So I have had this FreeNAS machine for nearly a decade, and for the majority of its life since I set it up, it has been mostly “turn it on and just works”.
But all of a sudden, over a year ago the power went out and afterwards I was no longer able to connect to it over the network. The system itself was fine, everything still working and detected in BIOS, it just wouldn’t be accessible in Windows. I did some blind tinkering since I don’t know what I’m doing but was able to fix it at least temporarily. A week later the power went out again and I have never been able to reconnect.
But that’s not even the most pressing issue at this point. Now I can no longer even get FreeNAS to boot up properly. It keeps hanging on these “Trap” messages.
I think I recall seeing Trap 1, Trap 5, and Trap 12, I believe. No idea what they mean, and when I Google them I just get multiple potential causes for each ranging from any one piece hardware, to bugs in certain builds.
I’m more willing to believe it’s a hardware issue since I never upgraded the FreeNAS version since I built it in '13 and only now am I having issues.
At this point, I just want to recover some of the things in there I can’t replace. A lot of it is just media, but there were a few things that I only kept on there for some dumb reason.
If anyone would be willing to help me get this thing booted and accessible on the network again I’d be very appreciative
Also, sorry if this technically doesn’t belong in Networking. A malfunctioning NAS could belong in any of Hardware, Networking, or OS/Linux.
Actually, FreeNAS is BSD based 
Never mind 
Do you have the option to transplant a new mainboard into the NAS, or at least get the drives and OS to boot from a different mainboard then current? That way you can exclude/confirm H/W failures and get at your data.
Otherwise, see if you can get a sysrescuecd iso image, make a bootable medium from that, then boot from it to see if you can access the data that way. At the very least it’ll allow you to use ddrescue to save the disk images so they can be used elsewhere for data rescue.
I actually do have another motherboard/RAM/CPU that’s just been sitting here for a while. I wasn’t sure FreeNAS has issues with booting from different hardware after being used on something else for so long. Although to be fair it’s not a radical change, just an FM1 APU based system versus an FM2 APU system.
Also, would a newer version of FreeNAS know what to do with the old drives? I can only imagine so. So maybe trying to boot a new version could also help in trouble shooting?
Finally, does it matter which drives were in which SATA ports? Not sure if I would have to be mindful of that or if FreeNAS will take care of it automatically.
For sake of fault-finding, don’t change too many parameters at once. For now, stick to swapping out the mainboard+APU and get the system working again. You may run into issues with networking (I doubt the order of SATA drives matter much, it certainly doesn’t on Linux) but just getting the system to boot is your first goal.
Well that narrowed it down in a hurry. Completely different mobo/CPU/RAM with no drives attached still gets the Fatal Trap 12 error.
Guessing that means the drive that FreeNAS boots from is borked. I think this might bode well for a potential recovery.
A quick search seems to suggest it may not be hardware related, but an OS fault: link
Yeah I read a bunch of those solutions before but I’m not too sure how they are applicable.
Should I get a newer FreeNAS build and try to boot with that and recover the old volumes I made on this version?
You could, and if you do I’d suggest to put it on a different disk (SSD, preferably) to preserve your current setup in case the new version borks the install. I’d also recommend disconnecting the data drives to preserve their integrity.
You mean when I try to boot it from a newer version for the first time? I’ve been using a tiny 8GB flash drive this whole time if that matters. I was told installing it on an actual drive was a waste of a SATA port back when I was building this.
I would say that You can use a new flash drive; But be prepared for that one to die too.
You would get better performance and potentially better longevity from an ssd, or even a rust spinner, but USB should suffice.
If you get a USB3/fast stick, just make sure it’s not going to thermally throttle, and be prepared for When it dies.
But even normal SATA drives die, so preparing/practacing is a good thing.
Iirc, modern FreeNas stores it’s config on the data drives too, so after you import an array, it may well restore the settings (I could be very wrong on that)
That’s fine. I don’t plan on continuing using this NAS. If/When I get important stuff off of it I’ll just decommission it and maybe transfer its drives to a new NAS later on. One less FreeNAS-y.
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But FreeNAS has done you alright for 7 odd years, no need to throw the baby out with the bath water…
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Haven’t given up, I’m still just trying to install a newer FreeNAS version. Mostly just came down to finding a spare flash drive I wasn’t using.
In the mean time I thought of a question. Is there some manner of config data in the old drive that I could manually copy over to the new one if that became necessary? Probably a dumb question but I have no idea either way.
Also forgot to mention I was looking into using unraid next time. I know it’s silly to pay for something you can do for free, but it looks so much simpler and more user friendly. Plus I like the idea of a RAID protected volume you can keep expanding without losing data.
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I wouldn’t bother, unless you had some very bespoke networking rules. Better to just boot a new truenas core image, import your old pool into it (simple to do in the GUI) and create a new share.
I did this last year when my old freenas boot drive died and it was simple and seemless.
The new UI for Truenas is also a lot nicer than old freenas, but I can understand the appeal of unraid for a general purpose machine.
Could a dying boot disk also explain intermittent connectivity like I was experiencing before the system wouldn’t boot at all?
Most certainly, yes. However, I notice you’ve done something that was recommended 7-8 years ago, but no longer is:
It is not recommended to use a USB stick as a boot device because the build quality or device lifetime varies too much to reliably use as the operating system device.
Thus, I’m recommending, as the TrueNAS devs do, to use an SSD (SATA or NVMe, your pick) for the OS.
Had I known about your use of an USB boot disk, I’d recommended this waaaayyyy sooner!
Well that’s good to know. My primary mission is just getting important data off the NAS right now. But when I rebuild either a TrueNAS or Unraid system, I will definitely get an SSD for boot drive/cache (if that’s possible).
Can you reccommend an HBA card that will allow me more than 6 hard drives? Never used one before but the next system I intend to be much larger in capacity so I might need one.
Yes try a fresh install of truenas on a cheap SSD(or a pair for resilience) and import the pool. If the hardware boots then it should let you access the pool and your data.
For a new HBA, I’d recommend an LSI controller as they work flawlessly with Truenas. I just got a good deal on an IBM Megaraid (IT mode) M1015, which is a rebadged LSI 9211-8i. Gives me 8 ports with 2 wires, so nice and clean. Avoid the multi-sata cheapo boards on Amazon.
If you are looking on ebay for used LSI boards, avoid the “hong kong” versions and look for a 2nd hand Dell, Toshiba, HP or IBM board from a reseller. They are a better deal and likely available in your local market without importing.
Hey, new version of FreeNAS booted up and I was able to connect to it just fine. Guess that dying flash drive was the culprit all along.
Now to import these old volumes and gain access to my data.
Oh wow, all the old pools imported without a hitch and it was incredibly painless. I can’t believe this is all it took to get my precious NAS back up and running. Should have done this months and months ago.
I got everything back. Now to back up the things that were important and then just live with it as it is while I work towards building a new, better NAS.
I might actually still with TrueNAS seeing as how nice these new versions are.
Thanks so much, guys!
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