SOLVED Any tricks to getting consistent WebGUI behavior?

[greenSeeker]

Every time I think I've got FreeNAS humming, it seems to go off the rails again in a day or two. Configuration in the webGUI seems to revert to prior settings on a regular basis, sometimes immediately, sometimes a week later.

Does anyone have any suggestions to un-bork the interface?

 

[Jailer]

Does anyone have any suggestions to un-bork the interface?

Yeah, supply us with some information about your system so we can try to help you.

 

[greenSeeker]

ASRock C2750D4I
Crucial 8GB CT102472BA160B x4
WD Red Pro 3TB WD3001FFSX x6
Transcend 64GB SATA-3 SSD TS64GSSD370

The WD Reds are in one large RAID-Z2 pool, currently degraded due to one bad drive.
FreeNAS sits on the SSD.

 

[DifferentStrokes]

What version of FreeNAS are you running?

 

[greenSeeker]

FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-201601181840

 

[dlavigne]

Are you making the changes in the GUI? If so, can you give an example of a reverted setting?

 

[greenSeeker]

The one I'm battling at the moment is the configuration of my transmission jail.

I had set one up earlier but had to resort to command line to get it running. However, it would regularly shut down on its own (the jail) and transmission would report permission denied errors when trying to write files, but only sometimes.

Having learned a bit about how this is all supposed to work, I decided to delete the whole thing and set it up again from scratch, this time staying in the GUI.

I've installed the plugin and the jail is present, however the Plugins > Transmission menu is not present. I found this is due to a failure to communicate with the jail at the network level.

I reviewed the network config and found it set for DHCP (which worked fine on the original jail). I updated the jail's MAC address to match the original so it would use my DHCP reservation. Bouncing the jail a couple times had no effect -- ifconfig still shows the interface is without an IP address.

I rebooted the entire NAS box, but the jail still doesn't get an IP. I edit the jail again, this time putting in a static configuration, but the NIC remains unconfigured. When I go in to edit the jail again, the configuration is all gone and DHCP is enabled again.

I reboot the jail, then the entire NAS, manually configuring the jail again each time, but it still reverts to DHCP (which still doesn't work).

I open a shell in the jail and manually configure the interface and I've got communication (I can ping my desktop and the gateway), but it only lasts until the jail is restarted, and the Plugins > Transmission menu never shows up.

 

[MrToddsFriends]

The Marvell SATA Controllers are known to be problematic in FreeNAS and supposedly you are using SATA ports connected to them (6x WD Red Pro and a SATA SSD on a ASRock C2750D4I). I don't know if your problems could be caused by Marvell controller problems though.

You could try a setup with an USB boot stick and all HDDs connected to the Intel SATA ports.

 

[greenSeeker]

The Marvell SATA Controllers are known to be problematic in FreeNAS and supposedly you are using SATA ports connected to them (6x WD Red Pro and a SATA SSD on a ASRock C2750D4I). I don't know if your problems could be caused by Marvell controller problems though.

You could try a setup with an USB boot stick and all HDDs connected to the Intel SATA ports.

I only have the OS disk connected to it in the hopes of minimizing exposure... I sure hope that's not the issue. This has been a rather expensive project so far and I'd rather not have to rebuild on new hardware not even 2 months in.

 

[joeschmuck]

Is your FreeNAS (not the plugin/jail) configured to DHCP or Static IP?

 

[MrToddsFriends]

Using a USB boot medium instead of your SSD would be the least expensive test I can imagine. Except trying another FreeNAS build from the end of the last year.

 

[greenSeeker]

Is your FreeNAS (not the plugin/jail) configured to DHCP or Static IP?

DHCP. I just took a few minutes to change it to static and reboot, but the end results were the same.
I've reverted to DHCP.

 

[Redcoat]

I only have the OS disk connected to it in the hopes of minimizing exposure... I sure hope that's not the issue. This has been a rather expensive project so far and I'd rather not have to rebuild on new hardware not even 2 months in.

If it's any encouragement, my FreeNASMini as configured by iXsystems has an ASRock C2750D4l and an SSD with the OS in a Marvell SATA slot.

 

[greenSeeker]

For anyone else who may run into this sort of issue, I was eventually able to figure out why my network settings were not being kept.

From the main Jails menu, there's a Configuration option at the top. On this screen are options for all jails, to use DHCP or static IP. Your jails will not use the IPs that you told them to use unless you first come in here and tell them that's it's ok to use the IPs that you told them to use.

As for why DHCP wasn't working in my case, I found the jails can only communicate with the FreeNAS host, and not the rest of the network, unless VIMAGE is disabled, and this is not possible without also disabling DHCP. Since I configured for static IP and disabled VIMAGE, everything is humming along. I'm pretty sure disabling VIMAGE is a security concern, but I'm on a secure private network, so I'm ok with it. YMMV.