New build (old hardware) Copying to volume issues.

[tophee]

Hi everyone,

This is my first post and I'm having trouble getting with my new build.

My FreeNAS box is a mix of new and old, here are the specs:

Intel P4 dual core
Abit AW8 mobo
6Gb ram DDR2
Some rubbish gforce graphics card
2x Samsung HD204UI 2Tb drives

I checked the SHA256 hash on the iso on 8.0.2 and installed to a 2Gb thumb drive and set up the volumes correctly. Went with a mirrored ZFS set up.

Set up datasets and CIFS. Tried to copy files from windows lappy to freeNAS and the thing fell over. The GUI didn't, but all copying stopped. After a reboot, tried again at a different point same thing happened taking the GUI with it. Third attempt I made sure a monitor was plugged in.

Here is what was shown on screen when it went down.
What has copied over is definately there, but this is a real show stopper.

If anyone can shed any light on to what I can do to get this to work, I'd be grateful.

Cheers
Tophee

 

[Durkatlon]

This is running the i386 build I assume? If it is, having 6GB of RAM sounds nice but is pointless: ZFS consumes kernel memory and with this build it will at most allocate 1GB of the RAM to the kernel.

Your problem is most likely due to kernel tuning parameters. I would recommend setting kmem_size and kmem_size_max to 512MB and setting arc_max to 10MB or so. You do this by modifying /boot/loader.conf. There are instructions all over this forum.

 

[tophee]

Thanks for replying Durkation. I'm using the amd64 image. I have seen some things about kernel tuning, but it seemed quite daunting as I'm not really sure what I'd be doing. I shall have to do some reading before I start that. Any other thoughts?

 

[ProtoSD]

It actually looks like it might be a problem with the driver for your NIC. Do you have another NIC you can try and disable the existing one?

bge0: discard frame w/o packet header

But I'm curious what the Solaris messages above that say.

 

[Durkatlon]

If it's the amd64 build, the kernel tuning doesn't really apply, and your memory should be used. Have you looked at the "Reporting" page in the GUI while you're copying to see if the swap gets used up? I'm with proto that you might need to try some hardware changes to see if you can make the problem go away.

 

[tophee]

Hi protosd
As it happens, I do have a spare pcie add-in I can use for nic. I can try that and report back.

Durkatlon, I'll keep an eye on the reporting page when I next try to populate the NAS. If any other error messages appear I will report back (hopefully not tho.)

 

[tophee]

Right, I have had another go. Due to helping out a relative with their computer, I ended up with better matched memory (I was using 4Gb 6400 and 2Gb 5400 ram running at the slower speed- it's now all 6400) and a larger psu. However (so far) seems to be copying things over well. I suspect the memory has solved it, but the greater amount of available juice can't be a bad thing.

Thanks for your help guys.