Hanging up for hours after first boot up

[x53gunner]

All, total noob here but I figure if I have the gumption to jump head first into FreeBSD on my own, get this far, and I'm a help desk geek by trade, I can get past this issue with some help. I'm doing my first install and it's hanging at "Trying to mount root from zfs:freenas-boot/root/default []..." Here's the critical facts:
Alienware Area-51 box
FOXCONN C51XEM2AA-8EKRS2H NFORCE 590 SLI AMD SOCKET AM2 MOTHERBOARD
AMD Athlon 64x2 4600+ running at 2.4G with 8 GB Ram
FreeNAS 9.3 Release
First USB drive Kingston 8 GB (removed)
Second USB drive Corsair 8 GB (removed)
Third USB drive (currently installed) LEXAR 64 GB
HD Western Digital 160 GB

I pulled down the ISO, burned it to a disc and booted up the system. The install hung up after detecting the mouse (MS trackball) but after a couple of reattempts with an older keyboard & mouse it installed. I rebooted it and time after time on the first boot, it hangs at: Trying to mount root from zfs:freenas-boot/root/default []...
I left it overnight thinking it was just slow (wishful thinking) but no such luck. I have no access to the command line or GUI unless I reboot it and lose all the info on the screen. I have attached a picture of the screen just for the curious of what happened previous to the failure. No error codes, no messages, keyboard responds to reboot command but that is all. Same failure repeatedly.

Sure, it's a huge learning curve but I'm trying to learn my way while trying to eventually get it set up as a killer NAS. Keep in mind, I'm a help desk geek so I'm 99.9% Windows oriented. Last time I did any command line work (aside from some Unbuntu and Elementary installs) was about 15 years ago when I learned some UNIX to prepare satellite command plans. No joke. What that all means is I'm competent but unskilled so go easy with the advice or questions or I'll get lost real easy till I figure this out till I get my spurs.

Thanks for taking the time to review and I'd appreciate any advice you can offer.

TJ

 

[SweetAndLow]

You should read the recommended hardware sticky thread. I have a feeling your hardware is not supported.

 

[x53gunner]

Yes, I see the sticky lists requirements that are above what the FreeNAS home pages lists. Bizarre, but totally understandable. Imagine that... Oh well, I guess it's NAS4Free time or perhaps I can locate a download for an older UFS version that may run on my rig. Thanks for pointing me in that direction.

 

[dlavigne]

Yes, I see the sticky lists requirements that are above what the FreeNAS home pages lists.

URL to the page which differs?

 

[x53gunner]

http://www.freenas.org/hardware-requirements/

First subheading:

Minimum Hardware Requirements:
These specifications will suffice to get a small FreeNAS install running reliably with moderate performance for a few users.

• Multicore 64-bit* processor (Intel strongly recommended)
• 8GB* Boot Drive (USB Flash Drive suffices)
• 8GB* RAM
• At least 1 direct attached disk (Hardware RAID strongly discouraged)
• One physical network port

Here are the asterisk items (in VERY small print on the web page):
* FreeNAS no longer supports 32-bit hardware. The last FreeNAS Release with 32-bit hardware support was FreeNAS 9.2.1.9. This release also supported the UFS filesystem. Deployments on 32-bit hardware using UFS had lower hardware requirements of a 4GB boot device and 4GB of RAM. PLEASE NOTE that further security and stability updates to the 9.2.1.x branch are not guaranteed.

I actually tried 9.2.1.9 and I got the same error. However, when I tried NAS4Free, I'm up and running at the console right now on my test rig. It's not the same, but at least I'll work out my learning curve and with the help of the hardware sticky, I'll build a purpose built rig that should work long into the future.

 

[x53gunner]

Actually, by some strange twist of fate, after trying NAS4Free and it booted up, I took another shot at FreeNAS 9.2.1.9 since UFS has lower hardware requirements. It loaded up and booted without incident and I logged in via GUI like nothing ever went wrong yesterday. Very weird... Yesterday I had nothing. Now, I have a choice of two. Go figure...

 

[HoneyBadger]

Really, that hardware isn't very well suited to FreeNAS though.

AMD gear has drivers that are ... "less than stellar" under FreeBSD. If you're just going to store ripped/pirated media, go right ahead, but I wouldn't be putting pictures of your kids on there or anything that's got to be 100% bit-safe.

 

[cyberjock]

That hardware really isn't well suited for a file server. Especially a ZFS system or a FreeBSD based system.