Boo

[SaFe]

Hallo FN-Community,

We are a little family company specialized in PLC and AS- System Automation.
Till now we are usind DNS323 and a mirror to Synology Diskstation DS411.
Since we are getting biger we wishe to move our repository to FreeNAS.
Unfortunately the first try and up with ERRORSSSS :_).

Since FreeNAS ist not so HW-hungry, we decided to use an existing HW with following spec:
- Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H (BIOS Ver. F9)
- AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5200+, 2700 Mhrz, 2Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)
- 16Gb DDR2 RAM
- 3x 2T WD HDD
- 16Gb USB

Wind7 and some heavy app like Step7, TIA-Portal12, CODESY, Matlab, FPGAsim, ... are running smoothly on this machine.

The first try to install FreeNAS 9.2 in VirtualBox was not successful even though the virtualization was on in BIOS.
Error: ...cpu doesn't support long mode....
So I try it again and this time on the real HW.

Here is how I started

1) turn SATA to AHCI in BIOS
2) Set 1.bood CD & sec boot HDD & 3. boo disable
3) burn ISO, plug in the USB stick and install FreeNAS.

The installation was successful without any Error and request to remove the CD and reboot the system.
I did so but the system never reboot up.
The machine reboots and never leaves BIOS.
It keeps searching for a boot device.
It look like the USB-Stick was not found.
I thy in BIOS all the 4 options (USB HDD, USB FDD, USBx, USBy) for 2.boot devie but non of the works.
The machine hangs is BIOS trying to fine a boot device even on the DHCP...
So I remove the USB stick and plug it in again and see, the system start booting FreeNAS
but than it hangs on "mountd..."

I leave it about an hour but it never move. So I force shutdown the machine and start it again.
Again same thing. It never leaves BIOS until I remeove and replug the USB-Stick and than is start. And this time it complete the boot sequence and show the IP address to call the Web GUI.
I try the address and get into the GUI...

Do to security concern all our machines (server, PBX services, VPN, ... incl File Server) get automatically shutdown at night and reboot in the morning. So will the future FreeNAS also.
But Now we are very uncertain do to this unstable behavior...

1) Is this behavior normal or can it be some HW issus
2) Am I doing anything wrong by the installation
3) I check and recheck the BIOS but cant find anything to change or set up...
4) Any advise to make this works correctly
Me and my team will be very thankful for your helps

blessing
SaFe

 

[gpsguy]

One thing you might try is another flash drive. Maybe just a 4 or 8Gb.

What you are seeing is not normal behavior. Obviously, it was running Windows 7 okay. But, you weren't running it from a flash drive. ;-)

Where did you get the notion that "FreeNAS ist not so HW-hungry"? Depending on what features you plan to use, then you may need a faster processor. Does your hardware support ECC RAM? At the end of the day, you may need to replace the hardware.

I caution your against virtualizing FreeNAS. It can be done, but it's not recommended. We have 2 stickies on the subject. One along the lines of "Don't virtual", the other "If you must virtualize ..."

 

[SaFe]

Thanks gpsguy,

I follow your advice and try it again with a 8Gb Flash.... same behaviour
obviously FreeNAS needs more than my Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H can offer.

blessing
SaFe