new hardwire - no boot

[jorgsacre]

hi all,

I've been using freenas 8 for quite some time on an old laptop and was very happy by it's perfprmance. Unfortunately the laptop stopped working and so i bought a new piece of hardware to use freenas on:
Intel NUC Kit DCCP847DYE + Crucial 4 GB SODIMM DDR3-1333.
I made a bootable usb key using FreeNAS-9.2.1.5-RELEASE-x64 that works.
During boot, the usb key is detected and the system boots.
However, after showing the freenas boot options menu, the systems tries to go forward but then reboots. I tried using verbose, single user, safe mode, all with the same result.
I also tried to use the x86 image to create a usb key but with this i didn't even get to the freenas menu and the system halted.
Can anyone tell me where to look or what I am missing (don't have much experience in troobleshooting this since the laptop I used in the past worked fine immediately). I can't seem to get by this point without the system rebooting.

Thanks !!

 

[DrKK]

Sir,

The hardware you have purchased is not even remotely sufficient for FreeNAS, and does not meet the minimum specifications for a FreeNAS box. You are almost certainly experiencing a fundamental hardware problem as a result. FreeNAS is not for a $147 NUC with 4GB of non-ECC RAM. It's for server-grade equipment. You're lucky it worked on your laptop for as long as it did.

I suspect the only solution is to buy the type of hardware that all of the documentation recommends, and all of the forum moderators recommend.

 

[jorgsacre]

Thanks for the swift reply.
Ok, I understand. Can you clarify if such hardware is just highly not recommended or would be able to run (if I provide 8gb RAM minimal - I found the miniam requirments in meantime), perhaps not really performing optimally? I'm just asking because I only use the NAS for media streaming, and did this in the past using the laptop (that really wasn't server grade stuff) and this worked perfectly fine. If possible, I'd try to use a piece of non-expensive hardware being very happy of the performance in the past.
Should it be the case that Freenas only works with certain brands and types of hardware, I can't really find much comprehensive descriptions of this (a lot of documents date from 2011).
Thanks looking into this!

 

[Ericloewe]

IF you do not value your data, feel free to use whatever hardware you want. The lack of ECC alone is essentially playing with fire, since ZFS assumes it is running on ECC. The forum is full of horror stories of people running without ECC and losing their data with no hope of recovery.

Besides the lack of ECC, the NUCs are essentially laptop hardware, and FreeNAS is not known for playing nicely with laptop hardware. Generally, you're strongly encouraged to stick with the traveled path, unless you feel like being a guinea pig. You'll find that general hardware recommendations go something like "Server-grade motherboard, ECC memory, Intel CPU that supports ECC, Intel LAN adapters, LSI storage controllers". The NUC has none of the above.

tl;dr: It's likely you'll lose data if you don't follow the recommendations

 

[jorgsacre]

hi Eric,

Ok, I understand and of course I am not really looking forward to losing data.
So the question remains, as I posted earlier, even in case I would choose to follow the server grade hardware path, are there compatabilityu lists or limitations for brands and types for the different components?

Thanks !

 

[Ericloewe]

The Stickies have a lot of information, be sure to read those, as they have specific information for FreeNAS, mostly derived from experience. The "Build check" threads also tend to be informative if you're new here.

 

[DrKK]

Thanks for the swift reply.
Ok, I understand. Can you clarify if such hardware is just highly not recommended or would be able to run (if I provide 8gb RAM minimal - I found the miniam requirments in meantime), perhaps not really performing optimally? I'm just asking because I only use the NAS for media streaming, and did this in the past using the laptop (that really wasn't server grade stuff) and this worked perfectly fine. If possible, I'd try to use a piece of non-expensive hardware being very happy of the performance in the past.
Should it be the case that Freenas only works with certain brands and types of hardware, I can't really find much comprehensive descriptions of this (a lot of documents date from 2011).
Thanks looking into this!

It is unlikely that putting 8GB into your system will fix the problem.

The problem is almost certainly the minimal hardware/motherboard/chipset that you have in a NUC. It simply doesn't have the type of hardware that FreeNAS can successfully drive.