System Hard Locks

[LarryW]

I built a new system and have tried running FreeNAS based on some recommendations from others but the experience so far has been troublesome. The new build consists of the following and was ran for a few days "burn-in" prior to starting my FreeNAS journey:

• Chenbro SR30169 case (really awesome design)
• Zotac A75ITX-B-E Motherboard
• AMD A10 6790K CPU
• 16GB Crucial Ballistix DDR3 PC-12800 (BLS2CP8G3D1609DS1S00)
• 4x 3TB WD Red drives
• 16GB Sandisk USB Flash (though I have tried another)

Ok, I know the first thing that will cross peoples mind is new build, guy does not know what he is doing. However, after having the system lock a couple of times (never runs more than 5 hours) I ran additional stress testing:

• 28 hours of Memtest - NO errors
• 26 hours of Prime95 from a WindowsPE boot (all cores 100%) - No lock / heat issues
• All drives short / long tested and write zeroes to entire disk (no errors)
• 4 hours of Prime95 and WD Test writing zeroes at same time - no issues
• Boots Ubuntu live CD and runs for 10+ hours

I have tried both 9.2.0 and 9.2.1 and used multiple USB sticks. Have tried disabling USB 3.0 in the BIOS and that does not seem to affect run time one way or another. I have tried both the img file that is directly downloadable and also extracting the image file from the .iso for both versions and both behave the same. About the only configuration that is done with each attempt is to setup networking with static addressing, then login to web client, change password and start a shell running top with 1 second update intervals. That does not really show any spikes either.

Looking for somebody with more FreeNAS experience to hopefully have some ideas. Thanks!

 

[cyberjock]

Well, for one, I don't recommend AMD hardware. Not sure why, but it just seems to be more problematic than Intel hardware. If you read around you'll see I say this all over the place. It sure sounds like, based on your testing, there's incompatible hardware in your system that doesn't play with FreeNAS.

Don't get me wrong, plenty of people DO get AMD systems to work fine. I'm not an AMD fan myself(and its okay if you are). I've just noticed that so many people have problems with AMD that I never recommend them unless you can prove it will run FreeNAS okay.

 

[LarryW]

Anybody else have any suggestions? I find it hard to believe that this is the answer as "Intel / AMD" debate. I have run FreeBSD on plenty of hardware using both architectures, which is what I believe FreeNAS to be based off of. I agree it might be incompatible hardware which is why I listed everything, but I would hope the system would have "base" processor support. I will likely be going to something else in the next couple of days - Nexenta being my next choice and the probably OpenFiler after that though I really do not want to use that since it is practically a dead project (though I have a few production servers with it for my business).

 

[cyberjock]

It's not an "Intel / AMD" debate. That's just what I've seen. I never said it was a CPU problem. It could be that AMD systems often have far more chips from different manufacturers. I don't know what the problem is. And frankly, I don't really care what the problem is. I've just observed that AMD systems, on average, have more problems.

This isn't any different than me recognizing that Supermicro based systems typically are better than boards from prosumer. I'm not bashing everyone else, and I'm not going to make up a list of reason why that is so(although it's fairly obvious since Supermicro is well know for server quality hardware). I'm simply making an observation.

I could critique your system a dozen other ways too..

Look at our stickies:

1. Where's the ECC RAM?
2. Where's the server-grade hardware?
3. Where's the Intel NIC?
4. Why did you go ITX when we recommend against it?
5. You sure that on-board SATA chip is going to work?

See, I can come up with more. But I went for the easiest answer based on what I've seen. I could have brought up all that other stuff too..

 

[LarryW]

As mentioned I build MANY systems for my business and yes, all of these are valuable items. However, this project is meant to be a home server (which I erroneously failed to mention in the first post) for basically file storage, backups, music, photos,... It has very different requirements than a corporate server.

It does not need ECC RAM, it does not need a Supermicro motherboard, Intel NIC, ... Why not continue rambling about where re my dual power supplies, load balancing front end servers, replication server (of course in remote geographic location from my home),... The problem is you get so wrapped up in the "perfect" system, you forget that not every one of the systems needs to be that.

I want something that will run reliably and serve files to the rest of the systems in our home. I would really appreciate any real assistance the somebody can offer and not your random criticisms that are not helping get to the root of the problem.

 

[Yatti420]

:) - I would get what I have..

 

[krikboh]

The AMD A series CPU's have inconsistent compatibility with FreeNAS. Your CPU contains the HD8670D and the FreeBSD wiki specifically states "Not supported" for the full HD8xxx line.

 

[LarryW]

Ok, thanks for the information that might definitely give me something to go on. I had really not even looked at the video portion of things when speccing this out as I figured for a NAS it would not be critical or a factor since we are not really needing any more than basic video requirements for the tty screen. Will keep an eye on the driver progress over at FreeBSD going forward as I really wanted to give FreeNAS as try.

However for the time being will have to look for alternatives so I can get a file server back on our home network. Thanks.

 

[LarryW]

Well, just for the sake of completeness I kept digging. I tried Nexenta following this and had issues with it as well. After that OpenMediaVault which had some issues, but provided a bunch more debug information on the console in regards to the hard locks. Installed the Extras and 3.2 kernel which adds more complete support for the processor and we have been running ever since with no lockups. While I would not say from an Enterprise standpoint it compares at all with the features found in FreeNAS, for home use it has features needed and has been performing well. Will keep an eye on the project going forward and might give it a go again sometime down the road.