going crazy with my first build :)

[HansP]

Hi

I recently got the nas plan stuck in my head due to htpc capable of only having 1drive in the enclosure

I have recovered a intel celeron 2.66ghz setup with 2GB ram to use as a nas with a 4gig usb drive

so
my first try with 9.2 was strange

i got it setup good and was able to connect to sickbeard ; sabnzbd ; couchpotato , ...

i could enable a disk to share with my other windows pc
so basicly it was set up ready to use ...

i created a ZFS drive of a 40gb laptop hdd i got laying around for all configuration
as test i mounted and shared the drive aswell but it failed copying a large 600mb file from the nas to my PC ; the server reboots itself with no error in the cmd or in the program ?

is there any way i can see the error log somewere ? or pple with similar problems ?

 

[Michael Wulff Nielsen]

Your log messages are in /var/log/messages. If you'd like it on your non-usb storage create a dataset called syslog. Freenas will log there.

But secondly I'll tell you that your hardware is completely non-suitable for FreeNAS. I would advice that you read the stickies in the hardware forum and the documentation.

Your system lacks the recommended ECC memory so you run the risk of a catastrophic filesystem failure.

A hard reset like you're describing is most likely defective hardware or just unstable consumer-hardware. You could try running memtest on it.

In my opinion you have two choices:

1. Get some recommend hardware to run FreeNAS on
2. Use another system that is more flexible with hardware and does not run a checksumming filesystem.

 

[HansP]

hmm , i tested the equipment with a bench of my work and it was fine

i sertainly do not need all extras freenas offers but do you have any other options for me ?

my requirements are :
filesharing over lan (duh)
couchpotato-sabnzbd-sickbeard service plugins


i just reinstalled the nasdistro and mounted the HDD as NTFS , could it be ZFS causing these crashes ?

maybe its easyer to go on windows 7 for this ??

 

[Michael Wulff Nielsen]

If you know Windows 7 I would recommend it, especially on the kind of hardware you have.

I think that you have bad hardware somewhere that causes the FreeBSD kernel i FreeNAS to crash. A test with Windows properly just uses the hardware differently and therefore it doesn't crash.

If you would like an enterprise grade NAS I would recommend buying proper hardware and running FreeNAS on it.

If you lean more towards "consumer" NAS solutions then Qnap and Synology have very good products that you could buy or you could use a windows machine.

 

[JakeHiltz]

Do not use ZFS with 2GB of ram .

 

[HansP]

so that could be the issue then with zfs under 2GB ?
i needed the drive to test sabnzbd-couch etc etc
can i use zts for that and then let sabnzbd download to another drive ?

like said michael , i probably only will use 5% of freenas capabilitys, i only want file shareing and the sabnzbd gang :)

thanks for your replys

 

[Michael Wulff Nielsen]

JakeHiltz is right, below 8GB of memory is not even supported. Don't even try. I suspect your crash could come from the low memory amount.

Don't try to do FreeNAS with that kind of hardware. It's nothing but trouble.

 

[JakeHiltz]

"If you would like an enterprise grade NAS I would recommend buying proper hardware and running FreeNAS on it" , where did this come from? He clearly says he does not need enterprise grade.

Keep using FreeNAS but do not use ZFS. I would recommend using UFS and just setup everything you already have based around this. Your hardware is not great but honestly , for what you are doing , it will be fine.

Keep in mind you may lose data , I would not store anything you dont mind losing on these drives.

 

[JakeHiltz]

I would usually recommend using something like Ubuntu 12.04LTS for this , but there is no real difference given your requirements.

 

[HansP]

well ; i liked this because its easyer to setup as ubuntu i think ?

u have the webacces that u can use fully and quickly !

but the losing data i dont like tbh ?
can u explain why losing data ? as in corrupting files when doing something ?

 

[JakeHiltz]

You have the same risk of losing data using UFS on FreeNAS as you do using Ubuntu as the server.

I am not saying you will absolutely lose data but rather that it is possible. I would not store anything you cannot bear to lose on anything like this without some kind of backup.

The problems with using ZFS with 2GB of ram , especially of non-ECC memory , are long and wide. You will run into so many problems its not worth even attempting.

Just use UFS and you will be fine.

 

[HansP]

well ; now i am using my htpc to do all this

amd E350 asus mini itx with 4gig ram

plan is to divert that unit to openelec or similar to just play and nothing more , and let the other machine do the download to gain a 1min boot instead of 10

 

[JakeHiltz]

Ok so right now you are using your HTPC (running openelec? ) to run all of these services. Your plan is to have them run on another box so that you dont have to decrease performance with your HTPC?

Is your HTPC wired or wireless?

 

[HansP]

no its using windows ; i could not install it trough openelec

i want to take that away from the box and make it possible for others to connect to my network easily to download stuff from me and also because my HTPC only takes 1 3.5 drive i want to extend it in the future to 2-3-4-5 disks
i built that htpc before openelec supported AMD audio-video and it was a pain in the ass to setup so i sticked with that a few years ; now its there and i am planning on using it with a USB3.0 disk or SSD 30gb disk.
so that the HTPC can be plugged off and rebooted in a minute or so (openelec says less than one trough stick :) )

just tested a few 6gb files and a a few times it succeded ; and one time it rebooted again (NTFS now )
so prolly will be fetching a bit of ram ( ddr is not that expensive anymore )

 

[JakeHiltz]

Have you used XBMC ? This is a FreeNAS forum so I wont talk about XBMC , but you should look at it.

Back to using FreeNAS . If you setup UFS you will be fine , just set up everything the same way you did before. If you still have issues copying to the disk come back and let us know!

 

[HansP]

yeah i have that now on windows ... ;)

will try ufs asap ! any difference with NTFS ?
can i also just plugin ntfs drives with data on in and mount them in freenas ?

 

[JakeHiltz]

No, FreeNAS will not add your NTFS drives. Also , if you want to cut down boot time for your HTPC you should seriously install XBMCBuntu. I would not run it within Windows , so much slower .

 

[Michael Wulff Nielsen]

I would remind you that UFS support is going away at some point. Honestly what you really need is a something like a Synology Cubestation.

 

[JakeHiltz]

Considering he is using old parts from 'around the house' I presume he cannot drop that kind of money on that. I would recommend that option as well.

 

[Michael Wulff Nielsen]

Then I would choose a minimal Debian file-server install with ext4. Much more suited to the hardware that he has. :) Or even *gasp* a Windows install.