Keep losing connection and FreeNas keeps crashing

[radar100]

Hi there, I'm completely new to FreeNas (and loving the potential - just for home storage and backups - old pc c2duo1.8gHz, 4Gb RAM, 2x1tb - mirror, 3x500gb - RAIDZ2 (total 1.3Tb storage available) sata card (will add more drives when cash is available)

I am having an issue with crashes of the system when copying data across - data still there after hard reboot of the NAS - sometimes takes a few goes. and would like some help finding out whether its a hardware or setup issue. Not sure how to get to the logs (how to show them here would be a great help), but have some info from other posts that may possibly help get to the bottom of this?
Here are screen clips of some of the output -

Any advice/help is greatly appreciated.

Radar

 

[cyberjock]

Well, you have 4GB of RAM, but only have 3056MB of RAM available to the system because of PCI reservations. As the manual suggests, you really should have at least 6GB of RAM to use ZFS + 1GB of RAM per TB of data. 6GB of mentioned because you often lose 512MB to 1GB for the PCI reservations alone.

 

[radar100]

Well, you have 4GB of RAM, but only have 3056MB of RAM available to the system because of PCI reservations. As the manual suggests, you really should have at least 6GB of RAM to use ZFS + 1GB of RAM per TB of data. 6GB of mentioned because you often lose 512MB to 1GB for the PCI reservations alone.

Bit of a typo on my part, there is only 3056Mb RAM in the system (hopefully more memory on the way later today, real pain as the box is an HP old and will only take ecc RAM, also a cpu upgrade, found a spare 2.4 Duo in my bits box last night). I'll add that and see what happens as I still have a fair amount to copy through. Would still like to be able to get someone look at the logs, if there are any instructions how to export that.
Many thanks
Radar

 

[radar100]

Right I have upgraded the cpu, won't be able to do the memory for a bit as the system only take ecc DDR2 memory which is not easy to come by!! have found some on ebay, so will see about getting that. I tried streaming a video from the NAS last night and it ran absolutely fin until the box crashed again.
Would someone be able to give me instructions on how to get the relevant logs off the system to see what the cause of the issue might be?
Many thanks
Radar

 

[gpsguy]

Hook a monitor up to the server and see if it displays a message on the screen when it crashes. If so, snap a picture, cellphone or whatever, and include it with your message.

... and it ran absolutely fin until the box crashed again.

 

[radar100]

ok, will have my kvm connected tomorrow, I have hooked the monitor up a few times and seen different errors - one just scrolling lines about io error, another that I couldn't make out and one that I managed to write down -
UMASS0: AT UHUB4 PORT 6, ADDR2 (DISCONNECTED)
(DA0:UMASS-SIN0:0:0): LOST DEVICE -0 OUTSTANDING. 1 REF
(DA0:UMASS-SIN0:0:0): REMOVING DEVICE ENTRY
DEVICE FREENAS4 WENT MISSING BEFORE ALL THE DATA COULD BE WRITTEN TO IT : EXPECT DATA LOSS
/DEV : GOT ERROR 6 WHILE ACCESSING FILE SYSTEM
PANIC: SOFTDEB_DEALLOCATE_DEPENDENCIES : UNREMOVED I/O ERROR
CPUID = 0
KBD: ENTER PANIC
[THREAD PID 7817 TID 100126]
STOPPED AT KBD_ENTER+0X3B:MOVQ $0,0X74CFA2(%RIP)

I'm really not sure what device that's referring to, could it be one of the drives or maybe the USB drive that I have installed the o/s on??

Will see at next crash what comes up and post as I can - which is now - here is the error I woke up to this morning after leaving it up last night -

 

[radar100]

Well so far so good, the main culprit was the USB drive I was using, ghosted the original to a new high quality 8GB one and freenas boots up and seems a lot happier. New problem though, keep getting Unhandled Exception
An unhandled exception was thrown by the application.
So will have a search around the forum and see what I can find!!

 

[cyberjock]

You shouldn't be ghosting one to another. You should install FreeNAS to a new USB stick and then restore the config.

One of my first threads in the forum was me complaining about ghosting not working. The bottom line is it's a bad idea. It's in the FAQ.

 

[radar100]

Cheers Cyberjock for clearing that up, thought it was me and didn't really think that ghosting would be an issue as I used sector copy, didn't help that the original usb was a crap cheapie. Luckily at the moment it's just a test rig and I could afford to lose the data, so just did a clean install and have set it up again, 2 days stable so far, will move some data onto it tonight and give it a bit of a kick around to test.
Is there any advantage to having Freenas on a decent sata (or even sas if I can get hold of a sas card)drive instead of a usb as I'm not happy with the reliability of usb in general and once I make this "live" really don't want to be scrabbling around trying to recover stuff?

 

[cyberjock]

There's no advantage to SAS from my perspective, but lots of negatives.

I admin 5 FreeNAS servers(myself and friends) and none have had a USB failure yet. Typically, if you choose a name brand USB stick(I have used Corsair, Samsung, Kingston, and HP), you'll get a very very long life out of it. I'll never understand why every single noobie that shows up wants to bail on USB as a boot device, but I find it interesting. I did the same thing.... but why would someone dismiss a comment from the guys that made the OS? Seems absurd to me, especially as a noobie, to think that you(or I) know better. When I went to build my first system I made the choice to go to USB despite feeling like it was a bad choice(short lifespan.. etc) but I have no regrets and prefer USB to anything else now.

 

[radar100]

Ouch seem to have stepped on a nerve there, sorry, was just asking for opinions about going with sas or sata.:o will stick with the USB, it's a Corsair 8GB, so decent pedigree. Just a bit twitchy as have been bitten by the crash dog before and spent weeks getting data back off drives. Managed to copy 500GB or so over last night, I'll be streaming from it as well as running a VM from the system, if that stays stable for a week or so, I'll start using it in earnest.
Many thanks for the input and advice, I really do appreciate the time and effort you guys take in helping out us noobs, maybe one day I'll have enough knowledge to pass it around.

 

[cyberjock]

Naa, you didn't step on my nerve. If you want to step on my nerve ask me how well 16x2TB Seagates worked on my RAID6 Windows Server.. LOL! That was a waste of ALOT of money.

 

[Gaucho]

Naa, you didn't step on my nerve. If you want to step on my nerve ask me how well 16x2TB Seagates worked on my RAID6 Windows Server.. LOL! That was a waste of ALOT of money.

So tell us.... how did your 16x2Tb RAID6 worked in Windows Server?? :D

I bet it beats FreeNAS by far :P