Intel Pentium 4 511 (Prescott, 2.8 Ghz)

[SeaFox]

I have an old Dell (Optiplex 170L)with this processor running FreeNAS 9.2.1.6 32-bit.

According to Intel's Ark page for this processor, it's 64-bit capable. But every 64-bit OS I've tried on it now has refused to run. Is there a certain chipset minimum I need for this to work in 64-bit or something else I'm missing?

 

[cyberjock]

The motherboard chipset has to support 64-bit. Some motherboards also require a BIOS update (some manufacturers didn't offer the update for some boards).

To be honest though, a CPU like that is certainly dated to other hardware that is not a good fit for FreeNAS. I wouldn't plan to build a system that uses that hardware if you value your data. ;)

 

[SeaFox]

Oh, yeah. I don't use it as a backup solution I actually count on. More like a machine to do the functions I want without having to leave my desktop on all the time.

I'm trying to get off 32-bit as Plex solves a big problem I have with MiniDLNA. The only other machine I can turn into a NAS at the moment is a low-power embedded board I don't think I can use because of the LAN chipset it uses.

 

[Knowltey]

Seriously, don't even try running FreeNAS on that processor. I'm saying this out of experience. Back when I first started playing arounnd with FreeNAS I tried setting it up at first on a box that had the same processor that you had, and while it did run, it ran like absolute crap (Like less than a MB/s transfer speeds, and would routinely crash. That processor isn't good enough to run FreeNAS as a testing box, and is definitely not good enough to be running FreeNAS as a production box.

The usage scenario you described though would probbaly notbe best served by FreeNAS to be fair as well. you may want to look at something more along the lines of just a Linux distro of some sort.

 

[SeaFox]

Seriously, don't even try running FreeNAS on that processor. I'm saying this out of experience. Back when I first started playing arounnd with FreeNAS I tried setting it up at first on a box that had the same processor that you had, and while it did run, it ran like absolute crap (Like less than a MB/s transfer speeds, and would routinely crash.

Hmm. Not sure what issues you were having, but I've been running FreeNAS on this machine for almost 2 years now, in only 512 MB of RAM.

I run bittorrent, FTP for syncing some stuff between computers, Firefly, and with the torrent folder as a CIFS share I can plug its path it into my media player on my Windows machine (Zoom Player) and browse/playback from it seamlessly with my desktop's own internal drives's content. Yeah, it's not very good on file transfers (I seem to remember something I copied off it last night ran at about 10 MB/s) but that speed isn't needed for a DLNA client to do direct streaming (no transcoding).

The main problem I've had was the media drive is a SATA disk (jails are on an old PATA drive) and the media disk would not mount if the machine had previously been turned off by a sudden loss of power, it left the disk in some weird state where I'd have to do a manual reboot from the GUI to bring it back up. The IDE disk doesn't have this issue. But I obtained a small UPS so the machine could now shut itself down properly when the power went out and haven't had an issue with that since.

 

[gpsguy]

We're you running FreeNAS 0.7 before you installed 9.2.1.6? If so, that's a completely different project, now known as NAS4free (www.nas4free.org).

... but I've been running FreeNAS on this machine for almost 2 years now, in only 512 MB of RAM.

 

[SeaFox]

We're you running FreeNAS 0.7 before you installed 9.2.1.6? If so, that's a completely different project, now known as NAS4free (www.nas4free.org).

No, I think the first version I ran was 8.2 or 8.3. Maybe it's been closer to a year and a half. This machine was left to me by a former employer (I worked from home at the time) and I separated from them two years ago.

 

[Knowltey]

Hmm. Not sure what issues you were having, but I've been running FreeNAS on this machine for almost 2 years now, in only 512 MB of RAM.

I don't know how you're managing it, but I wouldn't trust anythign runniing FreeNAS on only 512MB of RAM further than I could kick a turd. You realize right that you are running at ont 1/16th the minimum system requirements of 8GB right?

 

[cyberjock]

You can't even run the FreeNAS installer with 1GB of RAM without it crashing. I accidentally tried to do that last night in a VM. Haha.

 

[SeaFox]

I don't know how you're managing it, but I wouldn't trust anythign runniing FreeNAS on only 512MB of RAM further than I could kick a turd. You realize right that you are running at ont 1/16th the minimum system requirements of 8GB right?

