FreeNAS Timeout Errors on boot and iSCSI failure

StarMonkey · Mar 11, 2011

Hi, I've asked this question on the FreeNAS forum but have had no replies and when I've been browsing Google I've had a lot of help from here so I thought I'd put out a cry for help!

I'm having a lot of problems with FreeNAS on an HP Microserver and 4 x 2TB Samsung F4EG. I'm just trying to create an encrypted RAID5 volume which will be attached via iSCSI to a Windows virtual machine.

I've managed to create a RAID5 array and encrypt, format and mount it and I could see it via iSCSI after the first reboot. Now when I reboot the server it takes a long time for AHCI to detect the drives. Once they have been detected I get a lot of "timeout error" messages.

If I then reboot the server again everything boots quickly and there are no errors but iSCSI no longer works (clients can't see the iSCSI, FreeNAS has all settings enabled) and I know next time I reboot I'll get the timeout errors back again.

I've attached images of the messages and if anyone needs logs to help let me know how to extract them (I'm a Windows guy).

Thanks for any help!

Hardware:

HP Microserver
FreeNAS 0.7.2 (revision 5543) amd64-embedded
HP ProLiant AMD Athlon(tm) II Neo N36L Dual-Core Processor 896MiB RAM
4 x 2TB Samsung F4EG

Image1 - Timeout errors

Image2 - Timeout errors cont.

Image3 - Boot with no timeouts but LUN error

Image4 - What happens with a boot timeout if I try to reboot the machine

sub.mesa · Mar 11, 2011

I'm missing:
- the controller type you connected these disks to
- how you setup the disks (manually or using FreeNAS GUI?)
- how you encrypted it
- the output of: graid5 status and graid5 list
- smart output of your disks (smartctl -A /dev/..)

I should also note that geom_raid5 is a traditional RAID5 layer with write-back, and thus potentially dangerous. This type of RAID could easily cause corruption in some cases. Choosing ZFS over geom_raid5 would mean far more protection to your data.

StarMonkey · Mar 11, 2011

Hi, thanks for the quick response.

The disks are connected to a built in SAS backplane which connects to the motherboard, it's based on the AMD RS785E/SB820M chipset.

Disks were setup through the GUI.

Encrypted via the GUI also using this guide: http://freenas.org/documentation:setup_and_user_guide:disk_encryption

Where do I find outputs of the graid5 status and graid5 list? The basic status is 4 disks online and COMPLETE CALM.

All the drives are reporting no SMART errors but I can upload a log if you can tell me where/how to run smartctl -A /dev/

I'm using Soft Raid5 rather than ZFS as I'd read that adding extra disks in the future was tricky on ZFS - let me know if I'm incorrect, theres no data on the array yet so I'm open to changing.

sub.mesa · Mar 11, 2011

Well geom_raid5 does not support adding disks at all, so that wouldn't get you very far. ZFS is simply superior to geom_raid5, but since you have so little RAM you may not run ZFS at full performance.

The commands can be run on command line; there should be an option for CLI prompt somewhere. What version of FreeNAS are you using by the way?

The SMART log would be very important. You should run this command for every disk:
smartctl -A <DISKNAME>

You have to replace <DISKNAME> with the name of your disk; like /dev/ad0. If you post the graid5 status output this would be alot easier since you know the names of your disks.

The SAS backplane, is it 'dumb' meaning that it doesn't interfere with the signal sent by the motherboard controller? Or does it have its own logic and interfere with the signal sent? Can you show me pictures? I need to understand if you connected a normal disk to a normal controller, or that some special logic/hardware is in between that could interfere and cause timeouts.

tonyb · Mar 11, 2011

ZFS is a nice file system, but I wouldn't use it on FreeNAS .72. I tried it, and ran into huge performance problems (30 MB/s writes, 10 MB/s reads. That's not reversed, reads were slower than writes).

sub.mesa · Mar 11, 2011

That 's just because FreeNAS used badly aligned partitions starting at 63 offset. Right now they have a 4K optimized partition option if i'm not mistaken.

ZFS isn't that well integrated in FreeNAS, especially the older releases. But it's alot safer than geom RAID5 with RAM writeback and UFS filesystem. That is basically no protection and if something goes wrong, your data is in jeopardy.

StarMonkey · Mar 11, 2011

I'll post the logs in an hour or so when I get home from work.

I'm using FreeNAS 0.7.2 (revision 5543) amd64-embedded. I don't mind getting an extra 1gb stick of RAM if that'll remove any RAM performance related issues with ZFS.

The array is going to be used for file/folder/image based backup and restore so reasonably quick reads and writes are required but not real time video type I/O or anything like that.

