FreeNAS errors on server screen and random freezing

[foefyre]

Hello I am running a FreeNAS server and I'm getting this on the main screen and I don't really know what it means. The I/O errors were there when I came back from work (everything was frozen and I was only able to access from the server itself), after a restart it went to normal and things were fine. The other one shows ada6 Periph destroyed which I don't understand either, those errors are showing up while the server is running.

 

[m0nkey_]

Please provide details of your hardware as per the forum rules.

 

[foefyre]

Dunno how it would help
i5 2700k
8 gb ram
6 3tb baracudas
Intel DQ67OW mobo

 

[nojohnny101]

Welcome to the forums, just a word of advice, you're not going to get much help with that attitude. Hardware information is not only in the forum rules (which you agreed to follow when you joined) but it seems you have a hardware issue, you expect us to diagnose a hardware issue without knowing anything about your hardware?

How are your drives connected, direct to the motherboard or are you using an HBA? I know you said you just found it with these errors but can you remember if you made any changes close to the time when you started to see these errors? Also, what do you mean by "frozen"? Could you access the GUI? Could you access your data through shares? Was SSH working (if you have that enabled)? Also what is your boot media?

 

[foefyre]

No the first time it froze i realized when I woke up, it boots two 32gig flash drives in a mirror, the hard drives are connected directly to the mother board, no by frozen i could only access through the keyboard connected to the server the shares and gui wouldn't connect, the only thing besides the shares i have is plex installed (its why i use my old i5) which was also inaccessible. Its only been up for since last Saturday and i always come to find it frozen so i cant really isolate anything yet.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Looks like maybe a boot device is dying? Where do you store your system dataset? What version of freenas are you running? What does smart data say about your HDDs? What is the output of zpool status?

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[foefyre]

FreeNAS version 9.10.2, I don't know what the system dataset is, also I don't know how to read the smart data, its set to read once daily but those answers I don't know. Below is the output of the zpool status -v

Code:

zpool status -v																								 
  pool: deadpool																													
state: ONLINE																													
  scan: resilvered 4K in 0h0m with 0 errors on Fri Jan 27 17:56:24 2017															
config:																															
																																	
		NAME											STATE	 READ WRITE CKSUM												
		deadpool										ONLINE	   0	 0	 0												
		  raidz1-0									  ONLINE	   0	 0	 0												
			gptid/99fc1ad8-ddf6-11e6-bfc7-00224d550b33  ONLINE	   0	 0	 0												
			gptid/e20d5d64-de07-11e6-8bdb-00224d550b33  ONLINE	   0	 0	 0												
			gptid/9bed77a7-ddf6-11e6-bfc7-00224d550b33  ONLINE	   0	 0	 0												
			gptid/9cf759cf-ddf6-11e6-bfc7-00224d550b33  ONLINE	   0	 0	 0												
			gptid/9e0f0d31-ddf6-11e6-bfc7-00224d550b33  ONLINE	   0	 0	 0												
			gptid/9f15ccc4-ddf6-11e6-bfc7-00224d550b33  ONLINE	   0	 0	 0												
																																	
errors: No known data errors																										
																																	
  pool: freenas-boot																												
state: ONLINE																													
  scan: scrub repaired 0 in 0h1m with 0 errors on Sun Jan 22 14:30:52 2017														
config:																															
																																	
		NAME		STATE	 READ WRITE CKSUM																					
		freenas-boot  ONLINE	   0	 0	 0																					
		  mirror-0  ONLINE	   0	 0	 0																					
			da0p2   ONLINE	   0	 0	 0																					
			da1p2   ONLINE	   0	 0	 0																					
																																	
errors: No known data errors

 

[foefyre]

Well i isolated a bad power splitter i was using and tossed that, but is freenas supposed to freez the gui when the raid breaks? I noticed I completely lose the gui when more then one drive is disconnected.

 

[foefyre]

okay ive figured out the smart test, none of the disks showed any errors so thats good but can anyone explain how to move "if recommended" the system dataset?

 

[Kevin Horton]

okay ive figured out the smart test, none of the disks showed any errors so thats good but can anyone explain how to move "if recommended" the system dataset?

This is covered in the docs.

 

[SweetAndLow]

System dataset should live on your pool.

The GUI will hang when a disk dies of your system is using swap. Your system should never be using swap. If it is you have other problems, swap is just there is your system doesn't panic at the first sign of trouble.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[gpsguy]

BTW, 8GB is the minimum requirement for a basic filer with FreeNAS. With the disks you've got + Plex, 16GB should be your starting point. You may need more.

Also, you chose RAIDz1 which isn't recommended for 3TB+ sized hard disks. RAIDz2 would be a better choice. Since RAIDz1 can only support the loss of one disk, it's not surprising that "I noticed I completely lose the gui when more then one drive is disconnected."

