TrueNas Core not working properly on Alder Lake CPU (i5-12600k)

[scandrew]

I have just installed TrueNas Core on a new PC. While booting up, at some point TrueNas encounters an error and reboots, causing infinite boot loop. Last entry I saw was - "cpu shutdown..", something along those lines.
Only after I disabled the Efficiency cores in BIOS, only then it booted up without issues. So at the moment my 12600k is running only on 6 cores, 12 threads. Does TrueNas Core support the 12th gen Intel CPUs?


CPU: i5-12600k
Motherboard: Asus PRIME Z690-P D4 (newest bios 0605)
64Gb DDR4 - 3200Mt

 

[Ericloewe]

I have no idea what FreeBSD’s support for heterogeneous cores on x86 is like in 12, but I expect 13 to be better. You can give the TrueNAS 13 nightlies a try, for science (usual caveats about pre-beta software apply), but don’t expect the small cores on your CPU to ever work on 12 (unless you can disable just the large cores, but why do that?).
I expect this to be a particularly rough new platform at first. Something like Skylake, where USB support was unavailable for a good while at first, due to a crap XHCI driver in FreeBSD.
Come to think of it, we only just now have moved beyond glorified Skylake cores… insane.

 

[scandrew]

I guess it was foolish of me to choose this CPU for my NAS build. I tried disabling performance cores, just for science, but there is not such options. I can bring the number of efficiency cores down to 0, but the minimum number of performance cores that can be set is 1. Another unpleasant surprise was that the onboard 2.5Gps LAN is not recognized either. I had to install a PCIe network card.
Other than that, runs just as well as my old i7-4770k, only much faster.

 

[Kris Moore]

With that kind of hardware your probaby better off giving SCALE a shot. I'd expect the 2.5gb card to work properly there and perhaps the CPU as well. Linux tends to get the new hardware support faster.

 

[kylonewton]

Hi Scandrew,

I made the exact same mistake as you - you are having the same issues, see below thread, keep me updated on how you are getting on and I will do likewise. I can confirm you will not have issues with TrueNAS scale as I have already tried it. However, I cannot figure out how to get Nexcloud working properly which is important to me.

Fault

Hi All, My first post ever on a forum so apologies if I’m in the wrong place for this, or if I sound a bit stupid. I recently built a system to run Truenas Core for my small business. I use it with the nextcould plugin and I love it. The system is made up of the following components: - Intel...

www.truenas.com

 

[SteveKB]

I just had the same issue (same proc and MB) and your solution (turning off Efficient Cores) fixed my infinite reboot loop. I know its a hack, but now I don't have to plug in a monitor every time I reboot my system :)
Do you know if there is a bug in JIRA for it?

 

[kylonewton]

I just had the same issue (same proc and MB) and your solution (turning off Efficient Cores) fixed my infinite reboot loop. I know its a hack, but now I don't have to plug in a monitor every time I reboot my system :)
Do you know if there is a bug in JIRA for it?

I doubt it, I think we will have to wait for TrueNAS 13 / FreeBSD 13 before we will have full support.

 

[Etorix]

"Full support"? As far as I know only Windows 11 currently has a scheduler which does take account of the hybrid architecture in Alder Lake; all other OS treat, as best, P and E cores as equivalent. Work is in progress, but it will take time for desktop Linux to catch up, and then for TrueNAS SCALE to upgrade to whatever kernel makes the best use of this hybrid architecture.

Intel Alder Lake's Thread Director Support Coming to Linux

Performance uplift on the horizon

www.tomshardware.com

Keep these Alder Lake CPUs for desktop PCs and check back around 2024-2025 for turning them into NAS.
(Short answer: No ECC, not the best choice for ZFS anyway.)

 

[edge-case]

If you are still within the return window, and really want to stick with AlderLake**, then the 12400 is 6+0 [cores: big+little], and has a 65W TDP [rather than the 125W of the 12600K], so that would be a much better fit for 24/7, always on box, IMHO.

If you're in the USA and within driving distance of a MicroCenter, they have the 12400 for $180 USD....

