GUI and Putty seize up 5 minutes after reboot

[Daniel Cook]

I believe I'm running current stable FreeNAS 11.1-U7, or possibly 11.2-U2. If I get a chance to verify the next time I have 5 quality minutes with the machine before this bug repros I will edit my post.

My FreeNAS machine can get through a standard reboot without issue. At the console/command line I'm shown the 1-11 menu, the GUI can be logged into, the machine can be pinged from another device on the network, network shares are visible, and an SSH session can be established on Putty.

But within 5-10 minutes the UI goes unresponsive (mostly saying "Sorry, there was an error"), any active Putty session is closed by the host, shares are unreachable, and no new session can be started due to "Network error: connection refused". Note: the machine continues to be pingable on the local network, so it's not a full-blown network failure.

If I had a live GUI session going it gives the sorry message mentioned above. If I later try to re-establish the GUI by going to http://freenas/ui or similar I get the following in Chrome on Windows10:

This site can’t be reached
192.xxx.x.xxx refused to connect.
Checking the connection
Checking the proxy and the firewall
ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED

The only viable workaround is to restart the machine. I prefer not to upgrade to newer builds since the error might take place during the update and then I might be bricked.

 

[Chris Moore]

Do you have data on the system or is this a new build?
Please give as many hardware details as possible. This type of lockup is usually a hardware fault.
Here is a guide with some hints of what data we need for troubleshooting:

Forum Guidelines
https://www.ixsystems.com/community/threads/forum-guidelines.45124/

 

[Daniel Cook]

Do you have data on the system or is this a new build?
Please give as many hardware details as possible. This type of lockup is usually a hardware fault.
Here is a guide with some hints of what data we need for troubleshooting:

Hardware specs:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R rev. 1.0/1.1 (LGA1366-type)
CPU: Intel Core i7-970 Processor 12M Cache 3.20 GHz SLBVF LGA 1366 for x58
Drives:
Boot: Patriot Torch 60GB SATA 3 SSD
RAIDZ2 array #1: 4x WD Red 4TB WD40EFRX
RAIDZ2 array #2: 2x 3TB Seagate IronWolf ST3000VN007 + 1x WD Red 3TB WD30EFRX
Network card: Intel Gigabit CT PCI-E Network Adapter EXPI9301CTBLK
Hard disk controller: I believe is the stock ICH10R on the south bridge of the GA-EX58-UD3R board
Memory: CORSAIR Vengeance 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2133 CMZ16GX3M4X2133C11R
Case/cage/fans: Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 Black Window High-Airflow ATX Midtower Computer Case

This is not a new build. Most of the hardware was purchased new for Freenas 10 (Corral), other than the motherboard which is older. I reinstalled the OS from scratch for Freenas 11 and have always stayed on the latest stable builds.

UPDATE: at the console I have a large number of repeats of a message of this form:
freenas kernel: arp: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx attempts to modify permanent entry for 192.xxx.x.x on em0

Oddly enough the IP addresses quoted at the end of the error message are somehow in use by Amazon FireTVs in my house, but have historically been the addresses used by FreeNAS itself and a Plex Media Server plugin on the adjacent IP address. I just unplugged the FireTV to knock it off the network. So I need to figure out how to definitively set the FreenNAS with a static IP so that the other device isn't assigned to it.

Also, the FreeNAS version is definitely 11.1-U7

 

[Chris Moore]

Is your FreeNAS set to a static IP address or is it receiving the address from DHCP?

 

[Daniel Cook]

I have my router settings configured to give a static IP address to the FreeNAS machine. Nonetheless I had to go physically unplug the FireTV in the basement in order for packets to stop getting routed to the FireTV and resume going to FreeNAS. This also involved flushing the arp cache a few times just to be sure. I'm nervous that if I restart the FireTV it will take over the relevant IP once again. But now that it's powered down I can get to the FreeNAS GUI once again.

Even stranger, I assume the FireTV is configured for DHCP, and the router's DHCP range doesn't even include the IP address that FreeNAS and FireTV were fighting over. So I'm fairly curious how the FireTV got that assignment in the first place.

 

[Chris Moore]

The FireTV might not be playing by the rules properly. It is strange that it would try to take an IP address that is not even in the DHCP range.

 

[Daniel Cook]

I'm planning to wait until a full Macrium-based backup of my other systems is complete, then plug the FireTVs back in and see what IP addresses get assigned to them. Hopefully since there will already be devices assigned at their prior slots, they will go elsewhere and the packet collisions/misdirections will be done. Not sure how this happened but I suspect the FireTVs squatted on the preferred IPs when the FreeNAS machine was powered down for a few days and coincidentally I restarted the router.