unable to setup 1Gb/s network speed on free NAS

[krzychug]

Hi,

My hardware is H97M-G43, NIC Realtek RTL8111G GIGABIT LAN, Intel Celeron G1840, 8GB RAM + 3 HDD 1TB, FreeNAS 9.3 (latest stable build).

I can not setup this hardware to run with 1Gb/s network speed, it only works with 100Mb/s which is not acceptable for me. I found this post http://bluemedora.com/blog/correcting-link-speed-negotiation-issues-freenas-9x however when I run media 1000baseTX mediaopt full-duplex command network interface goes down with comment (from ifconfig) status: no carrier. When I go back to 100Mb/s it goes live again with no problems.

Reading through other replies to similar posts I'd like to say upfront it has nothing to do with my network setup - same hardware over the same cables run on 1Gb/s on windows with no issues.

I assume this has sth. to do with realtek driver for freeBSD. Any help would be appreciated ...

 

[DJ9]

Simple solution, go spend around $30 for a Intel NIC.

 

[Bidule0hm]

It's probably because you use some cable/switch/whatever that doesn't support 1G but only 100M and/or the Realtek NIC (Realtek NICs are well known to cause weird problems).

 

[SweetAndLow]

Make sure you are using cat 5e or better cable an your switch supports 1000mb/s.

 

[krzychug]

Thanks for all the answers.

I'm using good quality cat 5e cable, also my switches fully support 1Gb/s - as I said same hardware in the same "network" place works with 1Gb/s under different OS.
Buying Intel NIC seems to be an option (it is in fact ~30$), however did anybody really checked that it works with 1Gb/s? There are different models of Intel NICs - does it matter which one?

Any other hints from anybody?

 

[DJ9]

The Intel Gigabit CT PCI-E Network Adapter EXPI9301CTBLK works fine.

 

[HoneyBadger]

Buying the Intel card will probably solve this issue, but I smell a way bigger problem: you're running non-ECC RAM and RAIDZ1.

I really hope you aren't storing anything irreplaceable on there.

 

[krzychug]

Well, for time being I do not store anything there yet also I do not have final HDD setup I planned. It is more that I set it up to play with Free NAS to check what are the features and limitations. I'm going to build a small home NAS with free OS for family pictures, movies and some other hobby projects storage. However, the more I learn about FreeNAS the more I go into conclusion that it is not a good choice for this. The hardaware requirements - plenty of RAM (if you put a bit more disk space), ECC RAM, server-alike mobo that supports it, dedicated NIC goes beyond a limited "hobby" budget.

Most probably I will reconsider OS selection. Could be that sth. very simple with hardware RAID1 and without ZFS will do the job. After all it is just about protecting my data from mechanical disk failure (what happened to me couple of times in the past) and to get transfers from/to the storage ~1Gb/s in order not to fall a sleep copying sth. there :)

 

[HoneyBadger]

Actually FreeNAS is the best choice for this because of its ability to protect your data from corruption or loss; but in order to do that, it has to be set up properly.

Take a look at this article from ArsTechnica about bitrot and the impact a single bitflip can have on a picture.

If you're using it as a repository for downloaded movies and experimentation that is an inconvenience to lose, feel free to use whatever you like. Including ZFS on non-ECC, but that will be the first thing that's pointed out if the pool fails.

But if you're storing irreplaceable data like family photos, please take the time to protect it properly.

 

[Sam L.]

ensure that all your NIC (network interface cards) are selecting matching speeds and MTUs. I think your device supports jumbo 9k frames, but are all devices set to the same all around? If any of them don't match speed settings/jumbo frame settings you will see this issue. I had a similar issue with another dumb switch and some broadcom NIC adapters.

My fix was to set the Windows PCs to manual 9k MTU, and update device drives to allow manual selection of gig-ethernet speed accross the board. Your issue may be similar.

 

[Sam L.]

freenas error code 80004005 (I was unable to connect to the share) plus a couple other issues.
Fixed now...
===============
Background : I run Win7 x64 Ultimate, private network, running my own NTP on my win7 machine because I don't want to put my nas on the internet and it never wants to stay in synch with my laptop.

Hardware for freenas is:
1 Gigabyte (GA-H87TN) (ultrathin miniITX)
1 Intel Core i5-4460 LGA 1150 CPU (BX80646I54460)
1 Plextor M6M 128GB mSATA SSD (PX-128M6M)
12 Samsung Spinpoint (ST2000LM003) (2TB 2.5inch HDDs)
1 Protronix 8-Port PCI Express SataIII controller
2x8GB Corsair Vengeance (CMSX16GX3M2B1600C9) DDR3L 12800 Laptop memory

(thats 24 TB NAS in a 1.3x15x11 inch form factor! and average power consumption of 30watts. Peak power is 67watts so far.)

The freenas is a stand alone pc with wired network card going via crossover cable into my second pc (my laptop). The link between the two is a private IP scheme without DHCP. The laptop has a separate wifi link to the internet and is not sharing it.
---------------
I ran through the video tutorial to build my nas and share. I used the online video that demos 'freenasiscool' for ver 9.3, ultimately setting up a 12 drive raidz, making a volume, making a dataset, making a share.

