AMD E-350 Thread (now in new forum?)

[thorgrim]

Hi guys,

My first post here so please be kind :)

I've just built my first FreeNAS setup. Based on some reviews here and on the web I went with an Asus E35M1-I motherboard with AMD E-350 and 4x2Tb disks.
I want to install FreeNAS on a USB thumb but here is the problem. I've successfuly created the USB bootable disk (I've tested two, on two different computers and could boot to FreeNAS menu) but when I plug it in my NAS, it just doesn't boot... I've tried to play with the USB options in the BIOS but nothing did the trick. If I put in the BIOS to consider the USB as a CD it hangs on a black screen with blinking prompt on top, and when I say to consider the USB thumb as HDD it simply says "Please insert a bootable device and press any key"... The only thing left that I see is that I've used the FreeNAS-8.0.3-RELEASE-p1-x64 image, and was wondering to test the x86. But I'm sure that's not the problem...

So if you have any piece of advice to give me, would be great to hear :)

 

[xbmcg]

How have you created your usb boot stick?
There are tools out there to make a stick bootable out of a iso image.
Just copying the .iso image file to an usb device does not work.

 

[thorgrim]

I've created one with xzcat/dd under linux and tested with physdickwrite under windows for the second one. As I said, the sticks seem to be ok as I can boot from them on my personal and my work laptop.

 

[xbmcg]

You can try another USB port, sometimes not all usb ports are recognized as bootable, in the boot settings of the bios, disable all other devices (HD, CD ROM) in the disks section disable the HD's and leave only the USB Stick on first position, select this device as the primary boot device, check it is the right stick - you need 2 sticks, one for the installation and the other at installation target. If you choose the wrong one (the target) as boot device - you could get the error message above. You can try to plug in the target later (after booting), if it does not help.

If nothing does the trick the only way is to boot your NAS from CD/DVD.

 

[calgarychris]

Hi guys,

My first post here so please be kind :)

I've just built my first FreeNAS setup. Based on some reviews here and on the web I went with an Asus E35M1-I motherboard with AMD E-350 and 4x2Tb disks.
I want to install FreeNAS on a USB thumb but here is the problem. I've successfuly created the USB bootable disk (I've tested two, on two different computers and could boot to FreeNAS menu) but when I plug it in my NAS, it just doesn't boot... I've tried to play with the USB options in the BIOS but nothing did the trick. If I put in the BIOS to consider the USB as a CD it hangs on a black screen with blinking prompt on top, and when I say to consider the USB thumb as HDD it simply says "Please insert a bootable device and press any key"... The only thing left that I see is that I've used the FreeNAS-8.0.3-RELEASE-p1-x64 image, and was wondering to test the x86. But I'm sure that's not the problem...

So if you have any piece of advice to give me, would be great to hear :)

Hi Thorgrim,

I had troubles getting the E35M1-I and it came down to user error on my part. Not sure if this is helpful, but I'll post it just in case...

Hope that helps, don't give up, my E35M1-I is working beautifully now, thanks in large part to the help I've gotten here and smallnetbuilder.com!

Cheers
Chris
------

Had a devil of a time getting the Asus 35M1-I Deluxe to boot from USB. It's user error. Finally got someone to figure it out...

You have to select the USB as HDD under the USB configuration options (which I had done), then on the boot menu scroll down onto the second page of options (which I didn't realise existed!) and under BBS something or other, select the boot priority so that the USB is #1 and then scroll up and back on the first page under boot priority, select the USB to boot from. The problem I had is that without finding the second page, the USB didn't appear on the list of options to boot from....

 

[thorgrim]

Alright, it's now working just fine ! Thanks for your inputs.

I had already done the setup for the BBS stuff and all, my problem was in fact to enable the AHCI stuff in the USB configuration. By default it was disabled, and by despair I enabled it and now everything works just fine ! Time to setup my disks now.

Once more, thanks for your help guys, I was quite desperate with this.

 

[ChrisE261]

mrME,
Do you have special settings for anything, and do you have the USB3 version? I have the USB3 version but with USB3 enabled it doesn't even start up en without USB3 I can't get it stable. However, I must say that it can be the samsung 2Tb drives which are crap. Anyone else using the Asrock E350M1/USB3 ?

Hi,
I have the E350M1/USB3. If I disable USB3 my system runs fine. I haven't left it running for a long period yet so I might test it over easter.
Just download 8.0.4 and will test it this week to see if USB3 works.

 

[monarchdodra]

Asus E35M1-I Headless?

I've been using an ASUS E35M1-I for a few weeks now. Now that it is stable, I want to go headless. However, as soon as I detach the VGA cable, it crashes my system. If I try to boot without any monitor, the system doesn't boot.

Latest BIOS. 8.2.0 Beta 2

Anybody have any idea? Is it RMA time?

 

[RobKamp]

This is my configuration:

Motherboard: Asus E35M1-I
Disks: 5 x WD30EZRX, 3TB
Case: Lian Li PC-Q25B
Memory: G.Skill RipjawsX F3-10666CL9D-16GBXL
Power: be quiet! Pure Power L7 300W
SSD: Samsung 830 series Desktop Upgrade Kit 64GB

I run FreeNAS 8.2.0 Beta3 x64 as of moments ago ;-)

/tmp is a ramdisk as to lower writes to the SSD

I run ZFS with 16GB on the five 3TB disks.

