Web GUI broken on Windows 8?

[lemi667]

Ok, so I have FreeNAS box running in an ESXi hypervisor. We are in an office with rougly 25 computers using NAS to store documents and backups. We also have a few light Ubuntu servers running inside same hypervisor to provide FTP and web services to our partners and customers, these are getting just a few hits a day, so they do not need much resources.

The whole setup is running on the following hardware:

CPU: 8 core AMD FX-8120 3.1GHz
MB: Gigabyte GA-990FXA-D3
RAM: 20GB DDR3 (8GB reserved for NAS)
HDD: two Seagate Barracuda Green 2000GB in RAID1 for storage, one Western Digital Caviar Black 250GB for OS installations
NETWORK: six Realtek 8168 based cards, one motherboard integrated Realtek RTL8111E

Every virtual machine is getting it's own network card via PCI device pass-trough and there is one adapter exclusively reserved for ESXi management.

So far we are using FreeNAS-8.3.0-RELEASE-p1-x64 (r12825) and it works like a charm.

Now I decided to upgrade to FreeNAS-9.1.1-RELEASE-x64 (a752d35) primarily because it supports encryption, so I can have a peace of mind if the thing ever gets stolen. I installed a fresh copy for testing purposes. Here is where things get a little strange.

I use Lenovo ThinkPad E530 running Windows8 64-bit.
First of all I've spent 2 hours trying to figure out what is wrong with web GUI, as it didn't show all interface elements, Googling things like "Free NAS web GUI problems" - you get the idea.

Here is how the interface looks like on Firefox 23.0.1 (latest version at the time of this writing), note that there are no Volumes listed.

Here it is in IE 10, note that Volumes are here, but there is no menu on the left.

Using Chrome, I get similar problems...

Frustrated I was about to give up, when I connected once more, this time from my home computer (via VPN) running Ubuntu 12.04 and using the very same Firefox 23.0.1 and the thing just worked. I tried connecting from several other office computers running Windows XP, Windows 7, Mac OSX 10.8 and every single one works just fine using Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

The next step was to disable firewalls, running in safe mode with networking, disabling antivirus software, using external monitors in different resolution modes and nothing works. Using my Windows 8 laptop is just not possible.

I don't feel like spending 120€ on a Windows8 installation just to figure out is this problem Windows 8 specific, and installing Ubuntu on my laptop can mess up my partitions and recovery options, so that is out of question.

So to sum up, it turns out that this problem may be Windows8 specific. Did anyone else have any similar experiences with this, or any other version of FreeNAS?

 

[cyberjock]

There's been random issues with different browsers. Normally wiping cache/cookies/history clears the problems. Other times they are browser-specific(IE is a major problem for many people).

I don't use Windows much anymore, so I don't deal with the problems people have. Plus, I have disabled the disk cache for Firefox, and I've never had a single problem with FreeNAS(or any other website).

 

[ThePhantom0114]

I'm glad I'm not the only one with this problem...I have been searching and searching trying to figure this out, finally found your post. I have Windows 8 as well, and no browser seems to work correctly. In Chrome, all I was missing was the lower menu bar on the storage page (I could still see the volumes). I thought I was going crazy when I tried to figure out how to replace a drive, everyone kept saying to click Volume Status, and well, I dont have that! Finally I tested it from a Win 7 VM after I saw this, and sure enough, same version of Chrome in Win 7 works fine, the lower menu bar shows up, and I can easily replace drives now. Thanks for bringing this up! Is there any chance of this getting fixed? The main PC I use is Win 8, so not being able to manage FreeNAS on it is a big bummer...

 

[pirateghost]

I don't understand. I manage a couple of freenas boxes from my windows 8 machine, using Firefox and chrome.

I don't see these issues so it has to be something with your setup, and just blaming windows 8 doesn't make sense.

 

[ThePhantom0114]

Well I did try Firefox (I dont normally use it, but since its so recommended on here, thought why not) and it seems to work on Windows 8, so at least I can manage it from my main box, just find it dumb I have to use a special browser just for FreeNAS. However, Chrome does not, when the exact same version, with the exact same addons, like the OP said, does not work on Windows 8 and works fine on Win 7...so multiple people with different setups have the same problem with FreeNAS...

 

[pirateghost]

Simply blaming the Windows version is quite silly. This is my second Windows 8 install that I have used to manage my FreeNAS boxes, and I have had zero issues with either of my installs. Are you running your browsers in desktop mode or 'metro' mode?

The browser doesnt care what version of an OS its running on...

 

[ThePhantom0114]

Desktop mode. I don't touch metro. I'll try a Win 8 VM later and check to see how it does. I'm just saying there is a problem, I'm not sure what is causing it, but the same browser on 2 different OSes have different results. I'll see what the VM does, I'm about to install it fresh real quick because now I am curious.

