD,ACCEPT_RTADV,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
status: active
ipfw0: flags=8801<UP,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 65536
nd6 options=9<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED>
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 16384
options=600003<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,RXCSUM_IPV6,TXCSUM_IPV6>
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x6
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
bridge0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 9014
ether 02:7e:9d:d8:47:00
nd6 options=1<PERFORMNUD>
id 00:00:00:00:00:00 priority 32768 hellotime 2 fwddelay 15
maxage 20 holdcnt 6 proto rstp maxaddr 2000 timeout 1200
root id 00:00:00:00:00:00 priority 32768 ifcost 0 port 0
member: epair0a flags=143<LEARNING,DISCOVER,AUTOEDGE,AUTOPTP>
ifmaxaddr 0 port 8 priority 128 path cost 2000
member: em1 flags=143<LEARNING,DISCOVER,AUTOEDGE,AUTOPTP>
ifmaxaddr 0 port 3 priority 128 path cost 20000
epair0a: flags=8943<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 9014
options=8<VLAN_MTU>
ether 02:17:2d:00:08:0a
nd6 options=1<PERFORMNUD>
media: Ethernet 10Gbase-T (10Gbase-T <full-duplex>)
status: active

 

[Youri Andropov]

[update] No more freezes when PMS service is turned off... Maybe PMS is the problem ?

 

[dlavigne]

PMS is pretty hardware intensive. Doubling the RAM might make PMS happier.

 

[joeschmuck]

Which version of PMS? I'm concerned the newest version is a problem with respect to hardware.

 

[cyberjock]

PMS is pretty hardware intensive. Doubling the RAM might make PMS happier.

That's what she said! ZING!

Which version of PMS? I'm concerned the newest version is a problem with respect to hardware.

My buddy was on the latest as of 4 days ago. He was on 15 and is now on 16 since I upgraded him hoping it might help (it didn't).

 

[joeschmuck]

My buddy was on the latest as of 4 days ago. He was on 15 and is now on 16 since I upgraded him hoping it might help (it didn't).

That is too bad. I haven't upgraded in a long time. I figure that if it's working fine, why mess with it.

Can you roll those changes back and install an older version?

 

[cyberjock]

From what I've read once you upgrade you shouldn't downgrade. As far as I know Plex doesn't make the old downloads available anywhere (if you know of a place I'd love to have a link!) so rolling back isn't easy without you keeping the installer.

 

[joeschmuck]

Nope, I don't know of any place to grab the old versions but I'm sure they exist. I would expect it needs to be a clean install, not just backing up a version.

 

[Youri Andropov]

Well, I've updated FreeNAS to version 9.2.1.7 and PMS to version 0.9.9.13.525-amd64, and I still have the problem : a hang of about 12 seconds every ~2 minutes...
I don't see anything with 'top' in the jail when PMS freezes. It seems that only the network traffic is frozen.

 

[no_connection]

Only a few versions for 9.1 but better then nothing I guess.
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201181647-Plex-Media-Server-Linux-nix-

 

[cyberjock]

You know... jumbo frames are not recommended because it causes all sorts of random havoc with network's that aren't designed for jumbo frames. Since you just said network traffic just stopped I immediately looked at your MTU...

You might want to get rid of the idea of jumbo frames. They do not add throughput despite popular belief. At least, not unless you have a very very specific reason for a non-standard packet size. Even then, you are almost always talking all commercial-grade hardware at that point.

 

[Youri Andropov]

I reverted to standard frames (MTU 1500), but it didn't help ... :/
I'm thinking now about doubling my 8 GB memory.

 

[Youri Andropov]

FYI, no more freezes with 16 GB of RAM.