Can I view and edit console via remote access?

[ArchaicLord]

Hi everyone,
This has been bugging me for a while now. For some strange reason my FreeNAS box decides to go offline. When it does it stays that way until I can be bothered to drag it out and plug a monitor and keyboard into it. When I do I simply just have to press enter on the keyboard and the whole thing bursts back into life.

I don't know what causes the need for the enter to button to be hit. The normal console screen has dissapeared and just garbage text is presented. After hitting enter I return to the console. (As pictured below)

Is there a way I can simply log in from my current machine and view this console from another pc on my network? I just need to log in and hit enter.

All the research I have done just tells me how to connect to the FreeNAS via ssh which doesn't, from what I have seen, allow me to change the state of the FreeNAS console.

Lets say I wanted to use this console to change the IP address by choosing option 1 in the menu displayed above. As far as I know I can't do this via ssh connection.

I have seen a network that used some kind of device that would allow them to cycle through different monitors and use the same keyboard and mouse to make changes. I don't know what this is called but its a possible solution I am looking for.

Thanks for the taking the time to read my query
I look forward to trying out your solutions

 

[depasseg]

What type of system? Maybe it has IPMI. I think you might be thinking of an an IP enabled KVM. Also, try to disable the sleep setting in the BIOS of this system.

 

[danb35]

What he said. But how did you get those screen shots?

The best way to remotely configure things like the IP address is through the web GUI. Of course, if it isn't responsive for some reason, that doesn't work so well.

 

[ArchaicLord]

What type of system? Maybe it has IPMI. I think you might be thinking of an an IP enabled KVM. Also, try to disable the sleep setting in the BIOS of this system.

After looking up those systems I believe they used a KVM. But they used it to control and access servers and a firewall on thier network. They didn't use FreeNAS. But it seems like that is what I am trying to achieve

 

[ArchaicLord]

What he said. But how did you get those screen shots?

The best way to remotely configure things like the IP address is through the web GUI. Of course, if it isn't responsive for some reason, that doesn't work so well.

I got the screenshot from this site lhttp://doc.freenas.org/9.3/freenas_quick.html

If worst came to the worst I could have just taken a picture and then blocked out my personal IP address.

I also found it much simpler to use the console to configure the IP addressing and set it to static.

Yeah so currently on my NAS I am running Plex, mediaServer and ownCloud. I should get rid of the media server becuase it dosn't work as well as Plex. Plex organization of files is poor though and annoys me, but at the moment its the better media server to be using.

My son mostly uses it to watch his favorite films, but for some unknown reason to me the NAS falls over and it requires me to plug my monitor and keyboard in. I can't access the web console when it does this. \

I just out of curiosity tried to SSH into it and that was also unresponsive until I just physically hit enter.

I found this in the console log

(IP address changed)
STATUS=daemon 'smbd' finished starting up and ready to serve connectionsmatchname: host name/name mismatch: 111.1.1.1 != (NULL)
Jun 20 08:15:25 freenas smbd[45980]: [2015/06/20 08:15:25.359045, 0] ../source3/lib/util_sock.c:1199(get_remote_hostname)
Jun 20 08:15:25 freenas smbd[45980]: matchname failed on 111.1.1.1

The interesting think about this is the IP it is referring to dosn't exist on my local network. I just checked all places where I could have created or set an IP address and none match the address mentioned in this message.

I also have this error message as well which appears over and over again. I wonder if its this that is causing my system to fall over because it fails and fails and just times out

ATA status: 51 (DRDY SERV ERR), error: 84 (ICRC ABRT )
Jun 20 19:52:19 freenas kernel: (ada1:ata1:0:0:0): RES: 51 84 d7 87 e0 e8 e8 00 00 01 00
Jun 20 19:52:19 freenas kernel: (ada1:ata1:0:0:0): Retrying command

Hope this might add some more details.

 

[danb35]

The point of @depasseg's question was your hardware. Many server-grade motherboards support IPMI, which would give you a virtual console over the network without any extra hardware.

Though it's a side issue, I really don't see that there's any point in obscuring your machine's LAN IP address--it is (or at least should be) an internal, non-routable IP, so nobody outside your LAN could do anything with it. But my question about the screen shot was because it sounded like you were saying it was a screen shot of your system, but without IPMI or some sort of iKVM you wouldn't have been able to get that. But that wasn't the case; you were just posting that as an example.

On the ATA status message, that indicates some trouble communicating with one of your disks--whichever one is ada1. Most often, that seems to result from a cable problem. Make sure the cable is securely connected at each end, maybe try replacing it if you have a spare, or possibly try plugging that disk into a different SATA port on your motherboard.

