Real-World Performance Question - Home Use

[hispeedzintarwebz]

AHA!!!! The BIOS (I find this odd) sees the USB device as a hard drive. I had to set the USB drive highest in the order of "hard disks" and then move hard disks up in the boot priority...boots like a charm now. (BTW I do have the latest BIOS version.)

And sorry about the unoriginality of the tagline, didn't realize how similar the build was for a while. Just copied it and changed what was applicable.

Also, came downstairs this morning to find the NAS was turned off...seems that logging by default takes place in the RAM and is deleted. Set up a syslog dataset and restarted...according to the documentation Freenas should find that and start putting logs there. Maybe it was a one-time thing, not sure. Wish I knew why. I don't think it's a hardware issue, I had it transcoding last night to my Roku and spent a lot of time moving all of my data to it during the day, so I think if something would've overheated it would've happened then. If it happens again, hopefully I'll have a log of it now.

 

[Ericloewe]

AHA!!!! The BIOS (I find this odd) sees the USB device as a hard drive. I had to set the USB drive highest in the order of "hard disks" and then move hard disks up in the boot priority...boots like a charm now. (BTW I do have the latest BIOS version.)

It's actually very common, if not universal. Stuff like "USB removable storage" tends to mean "USB CD-ROM drives", in the context of BIOS menus, with USB mass storage devices being treated like ATA storage devices.

 

[hispeedzintarwebz]

I guess my experience is mostly with older boards, then. Definitely threw me for a loop.

 

[joeschmuck]

Glad you got it working, now I won't be bringing my system down until 9.2.1.6 comes out . As for the NAS being turned off this morning, that is odd however if you had a power loss (even a very short one) that could have caused it. The simplest thing is maybe you accidentally shut it down yourself but I think you would have realized that.

Did you run any RAM tests for CPU tests when you got your system? If not, you truly need to do it. Also in the BIOS, did you enable the ECC RAM by setting the ECC MODE from Disable to Basic or Good? (page 2-14 of the Asus manual) And since we are in the BIOS, I'd change the Video UMA Frame Buffer Size to 32MB (page 2-15) since there is no need to suck away 1GB of RAM for something you don't need. There are other things you could do if you want like disable the printer port but it's not a biggie. I do disable everything I'm not using or think I will never use. In my mind it's just something else to cause an issue.

I copied my tagline as well just because it looked nice and didn't require much work. It gets the point across when someone wants to know your configuration.

 

[hispeedzintarwebz]

I'll figure out a way to run a memory test...I think I've heard a lot about memtest86, so I'll look into that.

I did enable ECC in the BIOS, I think it is set to "Good" which I picked on a whim because I wasn't sure...I figured "Good" was, well...good, and I thought maybe "super" would hamper performance. I have no experience or basis for this, so I could be wrong.

I noticed when I put in the board that the NB heatsink jiggled a little bit, but when I did some googling, it seemed that everyone who had MB heatsink issues noticed it shortly after boot, certainly not after doing something like transcoding video or having it run for a while, so I think the likelihood that it is causing problems would be low. Again, could be wrong.

I'll make sure to disable everything...I've already disabled the MB NIC, mainly because I didn't want to have trouble in the OS choosing the wrong one.

Glad you could keep your long term experiment running. :) I might not be able to do it tonight, but I'll be back after getting memtest going with an update. Hopefully all is well.

 

[joeschmuck]

As for the NB, I can't look at mine right now but many heatsinks are mounted using spring tension. The NB does get rather warm as well when the computer is in use. So if yours moves side to side, well don't do that. It will disturb the thermal compound. You could mount a larger heatsink using a thermal adhesive. You typically see this type of adhesive on video cards. This works well too if you think you want to play with this. To test out if it's your NB, put a fan blowing into your case across the NB, this will dissipate the heat.

The ECC Mode has to do with how fast the MB runs through all the RAM to verify it's integrity. Basic means ~24 hours, the higher settings means it will go faster. The highest setting is said to take about an hour to scan the RAM. Asus wasn't very helpful when I was asking them about the settings. The bad part is I have no idea how an ECC failure will present itself to the user. I guess as long as it's running it must be working.

 

[hispeedzintarwebz]

Full pass of memtest86 went off without a hitch. Didn't want to leave it running overnight as I had some more data to transfer onto the NAS. Tuneables are enabled, everything seems to be running smoothly, with the exception of logging. I created the dataset called "syslog" but it shows empty when I cd into it in the shell. From what I've read, that should make freenas automagically save logs there. I'd like to avoid setting up some sort of syslog server that I have to keep running for this. I suppose if I see that it shuts down again, I could make one in a VM and make sure it's running for a few days to see if I can capture the behavior. Only reason I really care is because I wonder if that would've given me a little bit of insight into why the server shut down last night.

Does freenas have any plugins or areas where I can see temperatures? I think that would help me make sure that the NB is ok. If I determine that was a cause for the shutdown, I found thermal ceramic adhesive and replacement heatsinks for pretty cheap if I need to order them...not looking forward to the possibility of taking the whole thing apart again, but, I guess that comes with the territory.

Using a Fractal Design Arc Mini R2 case, there are two fans in the front that blow in right through the disks and over the MB, including the area where the heatsink for the NB is. Exhaust fans in the back and the top. Using a similar case (Arc R4) for my desktop, which is overclocked all to hell and it keeps wonderfully cool with a similar fan setup. Fingers are crossed.

Oh, and the UPS gets here this week. I'll start doing some research into how to get that set up between now and then.

 

[joeschmuck]

As for the NB temp, I've never seen those temps displayed through and FreeNAS. If you have air flow across the NB, even a small amount, you "should" be fine. The NB does get hot. Just don't make any decisions until you get the USP installed.

The Memtest86 needs to run overnight at least, the longer the better. It's an indication of system stability and a single pass is never enough. I know folks that run it for a week, which I personally feel is overkill but I can't fault them for wanting to be sure. I recommend at a minimum three passes of Memtest86. I will let mine run overnight and then a little longer. I also test my system out periodically (whenever I have that system out of the basement). Also, this RAM test doesn't just tell you if you have bad RAM, it could indicate a bad power supply or even CPU. If the RAM does fail, you need to run it over again and see if it fails in the same or similar location and that means it's RAM. If it just fails at random locations it is likely the PS, or you have the RAM overclocked or it's not compatible with the MB.

As for the syslog, I've never used it on FreeNAS. You should do a search on Syslog in the forums and also check out the user guide for any help there.

 

[hispeedzintarwebz]

Just dug up this thread after looking for it trying to help someone else...I got syslog writing to a linux server, so all is well. I have a UPS now, and I've had zero issues with the NAS. I just upgraded from 9.2.1.3 to 9.3 last night with no issues (I used dd to copy to a new flash drive and upgrade there, I will keep the old one for a time to boot from if I run into any problems, and I won't upgrade the zpool for a month or two).

...I know you were just dying to get a reply from me since May. Haha!