freeNAS keeps resetting

[Tyler Neibarger]

I have freeNAS set up, and every time I shut it down, I have to set everything back up. It gets rid of my user accounts, groups, drives, everything. I have two hard drives on it. One WD my passport (1 TB) and one Seagate Momentus (160 gb). I have one share set up on these joined drives, and it is set up as striped. Why is it resetting and deleting my files?

 

[gpsguy]

Please read the forum rules - especially #3 and at a minimum, provide answers to items 1-3.

Are you shutting it down from the console and/or webgui? Or just turning it off?

USB can be problematic. How is the Seagate drive connected?

 

[Tyler Neibarger]

WD is connected through USB, Seagate is connected through the motherboard (SATA connector). Motherboard is out of a Dell Inspiron 1525 PP29L. Processor is Intel Celeron 550 @ 2.00 GHz. Two GB or ram. 32-bit NAS OS. It is set up as ZFS. If you need anymore information, i'll edit it. And I'm shutting it down through the GUI. Thank you!

 

[gpsguy]

From the manual "FreeNAS with ZFS typically requires a minimum of 8 GB of RAM in order to provide good performance and stability".

Since you only have 2Gb, try UFS instead.

 

[Tyler Neibarger]

I understand the 8 GB for performance but I don't understand it for stability. What does RAM have to do with stability? I'm going to try UFS anyways, I'm just curious here. Because RAM isn't for permanent storage, so I don't see why it would be resetting because of RAM.

 

[warri]

I can't see how this is possibly related to the file system.

Sounds like either FreeNAS is not storing its database (which is something I have never heard of) or your USB stick just doesn't persist the changes. Maybe try a different stick.

You mentioned it is also "deleting files". Are those files on the harddrives? Or is FreeNAS just forgetting about the configuration you made?

 

[cyberjock]

I understand the 8 GB for performance but I don't understand it for stability. What does RAM have to do with stability? I'm going to try UFS anyways, I'm just curious here. Because RAM isn't for permanent storage, so I don't see why it would be resetting because of RAM.

First, having insufficient RAM can cause all sorts of weird issues. So there's no way to rule out definitively that your issue isn't from limited RAM.

Secondly, ZFS allocated 7/8th of system RAM by default for caching. The rest is for the remaining services. For 2GB of RAM, that's a whole 256MB of RAM. Not very much. But with 8GB of RAM, that amounts to 1GB. Hopefully you can see that it really does matter.

UFS doesn't have that limitation though. It has either no cache or a very simple caching system(I forget which). So 2GB covers any cache plus your services.

 

[Tyler Neibarger]

Ok, I can see now how RAM can affect it. At first it didn't make sense though. And yes, the files that are being deleted are stored on my hard drives. But would it really get rid of my profile because of insufficient RAM?

 

[cyberjock]

Ok, I can see now how RAM can affect it. At first it didn't make sense though. And yes, the files that are being deleted are stored on my hard drives. But would it really get rid of my profile because of insufficient RAM?

Does it really matter if you understand it though? If we put it in the manual, there's good reason for it. And isn't it a bad idea to decide you know better than the manual without actually understanding why its in the manual?

Even with all the reading I've done on ZFS, there's boatloads of ZFS stuff I don't know, don't understand, and just accept that if the ZFS makers say don't do it I don't do that.