Freenas 64bit not displaying properly on GMA 3600 GPU while the 32bit version does

[rick6]

I believe that freenas 8 (the 64 bit version) doesn't load properly on the GMA 3600 gpu due to some bug\lack of support from the 64bit version of freenas. When the booting gets to the ASCII Freenas part, lines of code render all on top of each other making no sense and not displaying correctly what is happening. If i use a S3trio 2mb pci video card from 1996 it loads correctly.

This GPU is often used with the latest Atom 2*** gen cpu\gpu ITX motherboard combo from intel.

The 32bit version of freenas seems to work correctly.

Any ideia what could solve this?

 

[cyberjock]

Yep. I had the same issue with pfsense. There is alot of conjecture as to the exact cause, but your motherboard/video (if it is like mine) only supports 32 bit Windows 7. No other drivers exist and Intel has said that they have zero intention of supporting any other OS. Linux had a fix within a few days. The current builds of FreeBSD have the fix applied.

I ended up using pfsense 32 bit because of the bug. Rumor is that Intel may have made some kind of mistake(unless it was deliberate) with the hardware and using 64 bit somehow screws stuff up.

The only advice I can give is to use a different board or use 32 bit. You could submit a ticket, but unless you provide a link to the source code that fixed the issue or a developer has your hardware a fix will not likely come before FreeNAS is being built off of the latest version of FreeBSD(in which case the bug will be fixed anyway).

 

[rick6]

Thank you for awnsering. Well, one can actually use the 64bit version if everything needing configure (ip\dhcp or example) is done previously with a pci video card and than return to the gma 3600. After that i won't be able to visualize much through the VGA output of the board but since freenas is mostly accessible through a web browser you can ALMOST forget it. As some say, Freenas is a headless system. Still i hate that my motherboard wont work fully with it.

Also i could leave that pci video card in but i need that pci slot and also i want to make it as low power as possible.

I seriously hope the developers take this issue into account :| This motherboard is seriously low power and i would want to keep it!

 

[cyberjock]

If you want to you can open a ticket at support.freenas.org. I may be mistaken, but I believe that you are limited to 4GB of RAM on that board(3GB usable on my system), so its function generally would not be recommended for ZFS operations.

 

[rick6]

Won't 4gb be enough for..lets say 3 to 4tb when it comes to ZFS?

 

[joeschmuck]

Yes, 4GB is enough. I ran 4GB for almost a year with no issues. Well it was more like 3.7GB, about .3GB was taken up for shared Video RAM and other stuff. I ran the 64 bit version. Just ensure you are still using the default 2GB of swap space on each hard drive, not what I like but it protects you from running out of RAM all together if FreeNAS can push some stuff to the hard drive freeing up a bit of RAM when needed.

 

[rick6]

Just ensure you are still using the default 2GB of swap space on each hard drive, not what I like but it protects you from running out of RAM all together if FreeNAS can push some stuff to the hard drive freeing up a bit of RAM when needed.

I'm sorry for the noob question and this already being a bit of topic, by saying "Just ensure you are still using the default 2GB of swap space on each hard drive" you mean always have at least 2gb of free space on each hard drive?


By the way, i found a really weird temporary solution if you really need to see what is going on the screen when the gpu messes the characters. If you plug in a USB mouse and by pressing the right button and drag the cursor down (yes, a little mouse cursor appears on top of the freenas boot), like if you were selecting text, you're able to see what's there and possibly even write some command by repeatly "refreshing" up the screen with the mouse. I'ts a way for any one with this issue to still use these low power boards (8\10watts for a dual core atom) with the 64bit version of freenas until a fix come up. I seriously hope it does!

 

[joeschmuck]

When you format your drives, by default FreeNAS establishes a 2GB partition for swap space for each drive. This is configurable under the GUI at Settings -- Advanced -- Swap Space...

I am now running with 8GB RAM so I don't have to have a 2GB partition on each drive I have. It's a personal preference thing.

 

[rick6]

Thank you for explainning this. Knowing this I now feel safer using 4gb for the 4TB of data.