The recommendations assume you'll be using ZFS. I've done virtual machines of FreeNAS before this and I've never given them more than 2 GB -- because my desktop only has 6 GB to start with.

Updated yesterday.
http://imgur.com/a/nhEG2

You can't even run the FreeNAS installer with 1GB of RAM without it crashing. I accidentally tried to do that last night in a VM. Haha.

Yeah, I see it complain whenever I have to reinstall things. I have trouble with the GUI updater not working for me, and have to reinstall from a CD when it borks things.

 

[Knowltey]

Well even for UFS you still need at least 4

 

[cyberjock]

wow.. x86. 9.3 won't even have an x86 release. There's really no need if you think about the fact that ZFS is all that is offered and it requires 8GB of RAM. If you want to use 8GB of RAM you *must* be running 64-bit. No, PAE doesn't work for ZFS. Sorry.

 

[SeaFox]

Well even for UFS you still need at least 4

Why?

If we're not running ZFS we're essentially running plain hard drives now.
It FreeBSD will run in as little as 64 MB of RAM, and we can set up a Wordpress Server in as little as 128 MB, I think we should be able to run FreeNAS in four times that.

wow.. x86. 9.3 won't even have an x86 release. There's really no need if you think about the fact that ZFS is all that is offered and it requires 8GB of RAM. If you want to use 8GB of RAM you *must* be running 64-bit. No, PAE doesn't work for ZFS. Sorry.

Thanks for the info. Wasn't sure if FreeNAS 10 would be the first 64-bit only release. I'll keep that in mind.

I could move to 64-bits pretty easily here now. I have two 64-bit processors laying around at the moment, one's a dual-core Pentium, and the other's a Core2 Duo. Also I have both Micro-ATX and Mini-ITX cases with power supplies I could put it into. I just lack a working motherboard that supports then (both processors are Socket LGA775/800mhz FSB). Oh, and the resulting system would "only" have 2 GB of RAM if I did it, due to what I have on-hand.

 

[Knowltey]

Why?

Because FreeNAS is designed ot have it's operating system loaded into RAM on boot and run from there. (multiple reason, mainly speed as well as error prevention if you have ECC (as you should be on any server)) That takes up just under 2GB of the RAM space (you could technically get away with 2GB, but you're going to want at least SOME headroom) so minimum 3 or 4 gigs if you area planning on running ZFS. The reason for the 8GB recommendation on ZFS is because you really want at least 6GB dedicated to ARC with ZFS, and you're already taking up roughly 2GB of that on the FreeNAS operating system.


Honestly, you should really just be looking into saving up and shelling out for proper hardware. If you watch for a good enough amount of time you can usually catch pretty good deals on all of the parts that you will need. I just purchased a combo to finally upgrade my server to proper ECC hardware a few days ago for just under $300. There are technically even cheaper builds than the one I went with as well if you got the route of the AMD stuff that supports ECC as well.

 

[cyberjock]

Why?

If we're not running ZFS we're essentially running plain hard drives now.
It FreeBSD will run in as little as 64 MB of RAM, and we can set up a Wordpress Server in as little as 128 MB, I think we should be able to run FreeNAS in four times that.

No. FreeNAS is *based* on FreeBSD. It is not FreeBSD though. FreeNAS creates RAMdrives and runs in RAM after bootup. That alone is just over 1GB gone. FreeBSD will run with 64MB of RAM, if you have zero packages running. That's a base install with nothing installed. As soon as you start adding what some would call basic services like moused, ssh, etc and you will find that 64MB of RAM isn't enough.

Do not underestimate our requirements. We didn't put them in lightly. They were set to ensure you don't lose data suddenly due to a kernel panic from an "out of memory" condition.

 

[DannyKlenz]

I have an old ocz vertex ssd with little use on it. Is Freenas configurable to run off that instead of in ram?

 

[cyberjock]

I have an old ocz vertex ssd with little use on it. Is Freenas configurable to run off that instead of in ram?

Feel free to code it in... FreeNAS source code is available at github.com.

Enjoy!

 

[DannyKlenz]

I lack the skill but thought maybe it was configurable. Perhaps you meant to tell me that this isn't an option but somehow got confused by as to what I was asking. Or just wanted to be snarky.

 

[cyberjock]

It is not a configurable feature.

FreeNAS is open source and you are welcome to edit the code, compile, and install it on your system in whatever configuration you want to use.