These are my bugs, PLEASE HELP I am pure Noob

[dporzio]

I put together the following FreeNas box:

HP Pavillion 1120n
ASUS PTGD-LA motherboard
Pentium4 519 (P) 3.06 GHz Processor
4 x 1GB Kingston PC 4200 RAM
2 TB HDD
300GB HDD for FreeNas 8.2 OS (when I get my bugs straightened out I am going to a 2GB CF plugged into the IDE)
Realtek RTL8101L LAN PHY (which does not get recognized and gets assigned IP of 0.0.0.0 by router)
AirLink USB 2.0 ethernet adaptor (which is recognized by the router and gest assigned an IP address that I can access the FreeNas Web GUI with)
Roswell 150M Wireless Lite-N Router RNX-N150RT

The first problem I have come across is the onboard NIC does not get an IP address from the router. While the OS is booting and it is making a DHCP client request for the onboard NIC it does not seem to see the router or vice versa. Essentially no connection to the networl When it is finished the assigned IP is 0.0.0.0 and there is no connection. If I plug the network cable into my USB ethernet adaptor, I can get an IP address and then use the WEBGUI to access the Freenas through it's assigned IP and I can set up my volumes, shares and services (2TB HDD volume, windows share and CIFS service). If I try to manually setup a network interface to the onboard NIC through the GUI it still does not work. Is this an NIC compatability issue? I do not understand this as I thought it was only a matter of plugging in the LAN cable to the onboard NIC to get connected to your network. I had this same problem with a Dell Dimensions 8200 I had set up with the previous version of FreeNas (0.7x) and I could only connect through this USB adaptor that I just happened to have lying around. I did not have the following problem with that box though.

The second problem is the loss of the network connection to the FreeNas box when transferring large files. I posted about this previously. It is fine with smaller files < 2GB or when sending the files to the FreeNas from the PC. But transfers from the FreeNAS to my PC (W7 PC) the connection drops and I get a Network Error Message that there is a problem accessing the network drive and to try again or cancel. The file transfer is effectively lost at that time. I can not ping the FreeNAS, it does not show up in my network resources and the mapped network drive is disconnected. I am at a loss to figure this out. I tried putting in more RAM (512MB uogrdaed to 4GB!) and it did not resolve the issue. The transfer times went from hours to minutes though but it can never complete the task.

One last question. I just installed a CF to IDE adaptor and I want to load the OS on the 2 GB CF to free up the 300GB HDD I am using for the OS presently. Can I do that without losing the files that are on the 2TB drive. I am leary to try because the HDD has some videos of my kids on it and I am hosed if I lose those files, they are are the only copies.

I need someone to point me in the right direction. I can change BIOS settings etc.. if someone tells me what to do.

Porzio

 

[Tekkie]

Regarding your last question, if that's your only copy you are hosed no matter what, RAID etc. is not a replacement for backups! If those movies are so precious then make backups of them ASAP! Burn on to a DVD, use something like Amazon S3 to store them on the net anything but what you have now.

Regarding the network problem what happens if you 'fix' your network speed to be 100Mbit rather than 1Gbit which I assume it is now? Some onboard NIC are notoriously poor when it comes to gigi-networking.

 

[sedmonds]

Regarding your network issue- I had the same problems with onboard NICs, which traditionally are not particularly quick either. I installed a PCIe Intel card and now enjoy much faster speeds with no network dropouts.
You should be able to import your volume from your 2TB drive with a new installation on the CF card assuming your volume was created using FreeNAS 8 previously.

 

[dporzio]

I have done nothing to the speed of my NIC, so i assume it is at 100MB/s as a default. How can I determine it's speed, through the BIOS I assume. Regarding replacing the NIC card. I have some PCI ethernet cards lying around. If I install it, won't I need the drivers for it to run or will the FreeNAS 8.2 recognize the card after I install it and reboot. In regards to backup that was the whole idea here. I put theses files on the NAS I had no idea it would be so hard to get them back off. I plan on loading the FreeNAs 8.2 on the CF and importing the 2TB volume, which was originally added with FreeNAS 8.2. Then installing one of the ethernet PCI cards I have and see what happens.

Thanks

 

[dporzio]

I just had a thought is the reason the onboard NIC no operating because it lacks the drivers?

 

[William Grzybowski]

I just had a thought is the reason the onboard NIC no operating because it lacks the drivers?

Probably, or faulty drivers (no support for your NIC)

 

[dporzio]

Bugs Squashed!

Success!. The problem was the onboard NIC interface. I stuck a PCI NIC card in and Viola! Reboot, set the network interface to the new NIC, IP address assigned by the router via dhcp, freeNAS box on the network with accessible shares. All my files there. Transferred them over to the PC last night without a drop in connection. So the Realtek onboard NIC is not compatible with FreeNAS 8.2. The USB to ethernet adaptor works but drops the connection with large file transfers. I appreciate everyone's input and suggestions. I could not have worked through this without all of your help. Now, who can a suggest a good freeware backup program to run on my PC to backup everything to the FreeNAS box? What is the benefit of setting up a RAID array?

dporzio

 

[BakCompat]

Realtek nic driver was updated in one of the 8.0.1 betas. It sounds like you are running 8.0.1 beta2, not actually 8.2... I want to say that the Realtek update was in beta3, but I don't remember for sure. You'd need to check the changelog to verify. beta4 is the current one which it seems most people with Realtek nics are using, expressly for that purpose. A different nic would probably be preferable, particularly a PCIe model, but a PCI model as you have chosen would work as well, as long as the chipset is well supported by BSD. General sentiment of Realtek nic owners is that 8.0.1 beta4 seems to solve network issues for them.

I've gotta echo Tekkie here. RAID is not a backup! RAID is for high availability... in case a drive fails, you hot swap it to keep everything online without downtime. Please do not count on RAID as a backup for your data. If your data has any import to you, then please back it up elsewhere... dvd, standalone hard drive, another NAS, etc.

 

[dporzio]

Older PC, no PCIe slots. Feeling good just having it up and running and will probably leave well enough alone.
Thanks for the info.