I think the backplanes dumb, the full server specs including diagrams are here:
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13716_na/13716_na.HTML

FreeNAS does have 4K optimized partitions, I'm using them with UFS.

StarMonkey · Mar 11, 2011

Logs:

Code:

$ smartctl -A /dev/ad4
smartctl 5.40 2010-10-16 r3189 [FreeBSD 7.3-RELEASE-p3 amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   100   100   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  2 Throughput_Performance  0x0026   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0023   067   067   025    Pre-fail  Always       -       10097
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       226
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   252   252   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   252   252   051    Old_age   Always       -       0
  8 Seek_Time_Performance   0x0024   252   252   015    Old_age   Offline      -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       15
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   252   252   051    Old_age   Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       13
181 Program_Fail_Cnt_Total  0x0022   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       2365
191 G-Sense_Error_Rate      0x0022   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0022   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0002   064   064   000    Old_age   Always       -       21 (Min/Max 17/31)
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x003a   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   252   252   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0036   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x002a   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
223 Load_Retry_Count        0x0032   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
225 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       226

Code:

$ smartctl -A /dev/ad6
smartctl 5.40 2010-10-16 r3189 [FreeBSD 7.3-RELEASE-p3 amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   100   100   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  2 Throughput_Performance  0x0026   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0023   084   067   025    Pre-fail  Always       -       5133
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       247
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   252   252   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   252   252   051    Old_age   Always       -       0
  8 Seek_Time_Performance   0x0024   252   252   015    Old_age   Offline      -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       15
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   252   252   051    Old_age   Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       12
181 Program_Fail_Cnt_Total  0x0022   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       2376
191 G-Sense_Error_Rate      0x0022   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0022   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0002   064   064   000    Old_age   Always       -       21 (Min/Max 17/32)
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x003a   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   252   252   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0036   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x002a   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
223 Load_Retry_Count        0x0032   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
225 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       247

Code:

$ smartctl -A /dev/ad8
smartctl 5.40 2010-10-16 r3189 [FreeBSD 7.3-RELEASE-p3 amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   100   100   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       1
  2 Throughput_Performance  0x0026   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0023   067   066   025    Pre-fail  Always       -       10262
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       208
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   252   252   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   252   252   051    Old_age   Always       -       0
  8 Seek_Time_Performance   0x0024   252   252   015    Old_age   Offline      -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       16
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   252   252   051    Old_age   Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       13
181 Program_Fail_Cnt_Total  0x0022   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       2393
191 G-Sense_Error_Rate      0x0022   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0022   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0002   064   064   000    Old_age   Always       -       21 (Min/Max 17/32)
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x003a   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   252   252   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0036   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x002a   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
223 Load_Retry_Count        0x0032   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
225 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       208

Code:

$ smartctl -A /dev/ad10
smartctl 5.40 2010-10-16 r3189 [FreeBSD 7.3-RELEASE-p3 amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   100   100   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  2 Throughput_Performance  0x0026   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0023   067   067   025    Pre-fail  Always       -       10115
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       220
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   252   252   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   252   252   051    Old_age   Always       -       0
  8 Seek_Time_Performance   0x0024   252   252   015    Old_age   Offline      -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       15
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   252   252   051    Old_age   Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       13
181 Program_Fail_Cnt_Total  0x0022   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       2399
191 G-Sense_Error_Rate      0x0022   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0022   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0002   064   064   000    Old_age   Always       -       21 (Min/Max 17/32)
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x003a   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   252   252   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0036   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x002a   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
223 Load_Retry_Count        0x0032   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
225 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       220

Code:

Software RAID information and status

Geom name: DISKPOOL1
State: COMPLETE CALM
Status: Total=4, Online=4
Type: AUTOMATIC
Pending: (wqp 0 // 0)
Stripesize: 131072
MemUse: 0 (msl 0)
Newest: -1
ID: 2817862866
Providers:
1. Name: raid5/DISKPOOL1
   Mediasize: 6001196531712 (5.5T)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Mode: r1w1e1
Consumers:
1. Name: ad10
   Mediasize: 2000398934016 (1.8T)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Mode: r2w2e2
   DiskNo: 3
   Error: No
2. Name: ad8
   Mediasize: 2000398934016 (1.8T)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Mode: r2w2e2
   DiskNo: 2
   Error: No
3. Name: ad6
   Mediasize: 2000398934016 (1.8T)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Mode: r2w2e2
   DiskNo: 1
   Error: No
4. Name: ad4
   Mediasize: 2000398934016 (1.8T)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Mode: r2w2e2
   DiskNo: 0
   Error: No

sub.mesa · Mar 11, 2011

Your logs look fine; no idea why you got timeouts.

