FreeNAS crashed permanently

[nanda]

I've had FreeNAS 9.2.1 running for months now, but this night it just died.

I rebooted several times and then hooked up a monitor. The error message I get is yibberish to me. I'm hoping someone knowledgable could help. Please!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7vku0yep9u0ociq/IMG_20140601_145459.jpg

 

[diedrichg]

What's your CPU/mobo? How much RAM?

 

[nanda]

This is my system:

ASROCK C2750D4 INTEL C2750 AVOTON OCTACORE MITX
WD RED 3.5" 4TB SOHO NAS SATA/600 64MB
2x KINGSTON 8GB 1600MHZ DDR3L ECC CL11 1.35V DIMM W/TS
COOLER MASTER ELITE 120 ADVANCED MINI-ITX BLACK
CORSAIR CX 430W BRONZE ATX12V 2.3 POWER SUPPLY

 

[DrKK]

A Sig12, which is what you have here, is almost always memory faulting. The only other suspects, usually for Sig12's (and I google'd it to be sure I wasn't stupid), would be bad binary kernel modules, or other problems in the kernel, and one would think, anyway, that the odds of that being the case (and like 10000 of us not knowing about it) would be zero.

Your suspect here, is the memory, I believe.

 

[DrKK]

OK, well, while I was writing that, you posted your system specs, and to me, the odds that any of those parts is bad, if you bought them new, is close to 0.

 

[DrKK]

For what it's worth, there was someone else with a signal 12 that posted in the FreeNAS forums:

http://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/fatal-trap-12-page-fault-while-in-kernel-mode.10268/

but this was a while ago.

 

[nanda]

Sold with motherboard.

Intel® Atom™ Processor C2750(4M Cache, 2.40 GHz)

http://ark.intel.com/products/77987

 

[Idiotzoo]

It certainly looks like a hardware fault. I had lots of problems when I was initially testing Freenas, including sig12 and other kernel panics, which were the result of a bad usb flash drive I was using for the system. You don't say what's holding the system, assuming it's a USB stick is it a good quality, branded product?

If you have a backup of your system config you can try installing onto a new USB stick and then restore your config. If it still won't boot with a fresh install on a new USB stick then you know there's something else wrong.

 

[DrKK]

I hope the OP tells us what the resolution is.

 

[nanda]

The USB stick is a possibility. It is a 8 GB drive from Lexar, i.e. no brand.

 

[Idiotzoo]

Try it before you start pulling anything else to pieces. I was using cheap rubbish so it was the first thing I replaced. There was just random corruption of the system that caused anything from config changes not sticking and random crashes through to an unbootable system. I've moved to Sandisk for mine. Their CF cards are all I use in my cameras now. I've never had a bad sandisk card but I've had problems with most of the other 'name' brands.

 

[nanda]

Hello again!

I have now created a second USB stick with the latest version of FreeNAS and was able to run it. Now my problem is how to get the data back. On my HDD i had a zfs volume with encryption enabled.

Is there a way?

 

[cyberjock]

If you didn't save your keys and passwords then your data is unrecoverably encrypted.

 

[nanda]

I can live with that, nothing truly important has been lost. I am very disappointed one isn't prompted to save anything when creating the volume though.

I just assumed the root password would be used. This is poor design in my estimation and will destroy the data of lots of people.

I still have the old corrupt USB-stick. Is there a way to recover the keys from there?

 

[cyberjock]

I can live with that, nothing truly important has been lost. I am very disappointed one isn't prompted to save anything when creating the volume though.

I just assumed the root password would be used. This is poor design in my estimation and will destroy the data of lots of people.

I still have the old corrupt USB-stick. Is there a way to recover the keys from there?

If the keys aren't corrupted they *may* be on the old key in the /data partition.

This has caused several users to lose their data. There are warnings in the manual that you should backup your keys as you can lose your data otherwise. Unfortunately there's only so much we can do.

We've also had users that made backups of their keys, but rekeyed and forgot to make backups of the new keys. We've also had users make backups to a USB stick or whatnot and later when they needed it they realize the USB stick is bad.

The bottom line is that encryption requires you to safely store and control your keys, otherwise you could lose your data.

Encryption is about preventing access to data, and if you aren't careful you'll find yourself in the group of people that are prevented from having access. ;)