FreeNAS crashes daily

[bbenz3]

I have recently setup a new server and something seems to be wrong. The server worked for a couple of weeks but now seems to crash daily around 4AM. I have multiple jails running and I'm not sure where to start for the troubleshooting aspect. Here is my configuration:

ASRock QC 5000 MB
AMD A4-5000 APU
8GB RAM
1x 5TB Toshiba 7200 SATA drive

FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-201505130355
Plex Jail
Transmission Jail
sql_server jail (running but not in use)
CentOS jail with one cron job starting at 6AM

The Plex installation is setup to perform a media scrape starting at 2AM which it runs fine for two hours. I have no other cron jobs started. I noticed this morning the error at the console was "kernel trap 9 with interrupts disabled". I don't have a crash log from this morning but have attached the one from yesterday if that will help someone provide an answer as I'm not sure what I am looking at inside of it.

 

[jgreco]

Take it back out of service and go requalify it for production.

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/building-burn-in-and-testing-your-freenas-system.17750/

The trap 9 is a general protection fault and is probably a signal that something is pretty wrong, that's usually hardware. Do not use your production software environment to debug a hardware problem. Fate will come along and scramble your bits on you.

 

[bbenz3]

This is just a home server and it isn't my only copy of the data. Sure I might have to rebuild it but it won't impact me if it were to crash and burn more than a few hours of my time. I will work on the stress test to see if anything breaks.

 

[DrKK]

I just want to point out sir, that pretty much the very last CPU we would ever recommend would be the bottom-end AMD APU's, like you have. I would proceed with caution, and as you say, have backups ready to go at all times.

 

[bbenz3]

I understand your caution and do appreciate it. This setup meets my needs for a low power solution and barring a real hardware issue should be more than sufficient to run the meager load I expect to put onto it as a home server. This is mainly used to serve movies to either Kodi or Plex both of which this CPU has more than sufficient resources to accomplish.

So far I have run Memtest86 without any issues and will move to the hard drive script that jgreco mentioned above.

 

[DrKK]

I understand your caution and do appreciate it. This setup meets my needs for a low power solution and barring a real hardware issue should be more than sufficient to run the meager load I expect to put onto it as a home server. This is mainly used to serve movies to either Kodi or Plex both of which this CPU has more than sufficient resources to accomplish.

So far I have run Memtest86 without any issues and will move to the hard drive script that jgreco mentioned above.

The issue is not so much that we find this hardware combination "insufficiently powerful". It's certainly, in principle, plenty powerful. Surprisingly powerful, per dollar, and per watt, to be honest.

The issue, sir, is that this particular platform/chipset/etc does not play as well with FreeBSD/FreeNAS as a desktop Intel, or (much better yet) a server Intel chipset would, and that things like NICs and so forth are horrifically sub-par on this board. e.g., it has the RealTek 8111E for its network, which is easily the biggest piece of shit on planet Earth for a motherboard LAN port, and has generally spotty performance with FreeNAS/FreeBSD.

So, to be clear, it's not a question of the CPU not being beefy enough, it's a matter of the AMD APU platform, and a chipset like this one, not being appropriate suited to the application.

But, if you understand the risks, don't care about spotty performance, and have backups of your data ready to go, then the risk would seem to be mitigated. I just wanted to bring the issue to your attention.

 

[bbenz3]

This is an upgrade from a less powerful Asus E-350 with the same NIC and while it might have had slightly less throughput than an equivalent Intel NIC it performed great for several years. The only issue was the CPU wasn't quite sufficient to run a Plex server. Originally this board was purchased to be used as a router and none of the low power Intel chips had the AES instructions that I was looking into to use with OpenVPN. Of course once I decided to swap the motherboards between my router and my NAS that became a moot point and in retrospect I would have been better off with a J1900 CPU which operates slightly faster and has less TDP. If the NIC really does end up causing issues that is an easy $15 fix to get a PCI-e Intel based card.

 

[DrKK]

This is an upgrade from a less powerful Asus E-350 with the same NIC and while it might have had slightly less throughput than an equivalent Intel NIC it performed great for several years. The only issue was the CPU wasn't quite sufficient to run a Plex server. Originally this board was purchased to be used as a router and none of the low power Intel chips had the AES instructions that I was looking into to use with OpenVPN. Of course once I decided to swap the motherboards between my router and my NAS that became a moot point and in retrospect I would have been better off with a J1900 CPU which operates slightly faster and has less TDP. If the NIC really does end up causing issues that is an easy $15 fix to get a PCI-e Intel based card.

I don't know. Sounds to me like you are getting $N of hassle for $M of savings, where N>M.

But I am sure you'll be fine.

 

[jgreco]

I understand your caution and do appreciate it. This setup meets my needs for a low power solution and barring a real hardware issue should be more than sufficient to run the meager load I expect to put onto it as a home server. This is mainly used to serve movies to either Kodi or Plex both of which this CPU has more than sufficient resources to accomplish.

So far I have run Memtest86 without any issues and will move to the hard drive script that jgreco mentioned above.

You can't *possibly* have run memtest86 correctly unless you have a time machine. That's something that needs to run for days or even weeks.