 

[lemi667]

Ok, so I've downloaded Windows 8 trial a while back, and I installed it in VirtualBox, and I still have the same problem... Then I installed it in the bare metal hypervisor to eliminate that the host could be the source of the problem and still nothing. Call me crazy, but every other OS works just fine in any of these scenarios. So I ended up using Ubuntu in my VirtualBox...

 

[ThePhantom0114]

Alright, completely fresh install of Windows 8, completely fresh install of Chrome, didn't log in, so no plugins, no custom settings, nothing, bone stock. Still doesn't work. Since it can't be Windows 8, would you please explain what the problem is?

Edit: Alright, now I'm really confused...it started working on its own, but it didn't work when I first pulled it up...after it sat on the page for 5 minutes or so, I tried to click the volume again on the storage page and the menu came up this time. So confused...haha. Well, I have no idea...I'll keep tinkering with it though because I would like to get Chrome working on my main machine.

 

[cyberjock]

Correlation ≠ causation.

 

[tslewis99]

I'm having the same issue with my Windows 8 Surface Pro but not my Dell Latitude E6520 running the same version of Windows 8. I wonder if it is related to screen resolution......

Tim

FYI, using Firefox 24 on both systems.

 

[Diogenes Platterwort]

While the fact that some users are not having problems may suggest that there's a problem with one particular user's setup, it's simply flat-out wrong to claim that it can't possibly be related to Windows 8.

Win8 is IE10 only. IE10 is well-known to cause extensive problems for many users.
Firefox browser tries to honor Internet Options security settings, so an IE change can cause changes in Firefox behavior.
Group Policies may be applied differently or not at all.

There are MANY possible interactions between operating systems and software. Simply denying that the OS can have any role is just as silly as claiming that the OS is the only possible cause.

 

[Whattteva]

I use Win8 and all the other browsers work fine for the web GUI.
Even IE10 seems like it mostly works aside from the tree menu on the left bar.

 

[cyberjock]

There are MANY possible interactions between operating systems and software. Simply denying that the OS can have any role is just as silly as claiming that the OS is the only possible cause.

You are correct, and most of us more experienced users recognize this. The problem is that most people use the same browser on all of their machines(I use Firefox exclusively). So when one desktop works and another doesn't you immediately look for the differences. The most obvious of them all is the OS. So the simplest solution for someone that only see's the webGUI as broken is "must be the OS". That's a good place to start, but you have a lot of homework to do before you conclusively prove that the OS itself is the cause. Instead of it being the starting point its immediately jumped on as the defining problem.

There's been lots of these threads over the last 18+ months I've been here. Most of them are fixed with a cache clearing. Some really are browser specific and 99% of IE10 users had(have?) a problem with the webGUI. But then you get the occasional chrome/firefox/insert-your-favorite-here. I've never had a problem with Firefox with any version released. But, I also don't have a disk cache. I disabled it with browser.cache.disk.enable=false for anyone interested and I've never had any ill effects from it. Saves me a little SSD life and my internet pipe is fast enough that I don't notice any slowdown on opening pages that might have otherwise been cached.

 

[Idiotzoo]

I encounter this problem on my Windows 8 pro box in the office. No browsers work properly. I've tried Chrome, Firefox, IE and Safari so far and none of them actually display the Freenas 9 gui correctly. This affects other websites from time to time, but I generally just work round it by using a different browser. My Windows 8 Laptop is fine. Both are 64bit but the laptop isn't pro. I'm pretty sure there's something odd going on at the OS level, but it doesn't seem to be a problem that's universal, which is also weird.

 

[cyberjock]

Could it be that your installation of FreeNAS is corrupted and the http server service(I forget which one.. I'm sleepy) is not working properly as a result?

 

[Idiotzoo]

In my case, no. Use a different computer and all is well so the problem isn't with Freenas, it's with some windows 8 systems. I have this issue with a few other sites, usually web UIs it's just that Freenas is unusual in presenting the issue on all the browsers I've tried.

 

[Idiotzoo]

I ended up using Chrome on my iPad. Worked perfectly.

 

[John Oo.]

The problem with GUI when you're on Windows 8 I've found is because of Touchscreen Compatibility. I don't know if it's pasted in the UserAgent or something but if you have a touchscreen and are not using it in the FreeNAS 9s GUI it won't allow you to hit buttons and other random things. I may be crazy but if you test it by using Chromes Developer console and the Sensor Emulation to enable Touchscreen emulation you should be able to click buttons and whatnot on the page again.

 

[rm-r]

i get this too between phone, laptop and tablet - seems to be worse if i have multiple open at once eg laptop is logged in and then i also login on tablet etc