I do have problems with you using an old FreeBSD 7.x release with UFS and geom_raid5 though; such a setup is not very portable and not very reliable. Switching to FreeBSD 8 platform with ZFS would give you a much more reliable storage system, more portable (to solaris-based platform) and probably also higher performance.

You could either opt for one of many Solaris-based platforms, or when looking at FreeBSD platform you have FreeNAS 0.8RC3 and ZFSguru with FreeBSD 8.2 releases. FreeNAS 0.8 lacks certain functionality from previous releases i believe, so check carefully if it can do what you want. If you choose that option, you could migrate to ZFSguru or Solaris derivative any day you want, which is good to have plenty of 'escape routes'.

If you do opt for the ZFS route, consider putting one 4GiB DDR3 module in the box, or even 2x 4GiB. I would not buy 2GB modules since that would cap the maximum memory you could install. According to your URL, it can hold max 8GiB with 2 sticks; so 4GiB per stick. Considering DDR3 memory is quite cheap, personally i would opt for 2x4GiB, but 1x4GiB for a low-profile ZFS server is acceptable too.

lightp2 · Mar 11, 2011

Dear OP,

HP Micro Server is running on AMD 785E chipset. The latest BIOS is 2011-1-17 (Feb 28,2011)

I am reading the FreeBSD ahci driver page. I am also discovering new information

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?...=ahci&manpath=FreeBSD+7.0-current&format=html

It is written in the FreeBSD man page that ahci driver official appears on 8.0. FreeNAS Legacy is based on FreeBSD 7.x. It is also written on development note that there are codes committed to workaround SB600/SB700 PMP probe related bug.

I am learning on this part as well. However I am not FreeBSD expert so it is better to let sub.mesa or other people help you out on this part (maybe FreeNAS 0.7x has custom backport kernel support??, not-sure). FreeNAS 8.0 (current RC) is however running on FreeBSD 8.x kernel so I guess it should have better AHCI support.

If you consider other options, you can probably try sub.mesa FreeBSD-based NAS GUI project, or else others can probably give opinion as well depending on your intention.

Officially Windows 2008/2008R2 and RedHat-Enterprise-Linux 5 are supported. (CentOS 5/Scientic Linux 5 likely will work as well) However, if you need a nice NAS Web-GUI screen which FreeNAS provides, then likely need to consider the current two active topics in this forum ZFSGuru or NAPP-IT.

Since RHEL5 is supported, Fedora Linux will run as well I guess, though no beautiful NAS web-GUI.

StarMonkey · Mar 11, 2011

Thanks for the help guys.

I'm probably going to look at a ZFS based solution then, RAM is cheap but I was hoping to keep this a low power/component build. I am on the latest HP Microserver BIOS, first thing I tried!

Is 8GB of RAM really required for a simple ZFS NAS box? Thats as much as I have in my VMware box!

One last thing I don't understand, you say I'm using an old version of FreeNAS - I thought I was using the latest stable release?

All I can find 8 wise are release candidates and betas, no stable releases?

sub.mesa · Mar 11, 2011

DDR3 is pretty low power already, and if you pick normal 1.5V modules they should not consume much power at all. You could put in one stick of 4GiB, or two of them for a total of 8GiB.

Yes that might sound excessive, but it would get most performance out of the hardware you have. Plus, when DDR3 prices rise again and you pay twice the amount per GB as currently is the case (this has happened before) then you can pull out one 4GiB stick and put it in one of your own machines if you like.

8GiB would be ideal from a performance standpoint. It would allow very decent performance out of the very moderate CPU and other hardware present. But it's not strictly required it runs fine with 4GiB too, but a tad lower performance. Since 8GiB with 2 sticks can be had for $60 these days, this would make an excellent investment in a ZFS server. Note that regular RAID can do fine with much less RAM so 1GiB would be fine for normal FreeNAS software RAID. But ZFS is quite different in this regard; it has a healthy appetite for random access memory.

0.7.x is the latest stable version of FreeNAS; the new 0.8 is a complete rewrite and is not declared stable yet, just like my project, some functions that are expected to work are either not implemented yet or don't work that well compared to the previous 0.7.x versions. So that's what i recommend you to try out several FreeNAS/ZFSguru/NexentaStor releases and try out your options what feels best to you. Write down a list of what it need to be able to do, and write for each project what are the pro's and cons. That would allow you to make a good determination of your best option.

Cheers!

StarMonkey · Mar 11, 2011

$60 for 8GB DDR3! I wish the prices were that good in the UK - $320 for 2 x 4GB DDR3 here

I'll try FreeNAS 8.0 RC2 (the latest build I can find) tomorrow and see if that works any better, I only need RAID5, encryption and iSCSI so as long as those are there thats all that matters.

sub.mesa · Mar 11, 2011

Are you looking at normal Kingston/Transcend ValueRAM or branded memory? 320 dollar seems overly excessive; you must be able to find that much cheaper!

