Help! New install, no web user interface

[choyal]

I am new to TrueNAS, but a 20 year IT vet. I just installed TrueNAS on an old SFF PC I had available (not too old), boots up, gets to the sonsole setup, and gives me all 0 for the IP for the user interface... even though my router shows the machine as receiving an IP address via DHCP. I've tried giving it a static IP, which then shows a web user interface IP address... but it never connects, even with both machines on the same switch (and yes, same subnet, and no, no VLANs involved yet)

I... don't know what the next step in getting this working is, and would appreciate it if someone should give me a shove in the right direction.

 

[jgreco]

Welcome to the forums.

In order to be able to give you assistance, please provide more information about your system. PC hardware is crap, and if you're trying to install on an "old SFF PC", the likelihood is that it uses some halfarsed ethernet chipset that isn't supported. As you may realize, being an IT vet, lots of low end PC hardware is just barely passable working with whatever the current version of Windows is at the time of manufacture.

Please refer to the Forum Rules, conveniently linked at the top of every page in red, for guidance on making a useful summary of your system and the problem.

Generally, interfaces other than Intel and some Broadcoms are problematic in my opinion. If you happen to have something like an Intel desktop CT adapter laying around, give that a shot. Despite the "desktop" label, this is a highly compatible bit of hardware with an excellent Intel-authored driver for FreeBSD that will typically give you full gigabit without all the drama.

 

[choyal]

The network adaptor is a Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet Plus adaptor. CPU is a AMD A4-5300B. 32GB RAM (because it was free). This is just going to be a small system for home use, storing multimedia files on it. The base system is a 6 year old HP Compaq Pro 6305 SFF (again, free), but beyond the MB/CPU and case, nothing else is as it came out of the factory. I can switch over to an Intel CPU system if you believe that's the culprit, but it's going to be the same age range (I blew my budget on drives)

Yes, in general, PC hardware is crap.... but not everyone has the budget to set up a full sized server.. I actually have 2 of them, but not the budget to run them, and they are older then my beater of a car..

 

[jgreco]

but not everyone has the budget to set up a full sized server..

This doesn't really have anything to do with anything.

First, there is no secret magic hidden button that I can push here to make PC grade crap work any better. So it doesn't really matter whether you have the budget.

Second, server hardware is no more expensive than reasonable quality prosumer systems. You can pay a hundred and sixty dollars for a decent workstation or gaming board, and usually the price for a similarly spec'd Supermicro server board is within maybe ten or twenty dollars of that.

The difference is that the Supermicro stuff is designed to be a server, and will have stuff like Intel ethernet chipsets, IPMI, and BIOS design that is optimized to the purpose. They're not really more expensive or more costly to run.

However, I understand that you're trying to repurpose a SFF desktop you already have, so, yes, that kinda sucks. In that case, you may need to pay the price and supplement that Broadcom with an Intel CT. In my experience, the Broadcoms either work or they don't, it seems to be a matter of the specific chipset. There is still no secret magic hidden button that makes it work.

 

[choyal]

Appreciate the recommendation for the Intel CT. It's in my amazon cart now. Assuming I don't have one in one of my other systems I can take, it will be here mid week.

At least with it being a hardware limitation issue, I don't feel too much like an idiot. And, amazingly, it won't be the first piece of hardware that I had to replace today.