Hi all,
As the OP, I thought it was about time I reported back on progress. In short, I've finally got my server back up and running, having received a replacement board by way of an "RMA exception" from NewEgg.
The new board appears to have been subtly updated since my original board - there are now more text messages output to the VGA before, during and after POST (e.g. "waiting for BMC", and "System initialising"). Firmware versions are latest as per AS Rock Rack's support site.
I've deactivated the watchdog in BIOS and watchdogd in FreeNAS (see my
"how to") in the [possibly vain] hope that I'll avoid a future BMC flash memory blow up.
I've also confirmed that BMC flash memory is not constantly being written by running the following command from the BMC terminal (as described in this relevant and current bug report -
https://bugs.ixsystems.com/issues/16190):
Code:
inotifywait -mr -e close_write /conf/
I wish I had checked for this on the old board, but of course can't since the board is gone - would be very interested to hear if others with dead boards see / have seen a write every second (as described in the bug report).
AS Rock Rack's support was very disappointing. Some dates:
- 16 separate emails + webforms
- 20 August: First email / webform sent
- 2 September: First reply from the venerable William - who couldn't help me as I am not in the US
- 7 September: First reply from AS Rock Rack support in Taiwan
- 21 September: RMA granted
In the end, I went with NewEgg's RMA process, as there are better consumer protections in Australia when seeking recourse through the retailer than the manufacturer. Their dates:
- 11 separate emails + webforms
- 20 August: first email / webforms sent
- 31 August: first email received
- 29 September: RMA granted
- 17 October: replacement board received
In NewEgg's case, I had to quote Australian Consumer law and threaten to initiate proceedings with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission before they would grant an RMA. It would have been very easy to give up considering the effort to which both AS Rock Rack and NewEgg went to not help me. But I am stubborn...
This was overall a sobering experience with my FreeNAS system. Having gone to the trouble (and expense) of building a robust and reliable system, I was off the air for ~60 days. I still fly the flag for FreeNAS and am very happy with my system, but - make no mistake - this is not an "off the shelf" experience.
So there you go. Back on the air. But a cautionary tale.