 

[foefyre]

Okay Ive upped it to 16gb based on peoples recommendations but do I need to completely rebuild my NAS to up it to a RAIDz2? Or can I just add a drive and configure it as a failover? Ive been google searching and I havnt seen anything on adding a failover drive. Since ive maxed out my ram slots on the board should I add a caching drive to cover (i read that a caching drive is good if you dont have enough ram)?

 

[gpsguy]

Unfortunately, to switch to RAIDz2, you would need to backup your data, rebuild your pool and restore your data and configuration. You could minimize the risk by adding a spare.

Here's an excerpt from the documentation. Since "L2ARC needs RAM to function", with just 16GB of RAM, adding the cache drive would probably do more harm than good. 32-64GB+ might be a starting point for L2ARC.

"L2ARC does not reduce the need for suffcient RAM. In fact, L2ARC needs RAM to function. If there is not enough RAM for a adequately-sized ARC, adding an L2ARC will not increase performance. Performance actually decreases in most cases, potentially causing system instability. RAM is always faster than disks, so always add as much RAM as possible before considering whether the system can bene1t from an L2ARC device."

 

[joeschmuck]

@foefyre I realize that you are new to FreeNAS but you really should read the user manual from cover to cover, this will answer many of your questions. Additionally please read the forum rules with respect to what data we require to help a person out. I always approach an issue by assuming one thing only, the person on the other end knows nothing about my system, problem, or what I was doing. When I think like this I put myself it their shoes and provide as much information as possible so that I can get some help without having to be asked a lot of basic questions. Yes, I too ask for help on the forums, and not just this forum.

You might also want to read through some of the forums periodically. FreeNAS was never meant to be an out of the box application to run without some basic minimal knowledge. If you value your data you will heed my words of wisdom as it will help you avoid some pain in the future.

As for the GUI not being responsive, typically that would be a low RAM issue or a bug in the program. I wouldn't think that you would have this issue with 8GB RAM however if you do have a lot of jails/applications running eating up your RAM then your SWAP partition would be very active and that could slow down the GUI, but making it completely stop, I don't see how that could happen unless you ran out of SWAP space which is unlikely unless you made changes to the SWAP space default settings.

You also said your running FreeNAS 9.10.2 but is that 9.10.2, 9.10.2-U1, or 9.10.2-U2? If you are running 9.10.2-U2 then I'd recommend rolling back to 9.10.2-U1 and see if you still have the issues.

And as @gpsguy has said, do not add an L2ARC. Many of us have tested this configuration and we can speak from experience, with only 16GB or 32GB RAM, you will slow your system down (measurable via benchmarks) and just add complexity to it. If you had 64GB RAM, maybe, 128GB or more then yes it would benefit depending on your usage of course.

 

[foefyre]

Yeah I'm running the stable version of 9.10.2 and the only thing I have on my system is Plex and I haven't touched most of the the default settings. I added a different user so that I can use something other then root to log into my windows share but no other changes. So far it's been up and stable since I've changed out the power splitters and I had 5 streams going at once with no issues so I'm quite happy with how it's running.

When I was looking into making a freenas server I didn't walk into it blindly I watched a lot of setup videos and read the documentation but google kept referring me to the old guides which work but don't quite line up with the GUI in 9.10.2. I now have the proper link to read into but before I was just having issue after issue and couldn't figure it out. Which is when I started this post.

 

[joeschmuck]

Yep, you got to watch out for those old FreeNAS videos, they sure can get someone in trouble fast. I dislike how the really old ones promoted using any old hardware and that was okay. This was true in the FreeNAS 0.7 days but that was many years ago.

Glad to hear that your problem appears to be fixed.

 

[gpsguy]

We're glad to hear that you are a happy user.

... with no issues so I'm quite happy with how it's running.

We wish folks wouldn't find all those old videos. Or, blogs that tell users to buy/build non-ECC systems. For only a few dollars more, you can have a great FreeNAS system.

 

[ricardonadao]

Hi all,

my Freenas seem to have a similar error, the difference is that it doesn't spit any logs to the screen or to syslog.

HW:
Intel DQ45CB
Intel Q6600
8 GB Ram
2xSanDisk 16GB USB (mirrored)
4x4TB WD RED (pool 2xMirror)
1x3TB Seagate (single pool)

Using it mainly as an iSCSI target for my ESXi machine.

The system freezes under heavy IO, if I storage vmotion something, or if I allow one of the VMs to do a lot of IO.

This starts to happen when I upgraded to 9.10.2-U1, before that never had issues (was running 9.10.2 and 9.10.2-U4 before), and it seems to be more easy to replicate in the "single disk pool".

Also noticed that my ARC hit ratio reduced massively after the upgrade, not sure if I didn't saw the problem before because of ARC smoothing/hiding the issue.

I've run the smart tests in all the devices and no errors, and also there is no errors in the logs that could point out to hdd errors.

Any ideas? or how can I help troubleshoot this?

 

[gpsguy]

Upgrade to a better machine with lots more RAM. 8GB is the minimum amount of RAM for a basic filer. With iSCSI you will probably need at least 32GB.

Search the forum for iSCSI.