[** I have nothing against AlderLake per se; I have a 12600K (from MicroCenter for $250 USD), and other than the high power consumption [under load], it seems to running great on my Ubuntu/Windows machine.... but I wouldn't personally contemplate using it for TrueNAS (Core or SCALE)... lack of BSD/Unix support, no ECC, plus the power consumption]

 

[Ericloewe]

TDP really isn’t a good measure of power consumption, unless you’re planning on running the thing at full tilt 24/7. Even then, there are enough weasel words attached to strip much of its significance.
I also cannot imagine the small cores using as much power as the big ones, so clearly the extra TDP, as far as the number still means anything, is being fed into higher sustained boost clocks.

None of this is to say that the i5 is worse in this context, I’ll reserve judgement on that until the platform is well-established.

 

[Etorix]

If you are still within the return window, and really want to stick with AlderLake**, then the 12400 is 6+0 [cores: big+little], and has a 65W TDP [rather than the 125W of the 12600K], so that would be a much better fit for 24/7, always on box, IMHO.

TDP is essentially meaningless…
Having E-cores enabled lowers the frequency of the ring bus between cores to 3.1 GHz, down from 3.9 GHz without E-cores (not sure about the numbers), and this has an impact on power use and temperature. Typically, I've seen desktop users reporting temperatures of 80°C while running a benchmark with P+HT+E and 95-100°C when running the same benchmarks on P+HT alone.
In short: Switching to a 12400 will avoid scheduling issues, since there will be only one type of core, but the CPU will likely run hotter under load than a 12600K with E-cores enabled.

 

[PtitLu]

I guess it was foolish of me to choose this CPU for my NAS build. I tried disabling performance cores, just for science, but there is not such options. I can bring the number of efficiency cores down to 0, but the minimum number of performance cores that can be set is 1. Another unpleasant surprise was that the onboard 2.5Gps LAN is not recognized either. I had to install a PCIe network card.
Other than that, runs just as well as my old i7-4770k, only much faster.

Hi , which card did you use to replace the motherboard chipset ?
Thanks

 

[warrenmatty]

Same suffering here. I had to add a gpu to use CSM legacy boot on a ASUS z690-p board. Also had to disable the E-cores. That said its working well. Plan to move to SCALE at some point just not stoked the time to rebuild jails. The performance is quite a bit better on the 12600k vs 3570 so far.

For the 2.5gb realtek network card:
Add the following lines to your /boot/loader.conf

to override the built-in FreeBSD re(4) driver.
if_re_load="YES"
if_re_name="/boot/modules/if_re.ko"

The card will work but its not persistent with updates so make sure you're near the device when you decide to upgrade Truenas.

 

[Ericloewe]

I thought that Intel had killed CSM already?

 

[warrenmatty]

I thought that Intel had killed CSM already?

I believe they did but for whatever reason If you bypass the igpu with a dedicated gpu the csm options become available and you can select boot disks that were not available prior.

 

[CookieMonster]

I doubt it, I think we will have to wait for TrueNAS 13 / FreeBSD 13 before we will have full support.

13 came out. Have the problems been resolved?


Considering which CPU to buy. Was gonna go with Alder Lake until I saw this.

 

[Samuel Tai]

13 came out. Have the problems been resolved?


Considering which CPU to buy. Was gonna go with Alder Lake until I saw this.

Unlikely. Upstream FreeBSD is targeting 14.0-RELEASE for Alder Lake support. See https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/alder-lake-cpu.83965/.

 

[Kris Moore]

FWIW, using a new Alderlake i5-12600 here on my SCALE boxes. Works fine on Angelfish currently. Will be updating to Bluefin / BETA1 when it drops in August, since kernel 5.15 has GPU support also.

 

[CookieMonster]

FWIW, using a new Alderlake i5-12600 here on my SCALE boxes. Works fine on Angelfish currently. Will be updating to Bluefin / BETA1 when it drops in August, since kernel 5.15 has GPU support also.

I read many sources that Scale is "not as solid as Core" yet. However, they did not elaborate why. Is there a comprehensive decision guide on trade offs between the current Scale and Core iterations? Is Scale as reliable in terms of stability and data integrity as Core?
Thank you.

 

[Etorix]

FWIW, using a new Alderlake i5-12600 here on my SCALE boxes. Works fine on Angelfish currently.

The i5-12600 has 6P+0E, so no hybrid architecture and no special requirements for optimal scheduling. That must help.