FreeNAS 11.1 -U6 crashing or "unscheduled system reboots"

[ctphillips]

My Dell R510 running FreeNAS 11.1-U6 has been crashing periodically. Most recently, the unit ran for just under 3 weeks before suddenly crashing again this afternoon. If this were hardware, I'd expect this to happen more often. Instead, I get weeks of trouble free operation followed by a sudden reboot.

The last time it happened I figured out how to make /var/log/messages persistent across reboots, so at least I have that. There's no detail however preceding this most recent crash which occurred at about 3:14 PM today.

Here are some details:

• 48 GB of ECC RAM
• Dual Xeon E5620 processors
• 3 Jails:
  • Plex
  • Transmission (with OpenVPN)
  • Sonarr (I don't use it, so the jail is stopped)
• 1 Virtual machine:
  • Ubuntu 16.04 running PiHole and a MATE desktop
  • I access this VM nearly every day via NoMachine

I realize this is not ideal, but I also have a USB backup disk attached to the machine. I have a cron task configured to backup critical files such as family photos once a month.

This is my third FreeNAS server and I have not encountered these issues previously. However, the other servers were much simpler - they just ran file services and Plex. I only recently learned how to add Transmission with a VPN and the Ubuntu VM. Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[Alecmascot]

I would upgrade to 11.2-U6 first.....

 

[kspare]

i've been seeing this is 11.2U6 as well.....

 

[dlavigne]

@ctphillips it's hard to tell without analyzing a full debug. If you decide to create a report at bugs.ixsystems.com, post the issue number here.

 

[ctphillips]

For the record, this issue turned out to be due to my USB backup disk. Once I removed the USB disk from the equation, the regular crashing stopped.

 

[jgreco]

USB backup disks should not panic the machine. Are you still running the older FreeNAS version on that? We definitely don't recommend USB disks, but loss of an I/O device causing a panic is still unacceptable in my book... I/O devices are crummy devices that just DO that now and then. It has to be robust. It would be interesting to know what's causing it.

 

[ctphillips]

USB backup disks should not panic the machine. Are you still running the older FreeNAS version on that? We definitely don't recommend USB disks, but loss of an I/O device causing a panic is still unacceptable in my book... I/O devices are crummy devices that just DO that now and then. It has to be robust. It would be interesting to know what's causing it.

I recently updated the machine to 12.0-U7 which is why I revisited the forums again. I disconnected the USB disk back in late 2019 or early 2020 and this resolved the crashing. I can try again under 12.0-U7 and see if things have improved. While the USB disk was attached all the time, the backups ran in the form of a cron task only once a month.

 

[jgreco]

If you can capture a crash, it is worth filing a Jira bug report on it, in my opinion. This should not happen, and it suggests bad things could happen for USB-attached boot disks too.