SMART not starting

[Jath]

Hello,

So I stopped Smartd and upgraded from 9.2.0 to 9.2.1. So far, I have not been able to restart Smartd. I get the message below.

Feb 16 21:01:50 freenas smartd[5507]: Configuration file /usr/local/etc/smartd.conf parsed but has no entries (like /dev/hda)
Feb 16 21:01:50 freenas root: /usr/local/etc/rc.d/smartd: WARNING: failed to start smartd
Feb 16 21:01:50 freenas notifier: /usr/local/etc/rc.d/smartd: WARNING: failed to start smartd
Feb 16 21:02:03 freenas ntpd_initres[2455]: host name not found: 0.freebsd.pool.ntp.org
Feb 16 21:02:03 freenas ntpd_initres[2455]: host name not found: 1.freebsd.pool.ntp.org
Feb 16 21:02:03 freenas ntpd_initres[2455]: host name not found: 2.freebsd.pool.ntp.org

Any ideas?

Thank you.

 

[cyberjock]

Can you post your hardware? It looks like no disk entries exist in the smartd.conf file(hence the first line in your paste). Normally this means the hardware isn't compatible with FreeNAS or no drives are selected to be monitored. I'd find it weird that your hardware did monitor before but doesn't now... /shrug. Let's see what your hardware is.

 

[Jath]

It never really had an issue with the SMART with the hardware, which is why I was confused. But, here's the information. Just as a note, it's a virtual machine. I have it on ESXi 5.5.

Build FreeNAS-9.2.1-RELEASE-x64 (bd35c86)
Platform Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1230 V2 @ 3.30GHz
Memory 1002MB
System Time Sun Feb 16 21:20:35 PST 2014
Uptime 9:20PM up 20 mins, 0 users
Load Average 0.00, 0.02, 0.03

 

[cyberjock]

and.. you are running with 1GB of RAM? Wow.. you have balls. The minimum is 2GB for UFS and 8GB for ZFS. And color me shocked.. but the system isn't performing correctly when you use less than the minimum? Naa, I'm not shocked at all. That's called "normal".

And if you are virtualizing FreeNAS you are totally on your own. We have plenty of threads and stickies on why virtualizing FreeNAS is just flat out crazy dangerous.

 

[Jath]

Honestly, not really sure why it says 1GB. Host says it has 6GB assigned to it at this moment.

If it's not meant to be virtualized, okie dokie.

 

[cyberjock]

It's definitely not. There's warnings in the manual that virtualizing is great for testing, but for production servers that store important data its a serious no-no.

I'm not sure why it says 1GB of the host says 6GB are assigned, but something is terribly wrong with your setup regardless.

 

[Jath]

I'm going to have to take another look at it.

Honestly, the reason I had hoped to do virtualization is since it isn't really "production", I wanted to be able to learn as much as possible with virtualization as possible. Along with that, I wanted a file server since my one hard drive died. However, if virtualization is bad for this, I am going to have to go back to the drawing board and use this server primarily for the file server, and buy a cheap one to put ESXi on it and learn with it that way.

That will come when I buy the rest for the file server. I still have about $1100 to spend to get this as a real file server.

 

[DrKK]

I, actually, for "getting feet wet" and "learning FreeNAS", *strongly* recommend virtualization. In particular, I think even a VMWare Player virtual FreeNAS machine is super instructional for learning the ropes. So, if that's what you're into, virtualization-for-learning-what-the-hell-is-going-on, then I think it's a great idea.

Cyberjock (who *DOES* run a virtualized FreeNAS by the way), is right, however, in that virtualization "for keeps" on a real "production" FreeNAS is something fraught with complexities, challenges, and risks, and should only be undertaken by someone that really knows what the hell they're doing and understand many of the complexities and weirdnesses of ESXi (which, almost no one actually does---especially the ones that think they do).

So anyway, he's not saying "don't virtualize", he's saying: "if you virtualize, you do so on at your own risk, and you need to be doing your own research, your own troubleshooting, and so on". Unless of course you're virtualizing to screw around. :)

 

[Jath]

I'm virtualizing to screw around. Basically, I REALLY want to learn basically everything about virtualization. I can really only do so on the one I want (VMware) at home. Get real good hands on experience.

However, my one hard drive died that had my backups, so I decided to build a file server also. Right now it's only as messing around, since I don't have the main pieces I need (the RAID Controller and hard drives), but once I get that and if FreeNAS is not great on virtualization, I will wipe ESXi off of it and put FreeNAS on metal. Then buy a separate cheap server to mess around with ESXi.

Thank you, guys.

 

[DrKK]

You don't need a RAID controller for small setups. FreeNAS/ZFS takes the place of RAID. You may need a controller if you have more than (say) six disks, but the IDEAL situation for a bare metal FreeNAS board is to be able to plug your drives in directly to the motherboard. If you *DO* need another controller, you'll need to configure it to NOT perform RAID functions.

 

[cyberjock]

http://forums.freenas.org/index.php...duction-as-a-virtual-machine.12484/#post58364

 

[Jath]

Ohh okay, I understand. Yeah, I was going to get a RAID Controller to even out the speed of the SATA ports on the motherboard I got, mainly because I got this. It has 2 SATA 3 and 4 SATA 2. I wanted about 6 3TB drives in a RAID 5 setup, so the speed would be a little wacked.

The file server would primarily be used as Plex Media Server and storage.

 

[DrKK]

Actually you don't have to worry about that. There's no spinning hard drive on the planet that can even remotely, now, or in the future, approach any notable difference with SATA3 vs SATA2. Plug them all in. SATA2 vs SATA3 doesn't make one god damn bit of difference. It's like the difference between a car that has a top speed of 150mph vs 175mph, which you're only using to go to the grocery store.

 

[cyberjock]

The speed won't be wacked with that. Your hard drives are barely able to hit SATA1 speeds, if they can even hit 150MB/sec. They have no chance of hitting SATA2 or SATA3 speeds unless you are running SSDs. To boot, your server is probably running Gigabit LAN, so you can't even dish out data faster than about 125MB/sec. So don't even concern yourself with the SATA speeds. They aren't of any consequence for you.

 

[Jath]

Hahah, works for me. If I don't have to spend extra money on a RAID Controller, it's all the better.

Thanks a lot for your help and suggestions with this.

 

[DrKK]

Sir, we aim to satisfy everyone, with diplomacy, peace, and love. Cyberjock is our point man for that.