No available disks in ZFS Volume Manager

[Ira]

Today downloaded 64 Bit ISO v 9.2.1.8, created installation CD, and installed on 8GB USB drive on Pentium 4 PC with 4 GB RAM (planning to upgrade to 8 GB). Boots fine and I can access GUI from browser on another network PC. Also have 2 x 500 GB SATA HDDs in NAS. If I boot from a PartedMagic USB drive, I can see and run S.M.A.R.T. tests just fine. When I boot from the NAS USB drive, access the GUI, and select the Volume Manager, no disk drives are shown available.

Drives have been Securely Erased with HDparm and not formatted.

What am I missing?

 

[DrKK]

More than likely, the chipset controlling the SATA ports is not compatible with FreeBSD. This happens fairly frequently with obscure or non-server-grade equipment. Obviously, if that is the problem, there is no solution, other than new hardware.

 

[Ira]

Changing hardware, will I need to remake my FreeNAS USB boot drive on the new hardware? Current hardware is Dell Dimension E510 bios A07 (latest). I suspected the SATA controller was the problem.

 

[leenux_tux]

Ira,

Couple of things you may want to do first, just to make sure...

1. From the command line, run the "camcontrol" command to see if there really are no drives being seen by the underlying operating system "camcontrol devlist"
2. Another command you might want to try is "gpart show", this will also give (if the OS is seeing them) a list of hard drives.

You have not listed your current motherboard (update your signature, always useful), it may be cheaper/better for you to invest in a trusty IBM M1015 SATA controller instead of shelling out loads on a new mobo. I did a bit of googling and the machine you mentioned looks like it was available in different specs, which one do you have ?

 

[anodos]

I know it's really tempting to reuse an old P4 system, but you'd probably be better off with something newer that supports ECC. Unless you're using it for a space heater :)

 

[Ira]

Yep, the problem was non-compatibility with the old hardware and FreeBSD. It's working quite well now in a Dell Optiplex 755 with a Core 2 Duo @2.33 GHz, 4 GB RAM, 2 x 500GB SATA HDD running Stripped and a Transcend 8 GB USB boot drive.

I first upgraded the BIOS to the latest available (A22) and selected ACHI for the onboard SATA controller.

Next question is: How much will the performance be enhanced if I upgrade the RAM from 4 to 8GB?

Thanks for all the help.

Ira

 

[anodos]

Yep, the problem was non-compatibility with the old hardware and FreeBSD. It's working quite well now in a Dell Optiplex 755 with a Core 2 Duo @2.33 GHz, 4 GB RAM, 2 x 500GB SATA HDD running Stripped and a Transcend 8 GB USB boot drive.

I first upgraded the BIOS to the latest available (A22) and selected ACHI for the onboard SATA controller.

Next question is: How much will the performance be enhanced if I upgrade the RAM from 4 to 8GB?

Thanks for all the help.

Ira

You would gain a more stable zpool.

 

[Ira]

OK, I'll do it. RAM is on order.

Thanks!

Ira

 

[anodos]

I'm not sure what you mean by "2x 500GB running stripped". A 2-disk stripe has no redundancy. One disk fails and you lose everything. If you have only 2 drives, you should present the drives bare to FreeNAS and use the GUI to create a 2 disk mirror.

 

[Ira]

Sorry for my "jargon". (smile) We're going for max speed and capacity here, not redundancy or reliability. My crowd has always referred to RAID 0 as "striped." (On our important data systems, we run RAID 5 for complete redundancy.)

This current project is to turn a batch of recycled PCs into Home or SOHO NAS servers. If it's for important data, we will certainly run at least RAID 1 (mirror).

Thanks,

Ira

 

[solarisguy]

[...] This current project is to turn a batch of recycled PCs into Home or SOHO NAS servers. If it's for important data, we will certainly run at least RAID 1 (mirror). [...]

ZFS is a fairly bad choice for a system that does not have ECC RAM (actually ECC everywhere: RAM, CPU, motherboard).

As long as you understand that FreeNAS 9.2.1.x is the last series that supports UFS, welcome to FreeNAS community :)

P.S. FreeNAS does not make any old hardware run any faster or last longer but some try to have FreeNAS everywhere just for the ease of use and uniformity of system administration interfaces.

 

[Ira]

I set this box up with ZFS. Would I better off to look at a different NAS software solution for these type of non-servers, non-ECCs?

