SOLVED FreeNAS seems to always die, lots of problems

[Bunter2000]

Hi all,
I am new to freenas in an operating system sense, I use the GUI and setup my network and thats it. I have been using Freenas for some years and in that time I was getting many harddrive failures and when I change the harddrive with a new one I test the old drive and it works perfectly in a windows environment, in fact 2 0f the 3 drives freenas says faulty I am using on a day to day basis and the third in an external HDD box. They have never missed a beat since.

In the past I have changed memory (16Gb) then I got sick of the constant faults been emailed to me I decided to bite the bullet and change the mobo, ram and CPU. The faults and issues do not tell me anything about the problems, maybe for you linux gurus it is simple but I do not have a clue. Some errors are indicating bad sectors or unable to read a sector, or one drive has failed and has been stopped but the data integrity is still intact. I log into the GUI and check the drives but freenas tells me all drives are OK and nothing has degraded and all datasets are OK.

AT THE MOMENT the recent problems are:

It takes forever to open any one of the shares, when the share opens into one of the datasets I then get a delayed list of all of the sub-folders and if I select or right click on any sub-folder it takes a few minutes to open and if I try to run the file directly it wont open and crashes windows file explorer so after re logging into the sub-folder I copy the same file to my windows PC (which also takes forever) I can open and run the program with no issues.

After checking the GUI and been told all OK no flashing traffic light etc, I decide to reboot freenas, well 1/2 hour later it finally boots up with all the same issues as above. I turned everything off checked everything inside cleaned all the "golden fingers" on Ram and support cards etc, there is no overheating problems. Now it takes nearly an hour to boot to the devil screensaver but I do not have access to drives or GUI or able to select any options. On the devil screen it shows the static IP address I have always had but in saying that while booting up I noticed it has a lot of trouble finding the network gateway and toggles through many subnets, my subnet is 255.255.255.0 I am now beginning to think the Network controller is faulty.

My system:
MSI Z68 Motherbord
2500K intel CPU
16 Gb RAM
On board HDMI
1 PCI e x 1 SSD card with 60Gb SSD
6 x 2Tb harddrives taking up all SATA slots As soon as a drive had (so-called) died I have replaced with Seagate NAS drives
550 Watt Power supply.

My drives are formatted in ZFS with 3 datasets and 2 x jails with 2 x plugins, Own cloud (inactive) and Plex Media Server which is active.

I am now contemplating going to a different server and operating system because I am reluctant to continue with so many problems, I have windows home server for years with the infamous Drive extender which was relatively easy to gain my files back but ZFS I am not sure how to get my data back. Are there any windows programs that will read and restore my data from ZFS formatted drives as I do believe my data is still intact.

Thanks in advance, Bill

 

[j0hnby]

Hi Bill.

1. Can you post any error messages you are getting.
2. What version of Freenas are you running?

The Devil screensaver? I can't think where that would be.....maybe console (but was sure that was a shark....)

 

[Bunter2000]

Hi j0hnby,

I am using 11.1 (latest stable) u5. I just looked on the console screensaver and it looks like a devil to me. But I cant do anything it has locked up and I if I reset it I will need a cut lunch b4 I can answer. Even though it is on all appears to be good I cant log into the GUI via windows (freenas.local) and when I try to use the mapped drives I get the usual windows blah blah message. These are the error login into the GUI and via drive mapping.

I am not good with linux commands etc so would it be easier to reinstall freenas again, if I do that can I still restore the existing data

 

[garm]

Sounds like you had multiple hardware failures stack up and you didn’t address them? Have you had S.M.A.R.T monitoring running on a schedule?
Can you access the machine via SSH or Shell?

You say drives you have replaced has worked sins replacement, how do you know that?

The magic of ZFS is block level checksums and data healing, this is not something you get with NTFS.

No ZFS pools cannot be read by Windows, but if you really want to get off FreeNAS you should be able to import the pool in basically any other OS with ZFS installed. I would stick to FreeNAS, so let’s try to get access first. Could be something easy, like a boot device failure.