 

[ArchaicLord]

The point of @depasseg's question was your hardware. Many server-grade motherboards support IPMI, which would give you a virtual console over the network without any extra hardware.

Though it's a side issue, I really don't see that there's any point in obscuring your machine's LAN IP address--it is (or at least should be) an internal, non-routable IP, so nobody outside your LAN could do anything with it. But my question about the screen shot was because it sounded like you were saying it was a screen shot of your system, but without IPMI or some sort of iKVM you wouldn't have been able to get that. But that wasn't the case; you were just posting that as an example.

On the ATA status message, that indicates some trouble communicating with one of your disks--whichever one is ada1. Most often, that seems to result from a cable problem. Make sure the cable is securely connected at each end, maybe try replacing it if you have a spare, or possibly try plugging that disk into a different SATA port on your motherboard.

Ahh.. ok. Thanks for that. I will open her up and take a look. I see what you mean about the image now. Yes, I was just using it as an example to help explain what I was trying achieve.

I have been studying Computing and I made this FreeNAS system on a budget. I Brought a random PC from e-bay for about £20 and threw 4x 4tb drives into it. In my first year of a HND I lost a lot of data. I made this during the summer and for my second year its saved my bacon a few times. Although I have learnt a few things now.

I have also now been using Linux, Windows and Mac systems.. My mac is a laptop and I and starting to get rather annoyed at the fact I have to keep unplugging and plugining in cables all over the place espciealy as this could be 2/3 times a day depending on what I am doing. I saw the network system they used and figured this would be a way to solve this issue. I guess I might have to change the motherboards in my FreeNas and Windows boxes to do these two. Not sure on the mac though as its a laptop.

[This might be off topic here]
I am now wanting to change the array setup as well . I configured it to be raid 10 I believe. I brought an external USB 4tb to back the FreeNAS onto but never worked out how to back up to an external drive that wasn't in a zfs or other FreeNAS Format. I was aiming to have an offline back up of, well my backup. I figured this would be the best thing to do but never worked it out.
So my current thinking is to change my array to raid 5. and use one of the internal drives to back up onto. That way I will have 3 disks working and one to back up to. unless I can work out how to back up to the external USB.

Thanks

 

[SweetAndLow]

What is your hardware?

To backup to external drives it's probably best to do that through a middle computer that is connected to your USB drive and pulls the data from freenas.

 

[pirateghost]

You don't need to 'open it up' to see if it has ipmi. I'm guessing with what you paid for it, there is no ipmi. Probably not even server grade hardware. No wonder its crashing.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

STATUS=daemon 'smbd' finished starting up and ready to serve connectionsmatchname: host name/name mismatch: 111.1.1.1 != (NULL)
Jun 20 08:15:25 freenas smbd[45980]: [2015/06/20 08:15:25.359045, 0] ../source3/lib/util_sock.c:1199(get_remote_hostname)
Jun 20 08:15:25 freenas smbd[45980]: matchname failed on 111.1.1.1

The interesting think about this is the IP it is referring to dosn't exist on my local network. I just checked all places where I could have created or set an IP address and none match the address mentioned in this message.

This may indicate malicious activity.

I also have this error message as well which appears over and over again. I wonder if its this that is causing my system to fall over because it fails and fails and just times out

ATA status: 51 (DRDY SERV ERR), error: 84 (ICRC ABRT )
Jun 20 19:52:19 freenas kernel: (ada1:ata1:0:0:0): RES: 51 84 d7 87 e0 e8 e8 00 00 01 00
Jun 20 19:52:19 freenas kernel: (ada1:ata1:0:0:0): Retrying command

This indicates a hardware problem of some kind related to the ada1 device (drive), and could easily cause the system to become unresponsive.

 

[ArchaicLord]

What is your hardware?

Hardware

Build: FreeNAS-9.2.1.6-RELEASE-x64 (ddd1e39)
Platform: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz
Memory: 8154MB
Motherboard: HP Pavlion. ( I couldn't see any markings on the board to tell me what type or version it is.)

When I built this I found out that a synology box alone was £200. I didn't have that kind of money. I only just had enough to buy 4x4tb western digital drives. The FreeNAS OS is running of an old USB I found lying around. I also at the time had very limited experience with networking and understanding of hardware.

But by building this setup and my studies I think I have learnt a lot in the last year.

I checked all the hardware connections. They seem to be pretty solid and no room for the sata cables to wriggle around. I have it a bit of dusting.

To backup to external drives it's probably best to do that through a middle computer that is connected to your USB drive and pulls the data from freenas.
Good idea.. Why didn't I think of that.. I think though that the apple shares for time machine backups were not visible. (However, I did discover that formatting a HD in extFat allowed apple, Linux and Windows systems to to read/write to it so that could solve this)