Help with Volume State is Unknown on a new build.

[twistedsymphony]

I'm new to FreeNAS and NAS setups in general. I just pieced together this machine using an ASRock A88M-ITX mother board 16GB of Memory and 4x4TB WD Red Drives. I installed FreeNAS to a SanDisc UltraFit thumb drive.
There's not really any other hardware here the HDDs and the USB drive are all plugged directly into the motherboard.

Basically I went through the install, and then I followed the wizard in the web interface to set everything up. I chose "automatic" for the volume configuration and mostly just used the default options for everything.

It seemed to be working but the smartd_daemon wouldn't run, and I was also getting some CAM errors on ada2 as described here: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/cam-errors.57620/

following the advice in that thread I did a shut-down through the web interface, waited for the machine to power itself off then replaced the cable on ada2 with a brand-new still in the wrapper cable. When I powered it back up I didn't get any CAM errors but I was now getting a critical error of "The Volume [my volume] state is UNKNOWN. smartd_daemon is still not running.

I shut down again, and replace the cable with a 3rd new cable and I'm still getting the volume state is unknown error.

in the console on the web interface I'm seeing:
smartd[2436]: Unable to register device /dev/da0 (no Directive -d removable). Exiting.
root: /etc/rc: WARNING: failed precmd routine for minio
syslog-ng[1578]: Configuration reload request received, reloading configuration;

I'm kind of out of my depth at this point. I'm not sure what I've done wrong. I had built this setup because I wanted something more reliable and particularly more recoverable than a simple USB drive in the event of a hardware failure, but searching around on this error message I keep seeing posts about this being unrecoverable... and I haven't even put a single file on this thing yet.

Any help or guidance would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[dlavigne]

Are you running 11.1-U5? If so, follow the Known Issues instructions in https://www.ixsystems.com/blog/library/freenas-11-1-u5/.

 

[twistedsymphony]

Thanks for the link.
I went to storage->volumes->view disc and there was only 1 volume listed so I disabled smart.

now when I enable the smart service it says "Configuration file /usr/local/etc/smartd.conf parsed but has no entries" and the SMART service still shows as not running.

Which makes sense because I disabled SMART on the only device available.

This also did not fix my "Volume State Is Unknown" error, which is the main problem I'm trying to fix.

 

[BigDave]

smartd[2436]: Unable to register device /dev/da0 (no Directive -d removable). Exiting.

This is your USB flash drive and you just need to follow the directions in the link, provided by @dlavigne
has provided to disable smart for that device (a great many flash drives are not SMART capable any way.

root: /etc/rc: WARNING: failed precmd routine for minio

This log entry is just noise and can be ignored.

syslog-ng[1578]: Configuration reload request received, reloading configuration;

This reloading of the FreeNAS configuation happens at midnight (server time) every day and is normal.

Your data storage drives being plugged into the mobo SATA ports should be designated - ada0 & ada1,
smart testing should be done on these drives on a regular basis. It is recommended that you test your
hardware (search for burn-in FreeNAS) for an extended period before committing data to your newly configured pool/volume, hard drive testing is a VERY IMPORTANT part of this testing.

By your description above, I recommend you start over since you have no data to lose.
While not ideal, your hardware should work and when reinstalling this time around try
and stay away from "automatic". You need to know about your configuration and learn
the hows and whys of FreeNAS. My suggestion is to read the User Guide cover to cover
twice before proceeding. Last piece of advice, make sure the data you commit to FreeNAS
is backed up elsewhere, I once had issues during a file copy/transfer and lost data that has
cost me alot of time and money and I still don't have it all back after over 8 years!

 

[twistedsymphony]

Thanks for the Breakdown of those messages

By your description above, I recommend you start over since you have no data to lose.
While not ideal, your hardware should work

I guess this leaves me with the question of what caused this to happen and how do I avoid it happening again?

Last piece of advice, make sure the data you commit to FreeNAS is backed up elsewhere, I once had issues during a file copy/transfer and lost data that has
cost me a lot of time and money and I still don't have it all back after over 8 years!

I started this whole build because people recommended it as a reliable and stable backup solution to important data. So far my experience and this anecdote hasn't given me much confidence.

I mean I'm looking for long-term storage of irreplaceable files where a "cloud" backup is not an option.

 

[twistedsymphony]

I recommend you start over since you have no data to lose.
While not ideal, your hardware should work and when reinstalling

I started a fresh re-install, having the installer re-format my OS thumb drive, and the installation went fine, but FreeNAS does not see any of my SATA drives. they're all visible in my Mobo/BIOS but in FreeNAS it's as if they're not connected.

 

[BigDave]

Make sure your mobo bios have the SATA ports settings as AHCI...
And read the User Guide... Please?

 

[twistedsymphony]

Make sure your mobo bios have the SATA ports settings as AHCI...

They already are set to AHCI. They've been set that way since the beginning. Though to be fair the User Guide doesn't explicitly state this; only that ACHI is needed if you want "hot pluggable" drives. I read through the whole user guide (minus a few sections such as Virtual Machine and Directory Services that I didn't think were applicable to my setup) before I started even building my machine.

I've probably read through sections 1-8 about 3 or 4 times now. I'm still not sure what it is that I'm doing wrong with my setup; nor do I know what it is you think I'm missing that I'll find there reading it again.

 

[BigDave]

I guess this leaves me with the question of what caused this to happen and how do I avoid it happening again?

The answer will come to light once the hardware issue (or failure) is discovered and successfully corrected.

I read through the whole user guide (minus a few sections such as Virtual Machine and Directory Services that I didn't think were applicable to my setup) before I started even building my machine.

I've probably read through sections 1-8 about 3 or 4 times now. I'm still not sure what it is that I'm doing wrong with my setup; nor do I know what it is you think I'm missing that I'll find there reading it again.

You failed to mention this^^^^^ in your first post, and I assumed you to be one who hates to read.
Sorry, my bad.

I started a fresh re-install, having the installer re-format my OS thumb drive, and the installation went fine, but FreeNAS does not see any of my SATA drives. they're all visible in my Mobo/BIOS but in FreeNAS it's as if they're not connected.

FreeNAS is not at fault here, look for a hardware fault, i.e. bad cable/port/drive/bios setting (I would
try resetting the mobo bios to default settings and trying again).
Having tried the above with no success, I would install Linux Mint on that hardware and see if the
drives can be formatted in that OS.
Keep us posted :)