Help debugging (9.3 problem?; incomplete web GUI display; unresponsive console)

[Uncle_Steve]

Since upgrading to 9.3 my system has had some "issues" and I'd like help debugging them. Of course these problems may be unrelated to the 9.3 upgrade, but since 9.2 never had any issues, my guess is it's something with 9.3.

So, what do I mean by "issues"? Well, for the past two nights, the system has hung (at least partially).

Both times when this has happened, the web GUI has allowed me to login, but doesn't display normally. It starts to display, but never completes.

The first time this happened, the console was unresponsive and I had to hit the hardware RESET to get the system back online. (ctl-alt-del had no effect and keyboard input didn't work).

The second time this happened, the web GUI also failed; however, I was able to ssh into the system. Now I'm pretty much a FreeNAS amateur, but even I could spot one problem:

pid 1592 (syslog-ng), uid 0: exited on signal 6 (core dumped)

I rebooted via ssh ("shutdown -r now").

I've checked and there are no pending updates.

So, the next time this happens, what information can I try to gather to help track this down?

What can I do now to make sure there's info available when things go wrong?

Please point me to any online docs I can read that might help me debug this.

And of course anything else you can think of or any other info I can provide.

Thanks very much!

 

[pschatz100]

What's your hardware configuration? Can't help without knowing all the facts...

Did you do a clean install or upgrade via the GUI?

 

[Uncle_Steve]

What's your hardware configuration? Can't help without knowing all the facts...

Did you do a clean install or upgrade via the GUI?

The system was built from my old workstation from 2010. The main bits are:

Intel WX58BP motherboard
Intel Xeon W3520 CPU
12G (3x4) non-ECC memory (Crucial CT3KIT51264BA1339)
(I have 6G (3x2) of ECC memory which I can install in place of the non-ECC)
8G Cruzer Fit SanDisk USB drive for the OS
three TOSHIBA DT01ACA300 3TB disks in RAIDz1

I left an ssh session open last night in hopes of seeing something interesting, but nothing happened overnight.

I did the upgrade via the GUI.

Now that I know of its existence, I can provide output from fndebug if desired.

 

[pschatz100]

From your description, I presume that the system boots OK and runs for a while before becoming unresponsive.

That said, you might have a corrupt installation or a hardware conflict (or malfunction.) I would try the following:

1) Plug the flash drive into a different USB port to see if that makes any difference.
2) Since you have another set of memory, you could try that as well.
3) Do a clean install using a new USB flash drive (they do go bad.) It that works OK, then try restoring your configuration. If it runs OK after a clean install yet develops issues after restoring your configuration, then you either have a corrupt configuration or a conflict with your settings.

If the clean install will not run, then you may have a hardware issue. I am not familiar with your motherboard, so I cannot comment further about hardware.

 

[Uncle_Steve]

From your description, I presume that the system boots OK and runs for a while before becoming unresponsive.

That said, you might have a corrupt installation or a hardware conflict (or malfunction.) I would try the following:

1) Plug the flash drive into a different USB port to see if that makes any difference.
2) Since you have another set of memory, you could try that as well.
3) Do a clean install using a new USB flash drive (they do go bad.) It that works OK, then try restoring your configuration. If it runs OK after a clean install yet develops issues after restoring your configuration, then you either have a corrupt configuration or a conflict with your settings.

If the clean install will not run, then you may have a hardware issue. I am not familiar with your motherboard, so I cannot comment further about hardware.

Thanks very much for your advice. If I discover anything I think will be helpful to the community at large I'll post it. If I discover what's causing my system's issues, I'll follow up here.