Error Messages

[Phil Demand]

From time-to-time, I'll power up the monitor that is attached to my NAS and there is always a long list of what appears to be error messages. I don't know if they are normal, but they look pretty nasty. I'll just give an example of one.

afp_disconnect: primary reconnect failed

To be clear, everything appears to operate normally. Time machine is backing up normally, watching content on my AppleTV through XBMC is working normally. Occasionally content won't load in XBMC, but after I restart my NAS, everything works normally.

Here's my setup:
Freenas 9.1.1 x64
Asrock FM2A85X Extreme6
AMD A4-4000 APU
4GB non-ecc
4 1TB Western Digital Red drives in RAID-Z
Macbook Pro

Hope you can shed some light on this, and/or tell me if I should be concerned about this. Thanks.

P.S. I am aware that this system may not be ideal for Freenas. This system was built for another purpose, by someone else, and then given to me. I then repurposed it as my NAS. Obviously, this motherboard/CPU is lacking in some ways and at the same time contains capability that can never be utilized. And, of course, I should be using ECC. I get that.

 

[cyberjock]

You pretty much summed up everything in your last paragraph. Not sure what else there is to say as you pretty much covered the bases with your post. ;)

 

[Phil Demand]

But what does that error message mean?

 

[cyberjock]

That single line you posted means AFP disconnected. No clue why. If you google the errors they should all be explainable with enough searching. How they apply to your situation is kind of dependent on things only you know.

 

[Phil Demand]

Am I in the wrong place? Is this not where noobs get help with this sort of thing? Is there a secret knock or something?
How about this: what other piece of info that "only I know" can I share that would be useful to a person trying to help me identify whether or not this is a problem and how I can fix it?

 

[gpsguy]

Neither cyberjock, nor myself are Mac users, hence his suggestion to Google the error you are seeing.

One cause for concern is that you are using ZFS with 4Gb of RAM. ZFS on FreeNAS 9.x requires a minimum of 8Gb RAM. With just 4Gb, caching will be disabled. Bad things can happen if you use less than 8Gb.




Sent from my phone

 

[Phil Demand]

Thanks gpsguy. Sorry for upsetting the forum gods. I'll try harder not to noob so hard in a noob forum.
The specs on the ASRock site for my board simply says "Supports Dual Channel DDR3 2600+(OC)" and the memory support page does not specify if any of the tested memory is ECC/registered/buffered. And so therefore I don't know how to search for the proper 8gb of memory for this machine. I realize that I'll need to buy sticks of ECC/registered/buffered memory, but I literally don't even know where to begin searching for this. Where? What should my search parameters be? #helplessnoob

 

[c32767a]

From time-to-time, I'll power up the monitor that is attached to my NAS and there is always a long list of what appears to be error messages. I don't know if they are normal, but they look pretty nasty. I'll just give an example of one.

afp_disconnect: primary reconnect failed

There are no other messages in the logs around that?

The message means what it says.... An AFP session was disconnected and an attempt to reconnect failed.
In certain circumstances, the client can re-use it's existing credentials to try to reconnect.
This message says the reconnect attempt failed.

What we don't know is why it failed, or why the session was disconnected in the first place.. It doesn't indicate a problem by itself, it could just be an inactivity timeout. Sessions and credentials eventually expire.

Or, it could be a problem / bug / undocumented feature..

We'd need to see more of the log around that message to hazard a guess and even then, the answer may be "AFP is a strange place, inhabited by strange creatures, venture at your own risk."

 

[solarisguy]

I did not do any research on your hardware, but it is only theoretically possible that you can replace non-ECC RAM with ECC RAM, and have ECC operational. The converse is sometimes true. There are many systems that you can have either ECC RAM or non-ECC RAM installed and both would work without giving any ECC support.

If the value of the data in your FreeNAS server is nil, you can continue as it is. If it is of any value to you, even if it is value of hundreds of hours that would be required to re-rip your CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays, then a system that by design helps protect your data from hardware failures should be considered.

By the way, one FreeNAS (or any other) system does not protect against a gross human error or a fire etc.

P.S. Your question was a valid one, we just have no more clue than Google does. And additionally, most people would not recommend any changes/adjustments since it is a miracle that your system is running as nicely as you described and I would be, for example, afraid that any change might make your system unstable...

 

[Ericloewe]

Thanks gpsguy. Sorry for upsetting the forum gods. I'll try harder not to noob so hard in a noob forum.
The specs on the ASRock site for my board simply says "Supports Dual Channel DDR3 2600+(OC)" and the memory support page does not specify if any of the tested memory is ECC/registered/buffered. And so therefore I don't know how to search for the proper 8gb of memory for this machine. I realize that I'll need to buy sticks of ECC/registered/buffered memory, but I literally don't even know where to begin searching for this. Where? What should my search parameters be? #helplessnoob

Unbuffered, and I expect the manufacturer's specs to list this. Registered memory is only for large servers.