I prefer to look at normal OEM memory without any heatspreaders; often meaning they can hide older chips at higher voltages underneath.

Regarding encryption; do you only want partial encryption or everything? If you encrypt everything, chances are the simple AMD cpu cannot encrypt fast enough to keep up with gigabit speeds. If you only want to encrypt part of it, for example an encrypted zvol shared with iscsi, then you should be fine.

If you want to encrypt all your data, there could be another way. When using RAID-Z you can encrypt only two devices; meaning that without either of them you cannot access the pool and its data. This obviously is only meant to detter non-technical people from accessing the pool, not a serious cracker.

StarMonkey · Mar 11, 2011

This is for the cheapest sticks of ecc unbuffered memory. Crucial 4gb 10600.

I want to encrypt the entire array. It's going to be an array of backups of encrypted servers, desktops and laptops so the backup needs to be encrypted too.

Having looked at most of the products tonight and after loading most of them up in esxi I think the only product that has raid5/zfs, encryption, iscsi and runs off a USB stick is freenas 7.x. Freenas 8 has a dodgy zfs implementation looking at the forums and doesn't feature encryption yet (though the new GUI is pretty!).

It seems so simple what I want, massively frustrating!

sub.mesa · Mar 11, 2011

Both FreeNAS 0.8 and ZFSguru have GELI encryption. You could attach and detach GELI manually on the command line on either of them, though not via the GUI yet.

Not sure what your best option would be, but if you are going to encrypt everything, you may just stick to 4GiB ram instead of 8GiB since encryption would cap your speeds anyway. Keep in mind your CPU is not that powerful, although AES encryption is something AMD cpus do quite a bit better than Intel CPUs. Still i hope you don't have too high expections of performance you can achieve.

Do you need AES-128 or 256?

StarMonkey · Mar 12, 2011

The encryption is just to stop anyone who might steal the box having casual access to the data.

I don't need huge I/O as it's just going to be writing backups each night.

StarMonkey · Mar 12, 2011

Thanks for the help so far.

I've installed FreeNAS 8 RC2 and I've created a ZFS RAIDZ Pool and then a dataset under this.

Now I'm trying to figure out how to setup iSCSI and encryption. I can't find any help online for FreeNAS 8. Can you give me or point me to a step by step guide to setup iSCSI and then the encryption?

I thought I'd set up everything correctly for the iSCSI connection but I can't connect so obviously I haven't!

StarMonkey · Mar 12, 2011

Right got the iSCSI working - top tip, FreeNAS 8 has a bug where it doesn't understand 0 as auto size for an extent, just gives a LUN0 Auto Size error in the console (but doesn't report any problems in the web GUI), you also need to set all the iSCSI settings up before turning on the iSCSI service otherwise you get no errors and it just silently fails.

So my only question now is how to get this ZFS volume encrypted?

StarMonkey · Mar 12, 2011

Spoke too soon on being sorted

I've connected to my Dataset over iSCSI from a Windows 2008 server and the Dataset appears in Disk Management but when I try to Initilize the drive and bring it online the option is greyed out. When I try and Offline the disk or anything else I get the message the "Media is Write Protected".

Any clues what the problem is here? I've tried all the permission options I can see in FreeNAS.

StarMonkey · Mar 12, 2011

Well I'm mainly posting now for anyone who's trying to do the same as me.

Fixed the Read Only problem, I had to attach the disk to a Windows 7 box with iSCSI, convert it to a GPT disk and bring it online. I then disconnected Windows 7 iSCSI and reconnected the iSCSI on the 2008 box. This time the disk said Read Only in the Disk Management screen so I offlined the disk and brought it back online to clear the Read Only attribute.

Now I'm back to my original question of how to encrypt the ZFS volume.

sub.mesa · Mar 14, 2011

Encryption is not yet integrated in FreeNAS 0.8 i believe. But you could test by doing it manually

1. format your disks (make them blank)
2. apply encryption layer to your disks:
geli init /dev/ad0
3. attach the device (open encrypted container)
geli attach /dev/ad0
4. now you have /dev/ad0.eli device, you can create a pool on it:
zpool create tank /dev/ad0.eli
5. Now done you can export/unmount the pool and detach the encrypted provider:
zpool export tank
geli detach /dev/ad0

As you can see it can be done from CLI, but having a GUI (web-interface) for this would be very helpful.

FreeNAS Timeout Errors on boot and iSCSI failure

n00b

2[H]4U

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Limp Gawd

2[H]4U

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2[H]4U

Gawd

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2[H]4U

n00b

2[H]4U

n00b

2[H]4U

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2[H]4U