You do have a config backup saved right?

 

[j0hnby]

Thanks :) Can you grab your IP settings from the console screen (the one you see on your monitor plugged into your Freenas box) - check you have the correct config. Also that you can ping that IP from your Windows PC. I can't remember the console options from the top of my head, but if there isn't a direct option for it, go into shell and run a ifconfig to see.

 

[Bunter2000]

Hi garn,
I am a complete noob, had no experience with shell etc other than DOS and windows. I put the NAS together in trial and error mode with no help for years my setup is destined for it to fail?? I wish I could teamviewer into it for you. I can get in via the shell form the console . As far as the drives go, freenas would report a drive failure so I would replace it, when I connected it to a windows machine and reformat I could use it with no errors. I would prefer to keep freenas and not change over. From everything I have read there is nothing like it and when it is running properly it is brilliant.
I did have smart monitoring running, and no backups did not know where to start.
What commands can I do now I am in shell?

 

[Bunter2000]

j0hnby

Here is the result of the ping - Not good

This is why I said in original post maybe the ethernet port has failed, there are no polling lights on the rear connector

 

[garm]

Garn is really not the same as Garm..

This is garn

This is Garm

 

[garm]

You need to figure out the Ethernet issues first. But before that I would suggest you run zpool status -v in your shell, just to make sure the data is still there

 

[Bunter2000]

Garm sorry about the typo,

I did a zpool status - NO ERRORS, I checked my network and a cable that has sat there for the last 2 years is suspect. I cant do anything tonight as I need to go underneath the house to check the cable. That would explain the speed problems if there was a connection problem that was just hanging on - I hope. Is there a list of error type with a noob explanation. I still think the mobo lan controller is faulty, I have a spare 1 Gb card in my workshop which I will change if the cable is OK.

I will keep everyone up to date tomorrow. Thanks all for your time

Bill

 

[Bunter2000]

I did have a cable fault, cut the connector off and installed a new one, the speed problem is gone. But while I was in console I had two different errors. One when in console so cleared screen to get back to console screen. (see pic). The errors indicating Hard drive issues (ada5).

The first error was "Timeout on slot 11 port 1" and did not have the "WRITE_FPDMA_QUEUED" line but every thing else the same - I had USB issues while transferring 4 pics and ended up with this one pic.

I cleared the console and immediately got the error below

I cleared the console for a third time and did not get any more errors, I waited for about 3 mins, nothing more.

I then logged into GUI and no errors indicated with a green traffic light. I checked Volumes and drives and no error showing up. I hope you can work it out because I have been plagued by false drive problems for the past 2 or so years.

 

[toadman]

Looks like it could be a bad cable. I would reseat, or replace the cable for that connection.

 

[Bunter2000]

Toadman, I checked the sata cables and they seem to be OK but I dont have anymore errors so thank you for your suggestion.
To everyone else that inputted their thoughts I also say thank you, not only did I have a cable issue the onboard NIC was also playing up after a short while. I replaced it with a PCI Express NIC and it is running as fast as ever.
I am not usually one for forums but I am now converted I wish I know what button to press to officially say thanks to everyone

THANK YOU - ALL :):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):)

 

[droeders]

I am not usually one for forums but I am now converted I wish I know what button to press to officially say thanks to everyone

Well, you could click Thanks for all the posts that helped you...

 

[Bunter2000]

Sorry guys I must have had a blonde moment I really did not notice the "Thanks" button. I was looking for the thanks button on my own posts and did not think to look back at the posts everyone else had already posted until "droeders" pointed me in the right direction.

Just one last question, last night I got an email from the freenas server saying critical errors but as I was going to bed I waited till morning to look. In that time I got other emails relating to starting and stopping resilvering. When i checked the GUI (web interface) I found no errors. I had not set up any schedules so why was it re silvering with no system errors prior to the emails or after?