New clean FreeNAS Installation Intermittently Booting

[rob3007]

Hi All,

I am really hoping someone might be able to help me here, I am brand new to FreeNAS (and I dont know much about Linux either!) I normally stick with Windows, but I really want to try and use this incredible tool and I am having problems already!

I should also mention that I am also new to posting in forums as well, whenever I have needed information before I have always found someone elses post to fix my problem, but I have searched for 2 days without finding any answers that have helped me... Please be patient with me!

OK, here is my problem. I recently had a failed SSD that was running a Windows 10 PC that I stored all my data on, and as the PC was only ever used for data storage anyway, I thought that having a go at using FreeNAS would be a good opportunity to learn something new. I bought a brand new SanDisk Ultra Fit USB 3.0 32GB Flash Drive, downloaded the latest stable version of FreeNAS (file name: FreeNAS-9.10-RELEASE.ISO) and followed the instructions to install it.

All went well with the installation, and the PC soon rebooted and this is where the problem started. on first boot it got so far and then stopped, last message was

Code:

Stopped at kdb_enter+0x3e: movq  $0,kdb_why"

I found several posts about this type of error, but nothing that seemed to link with a brand new install, so I hit the reset button, the computer restarted and this time it worked and booted fine. As I have no data drives installed yet I shut the PC down and started moving data off my drives.

Later on I booted up to a similar message, this time it happened every time I rebooted, after about 10 attempts it finally booted, and then it booted fine the next couple of times, before it failed to boot again.

Obviously I am nervous about trusting my data to a PC that I cannot guarantee will boot every time, so I want to get this sorted out before I go any further. As I say, I am completely new to the OS, I dont even know how I would go about getting a log file for what I see on my screen from the boot over to the windows PC next to it, or even where I would find a log file! I was hoping there might be something in the web GUI but I couldnt find it, so if someone could point me in the right direction for that then that would be helpful. For now I have a link to a photo of my computer screen below!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2Uxe3KoJmuDUjUwN2VJSU9PSlE/view?usp=sharing

The PC that I am trying to use for this attempt is about 5 years old, but has run stable with windows 8, 8.1 and then Windows 10 (until the SSD failure) the hardware is as follows:

Motherboard: Zotac H67ITX-C-E
CPU: Intel Pentium G620T (I know this is quite low spec, but it is dual core and hopefully its enough to run a basic home NAS, I dont intend to use encription and I plan to just set up my disks as individual volumes as they are all different sizes and dont really need a proper RAID)
Memory: 8GB non-ECC
ODD: HP blueray drive
Installation drive: SanDisk Ultra Fit USB 3.0 32GB Flash Drive (as mentioned previously)

Everything else is integrated into the motherboard. No data disks currently installed in the PC.

I have played around with some of the settings in the BIOS but nothing there seems to help, am I a lost cause?

Thanks in advance for any and all help received!

Rob.

 

[m0nkey_]

It's likely the motherboard is not compatible with FreeBSD, so your results will be a little hit and miss.

I highly recommend you look at the hardware recommendation guide available under the resources section.

You can easily build a solid FreeNAS server pretty cheap these days. One suggestion is to look at the Lenovo ThinkServer TS140 as it regularly goes on sale, supports ECC and typically comes with a Core i3 processor (minimum). Right now it's on sale on Amazon for $209. Put another 4GB ECC RAM and you're good to go.

 

[rob3007]

Hi m0nkey_

Thank you for your fast reply. I appreciate what you are saying, and in an ideal world I would agree, but I was really hoping to utilise the hardware I already have. I am in the UK and I havent seen anything that comes even close to the spec of what you just linked to for that sort of money over here, the CPU in that ThinkServer alone would cost me £120 (about $150).

This was really more of a learning exersise and hopefully ending up with a useful tool at the end of it. If I cant do what I was hoping to with the hardware that I have then I guess I will have to give it a miss.

I had read the hardware guide and realised that my my hardware wasnt on the recommended list, but then given that it is about 5 years old I didnt really expect it to be. I was just hoping that meeting the minimum specs would be enough to make a useable system.

Thanks again for your comments.

Rob.

 

[wblock]

I don't see any reason that motherboard would not work. And if it did, it should be deterministic.

However, the failures suggest either RAM or power supply problems. I would run memtest on it. Failing memory could also explain the SSD failure as a data failure rather than a hardware failure. Or the other way around: a failing power supply could have damaged an SSD.

 

[rob3007]

Hi wblock,

Thank you for your response, after everything I had read on other posts about possible memory problems, but for some reason I had convinced myself that the hardware was fine just because I had been running a prefectly stable system up until the SSD failure. I clearly failed completely on that one! after trying various configurations just make sure that there wasnt an underlying problem anywhere else, I have confirmed that indeed my memory is faulty, the test is currently at 27597 errors and not even half way through!

Thank you for your time (and also sorry as I feel that I may have also wasted your time here on something I should have already checked).

Given the failure of the SSD and the memory, I think that it may be time to retire the rest of this hardware afterall, patching it up seems pointless at this stage, ill just be waiting for the next failure!

Thanks again and if I ever do get round to getting a reasonable FreeNAS system up and running I'm sure I will be back again!

Rob.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Given the failure of the SSD and the memory, I think that it may be time to retire the rest of this hardware afterall

If the memory was bad, there's a decent chance that the other components were OK but the RAM made them look broken.

 

[wblock]

If the memory was bad, there's a decent chance that the other components were OK but the RAM made them look broken.

Yes. And a failing power supply can do that also.

Given the failure of the SSD and the memory, I think that it may be time to retire the rest of this hardware

Maybe. Although keep in mind that major RAM manufacturers usually have a lifetime warranty. And it's worth trying that system with a different power supply.

Which is not to say that I'd recommend that system for FreeNAS. But it might be something to trade or give to a relative or something.