FreeNAS RAID-5, the Saga Continues…

What a nightmare at this point.  I am having a real hard time getting access back to my RAID-5.  I’ve rebuilt this RAID-5 a half dozen times now.  The issue is when I try to set a mount point back to the rebuilt RAID, I get a message about the “/mnt/bigdisk” (the original mount point of my RAID-5) not being properly dismounted and then FreeNAS panics and we go into a continuous reboot.

So, at this point I’m confident that the data is still intact, but I can’t figure out the process to get back to it.  I’ve moved the 3 RAIDed drives to another system, installed the most recent version of FreeNAS and have tried to access it and I can’t get to it.

So, I’ve downgraded back to an older version of FreeNAS trying to see if that will help, but now there are complaints of wrong disk size: expected vs. real.

Finding the time to deal with it is the hardest part at this point.

I’d certainly appreciate any comments in this area that may be helpful to me and the RAID-5 situation.

Continued trouble with Free NAS

My Free NAS server decided to reboot and guess what?  The annoying truncated device name issue appeared again.  I’m rebuilding the RAID 5 for the 3rd time now.  Once it’s back I will copy all of this data over to the new  Drobo.  Then I will upgrade the Free NAS software and see if things appear any better.   At this point once the RAID 5 is rebuilt and even if I correctly restart the server I get the same “truncated device name” issues.

Then I have to pull drive 0 (or 1 if you’re not an array based programmer) of the RAID 5 and format it with a MS DOS partition so that the NAS server will pick up the drive again.  Then I insert it from the RAID Management interface of the Free NAS software.  Then it rebuilds fine and I can re-mount the mount points.  Don’t reboot because it will go bonkers again!!

More to come…

Free NAS annoyance, again…

Last night there was a general power outage to about 1,000 residents and thankfully all my APC UPSes were acting in good manor and kept my private office NOC running long enough for me to gracefully bring down all the servers. Well, the recently recovered NAS box (powered by Free NAS) was powered off correctly, but upon start up I encountered the NOW annoying “WARNING: device name truncated c9c9c9c9c9c9c9c….” and then we get caught in a reboot loop.

Remember in a previous post of mine I had to basically determine which drive was causing the issue at start-up. I’m now wondering if this is a bug in the Free NAS version I have. I’ll get to the recovery procedures later and report back. I guess I’ll upgrade to a more recent version to see if this has been fixed.

In the meantime I’ve powered off the NAS box (RAID-5) and it awaits intervention.

Drobo ordered!

I’ve ordered my DROBO, it will be here this week. I plan to document the install/setup process here for others to see.
I ordered it from newegg.com and it has a $50 rebate with it. I also ordered the share module.
stay tuned…

FreeNAS RAID-5 shines!

Talk about scary… Walked into the server room and saw horrible messages screaming by on my FreeNAS console stating WARNING: device name truncated (c9c9c9c9c9c9c9c9c9c9c9c9a9a9a9a9a9a9)

Checked the network for all NFS / AFP / SMB connectivity and all was GONE!! The system just get rebooting over and over. Well, Free NAS really shined through on this one.

Before I get to the solution, here’s my setup. 2U server w/ 1 bootable IDE drive and 3 x 400 GB IDE drives for the RAID-5. OK, enough already, here’s the solution.

I had to first determine which HD was causing the issue, so upon a reboot I paused the boot-up screen while booting in logging mode. I used the brute force method, but it worked. Brute force method goes something like this….

RAID-5 drive 3, swap with a new 400 GB drive, reboot FreeNAS… still had the issue… plug back in old drive.

RAID-5 drive 2, swap with the new drive, reboot FreeNAS… still had the issue… plug back in old drive.

RAID-5 drive 1, swap with the new drive, reboot FreeNAS… guess what, FreeNAS picked up and started booting. So, drive 1 went bad.

Once you have a booting system, log into the GUI and do an insert of the new drive into the RAID-5 and that initiates a rebuild of the RAID-5. Yes even an 800 GB RAID-5 takes all night to rebuild.

Once you rebuild, you can remount the RAID-5 and all should be fine.

It worked well for me and my faith continues strong in FreeNAS.

FreeNAS (low-cost NAS backup solution)

Howdy!
Well I’ve been using FreeNAS for a month or two now and it’s been perfect thus far. Up to this point I’ve been using it with CIFS, NFS, and AFP enabled on a single 60GB drive. Yesterday I installed 3 400GB drives and configured and built a RAID5 and that went very well. I plan on putting it to some serious testing with *nix scripts running to copy data to and from the RAID. I’ll keep you posted with any relevant updates. If you want to test out FreeNAS yourself, visit: http://www.freenas.org. Or, if you need some help setting it up hire us, capnet consulting! Enjoy!