Now I have a question about memory usage. I installed 16GB and the next line is from top:
Mem: 219M Active, 81M Inact, 1336M Wired, 964K Cache, 155M Buf, 14G Free

It only uses 219M and report 14GB free. Is this due to using the SSD as Cache or is do I need to tweak some memory parameters?

 

[RobKamp]

I've been using an ASUS E35M1-I for a few weeks now. Now that it is stable, I want to go headless. However, as soon as I detach the VGA cable, it crashes my system. If I try to boot without any monitor, the system doesn't boot.

Latest BIOS. 8.2.0 Beta 2

Anybody have any idea? Is it RMA time?

It takes a long time to boot. However a system crashing while removing the VGA cable is suspicious, to say the least.

 

[zyo]

Hi guys

I just bought the Asus E35M1I, very good motherboard, but has anyone managed to wake on lan from complete shutdown status?

Does WOL from shutdown have anything to do with freenas?
I have set Power up on PME in bios but that doesnt seem to work. I used to be able to WOL on my SuperMicro ATOM board so the router/wiring/client machine/etc shouldnt be a problem.

 

[titanio]

I run FreeNAS 8.2.0 Beta3 x64 as of moments ago ;-)

Hi,

Mine just alts on mount error...

Any tips?

Thanks.

 

[tingo]

Now I have a question about memory usage. I installed 16GB and the next line is from top:
Mem: 219M Active, 81M Inact, 1336M Wired, 964K Cache, 155M Buf, 14G Free

It only uses 219M and report 14GB free. Is this due to using the SSD as Cache or is do I need to tweak some memory parameters?

Short answer: no, you don't need to tweak anything. top is not as accurate as you might think / want.
For the long answer, you have to learn what those numbers in top actually report, how FreeBSD manages memory, and more.

 

[Jabroni]

I just bought this motherboard.. and after playing for it for a while i was impressed with the performance i was getting. The only thing I had to do extra in order to gain full gigabit was instead of tweaking anything on the FreeBSD/XFS/CIFS was overclocking the CPU, from the stock 1.6, i stepped it up to 1.76ghz, and now i can max out using the vsftp process and the smbd..

CPU: AMD E-350 Processor (1760.06-MHz K8-class CPU)

Hope that info helps some other uses who uses this great board :)

 

[MikelB]

Hi guys

I just bought the Asus E35M1I, very good motherboard, but has anyone managed to wake on lan from complete shutdown status?

Does WOL from shutdown have anything to do with freenas?
I have set Power up on PME in bios but that doesnt seem to work. I used to be able to WOL on my SuperMicro ATOM board so the router/wiring/client machine/etc shouldnt be a problem.

Hi

Any luck with getting WOL to work? I have been unable to get this working on my ASUS E351-I mobo.

 

[zfrogz]

Hi guys,
First post. I picked up a E35M1-I board, stuffed it full of 16GB ram and 6 Western Digital 2TB green drives in a ZRAID2. Internally, the drives benchmark at an average of 175MB/ps using the DD command. Installed FreeNAS 8.2 and let the auto tune do it's thing which gave me these settings:
Sysctls:
net.inet.tcp.sendbuf_max 2097152
kern.ipc.maxsockbuf 2097152
net.inet.tcp.recvbuf_max 2097152
Tunables:
vfs.zfs.arc_max 10580236461
vm.kmem_size_max 14694772864
vm.kmem_size 11755818291
kern.ipc.nmbclusters 5000

Over my gigabit lan using CIFs, I get transfers that seem to level off around 50MB/ps. This is not bad especially coming from a Netgear ReadyNAS that topped out around 22MB/ps but I feel like I could do better with the proper tweaks. I'm new to both BSD based OS's and ZFS. I'm wondering what you guys are experiencing since many of you have similar hardware and what CIFs and/or tunable tweaks you have made to get the most out of your system.

 

[oxyris]

Hi!

I'll be getting the same board as you with a similar setup (also 6x2TB WD green in RAIDZ2). I can give some feedback as soon as I get the hardware and setup the machine.
Does the board actually support 16GB of RAM? The Asus page only specifies 8GB. Also, what frequency RAM did you get?

 

[Stephens]

It's been reported on this forum that the Asus E35M1-I does indeed support 16GB of RAM. You might want to do a search. I wish I'd known it before buying the hardware for my 2 NAS's as I'd certainly have gone with 16GB since I have 6x2TB drives in a RAIDZ2 as well.

 

[Mitch]

Great discussion here

Someone can told me CPU usage with E-350, ZFS RAIDZ2 and Transmission plugin running ??
Cause I would like to know if E350 is enough for my need (12TB + Transmisssion + Maybe MediaWiki in Jail)

Thanks a lot !!!

 

[tjo]

This is my configuration:

Motherboard: Asus E35M1-I
Disks: 5 x WD30EZRX, 3TB
Case: Lian Li PC-Q25B
Memory: G.Skill RipjawsX F3-10666CL9D-16GBXL
Power: be quiet! Pure Power L7 300W
SSD: Samsung 830 series Desktop Upgrade Kit 64GB

I run FreeNAS 8.2.0 Beta3 x64 as of moments ago ;-)

/tmp is a ramdisk as to lower writes to the SSD

I run ZFS with 16GB on the five 3TB disks.

Now I have a question about memory usage. I installed 16GB and the next line is from top:
Mem: 219M Active, 81M Inact, 1336M Wired, 964K Cache, 155M Buf, 14G Free

It only uses 219M and report 14GB free. Is this due to using the SSD as Cache or is do I need to tweak some memory parameters?

I'm looking at the same ram. Did you get yours working?