I was unable to connect to the nas via the setup cifs share, even when only setting force guest. Seaching online help for 3 days led to no progress. Finally I found someone who pointed out that you can force windows to select "alternate credentials" when using the map network drive wizard! I know how to setup user credentials in windows, and despite setting up in freenas that the user was a windows account, my win7 pc would always attempt to authenticate as a generic credential; see windows credential manager. I had setup and check this more than 50 times. Ironically, despite configuring and logging is as the same user over and over again I had to use the wizard where I could check the box that says "use alternate credentials" with my credentials input as "10.10.10.1\freenasiscool" then the password, then check the box to save it. Windows 7 would not accept manually putting in these credentials any other way.

Also I had to check the adapter settings, as it needed the "Client for Microsoft Networks" installed, as well as under IPv4 I had the NetBIOS "Enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP" checked. I disabled IPv6 all around to reduce any other issues that could arise.

I also had to go into my firewall (Symantec) and configure the rule "Allow UPnP Discovery from private IP addresses" I did this not so that it would work for default login now, but for future services that I wish to enable on the server.

Now I can finally get in, see my directory, make files, delete files, and modify them as well. Unfortunately I further have the issue that copying over a single 54MB file took 30+ minutes, as the transfer rate is right at 28KB/s.

To fix slow transfer to the nas I found how to add options to the network interface. Go to the Network -> Interfaces -> click on yours (mine was re0) in the options set "mtu 9000 up" which I also had to set on the other side of the network link at my laptop. After rebooting the NAS my upload speeds went from 30KBps to 122MB/s peaking out the gigabit LAN.

I hope that some of this helps another person out there.

 

[SweetAndLow]

freenas error code 80004005 (I was unable to connect to the share) plus a couple other issues.
Fixed now...
===============
Background : I run Win7 x64 Ultimate, private network, running my own NTP on my win7 machine because I don't want to put my nas on the internet and it never wants to stay in synch with my laptop.

Hardware for freenas is:
1 Gigabyte (GA-H87TN) (ultrathin miniITX)
1 Intel Core i5-4460 LGA 1150 CPU (BX80646I54460)
1 Plextor M6M 128GB mSATA SSD (PX-128M6M)
12 Samsung Spinpoint (ST2000LM003) (2TB 2.5inch HDDs)
1 Protronix 8-Port PCI Express SataIII controller
2x8GB Corsair Vengeance (CMSX16GX3M2B1600C9) DDR3L 12800 Laptop memory

(thats 24 TB NAS in a 1.3x15x11 inch form factor! and average power consumption of 30watts. Peak power is 67watts so far.)

The freenas is a stand alone pc with wired network card going via crossover cable into my second pc (my laptop). The link between the two is a private IP scheme without DHCP. The laptop has a separate wifi link to the internet and is not sharing it.
---------------
I ran through the video tutorial to build my nas and share. I used the online video that demos 'freenasiscool' for ver 9.3, ultimately setting up a 12 drive raidz, making a volume, making a dataset, making a share.

I was unable to connect to the nas via the setup cifs share, even when only setting force guest. Seaching online help for 3 days led to no progress. Finally I found someone who pointed out that you can force windows to select "alternate credentials" when using the map network drive wizard! I know how to setup user credentials in windows, and despite setting up in freenas that the user was a windows account, my win7 pc would always attempt to authenticate as a generic credential; see windows credential manager. I had setup and check this more than 50 times. Ironically, despite configuring and logging is as the same user over and over again I had to use the wizard where I could check the box that says "use alternate credentials" with my credentials input as "10.10.10.1\freenasiscool" then the password, then check the box to save it. Windows 7 would not accept manually putting in these credentials any other way.

Also I had to check the adapter settings, as it needed the "Client for Microsoft Networks" installed, as well as under IPv4 I had the NetBIOS "Enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP" checked. I disabled IPv6 all around to reduce any other issues that could arise.

I also had to go into my firewall (Symantec) and configure the rule "Allow UPnP Discovery from private IP addresses" I did this not so that it would work for default login now, but for future services that I wish to enable on the server.

Now I can finally get in, see my directory, make files, delete files, and modify them as well. Unfortunately I further have the issue that copying over a single 54MB file took 30+ minutes, as the transfer rate is right at 28KB/s.

To fix slow transfer to the nas I found how to add options to the network interface. Go to the Network -> Interfaces -> click on yours (mine was re0) in the options set "mtu 9000 up" which I also had to set on the other side of the network link at my laptop. After rebooting the NAS my upload speeds went from 30KBps to 122MB/s peaking out the gigabit LAN.

I hope that some of this helps another person out there.

I hope no one else ever follows this advice, you did so much work that has zero affect on your networking and connecting to FreeNAS. Using MTU of 9000 isn't something you should ever need to do and turning on upnp again doesn't do anything on your windows box.

 

[Ericloewe]

I hope no one else ever follows this advice, you did so much work that has zero affect on your networking and connecting to FreeNAS. Using MTU of 9000 isn't something you should ever need to do and turning on upnp again doesn't do anything on your windows box.

Given he's posted this in several semi-random tangentially-related threads, I tend to call it spam.