Or are you suggesting I switch from ZFS to UFS for this application and continue with this version on future similar projects?

 

[DrKK]

I set this box up with ZFS. Would I better off to look at a different NAS software solution for these type of non-servers, non-ECCs?

Or are you suggesting I switch from ZFS to UFS for this application and continue with this version on future similar projects?

Ira, this question is a bit of a "jihad" issue here in the FreeNAS community.

Because of the peculiarities of ZFS, there are technical reasons why running non-ECC RAM can actually cause problems above and beyond what would normally be expected. You *CAN* run non-ECC RAM, and odds are good you will be fine, but:

1) You'll want to be aggressively backed up
2) You are running software intended for SERVER GRADE applications, and that makes SERVER GRADE assumptions, on non-server grade equipment, and hence, we don't recommend it, and your data is at some risk.

FreeNAS is for solid, purpose-built equipment, really. It's not intended to be used on some crappy old crap you just had laying around. If you do so, you need to understand the risks.

There are Linux possibilities (e.g., you might look up "turnkeylinux file server") that might be considered.

Running UFS, while a decent option, is actually also not usually our recommendation these days because we are about to phase out UFS support in FreeNAS, I believe.

 

[Ira]

I started at the FreeNAS history page. I guess that's where I led myself astray... Let me explain.

We're in the recycling business, not the take apart for scrap business. We strive to find new uses for recycled electronic equipment to put it back into use. I read Olivier Cochard-Labbé's story about re-using an old PC and thought we might try the same, since it was the origin of FreeNAS. Hearing now the technical requirements of the hardware and lack of compatibility with FreeBSD (which I started using in 1996, b.t.w.) FreeNAS is not the product, as you put it, "intended to be used on some crappy old crap you just had laying around."

I truly appreciate all the help over the last couple of days. I'll look for a more "suitable" application.

Perhaps the web site could add the words "FreeNAS is software intended for Server Grade hardware."

(I guess we've been disassembling the wrong hardware for scrap...Smile. The server grade stuff just doesn't sell.)

 

[DrKK]

Ira:

I didn't mean to rain on your parade. The original FreeNAS project, the direct descendants of the codebase you're referring to more exists with the "NAS4Free" guys. The modern FreeNAS product is definitely intended for server-grade deployments. Sorry brother.

 

[solarisguy]

@Ira, I think some clarifications are needed.

• ZFS would require ECC regardless whether it is *BSD, FreeNAS, Linux or Solaris.
• FreeBSD is a base for FreeNAS, so FreeNAS is compatible with FreeBSD. Just not everything from FreeBSD is installed/used by FreeNAS.
• If your hardware works, and your earlier post shows that is works, you can easily run FreeNAS using UFS mirrors, provided that you do not hope for any updates (let's say to Samba) down the road. Current FreeNAS 9.2.1.8 might be the last version with UFS support. And I think that is your real limit, that is why I wrote about it earlier.
  
• You evidently know your way with the hardware and Unix. Around here, the server grade lingo quite often only means that for example if you are using cheap SATA cards or Realtek network cards nobody would even try to troubleshoot them. Or since ECC (due to ZFS) is expected, random crashes that could be caused by a faulty RAM might evoke responses of the type: did you check your logs for ECC memory errors? Presence of a UPS is silently assumed by some. 24x7 operation (i.e. no power cycle stress) is taken for granted. Etc.

 

[cyberjock]

Everything everyone is saying about ECC RAM, server grade, etc is 100% true.

But, if you are already saying that you are doing stripes (which most people would immediately assume you are just crazy stupid) and you understand the risks (which it sounds like you do) then why not do the other stuff wrong too? Go non-ECC and do whatever floats your boat. If you're using it for trash data (and you are basically *expecting* the pool to fail by doing stripes, then why not just not worry about the data and go for max performance and be done with it? (I'm not being sarcastic, I'm serious... and it's not April fool's day)

Don't get me wrong, I personally don't believe in "build stuff that you know will blow up in your face later". Quite a few people that have asked me to recover their pools made the same argument. They had no intention of storing any important data on the pool, blah blah blah... and then one day they have a few *extremely* important files on it when a disk fails. Next thing you know they're looking at how to not spend $10k+ for data recovery (yes, that's how much it *really* costs for ZFS recovery) and get their 50MB of ultra super dooper important files back.

If you are doing this strictly for performance and nothing else I'm not sure why you wouldn't just buy a $50 SSD and enjoy that... it would be gobs faster...