New Install - Mount Root problem

[videomi]

I've built one FreeNas 7 box, and while that build took some time and troubleshooting, I attributed most of that to "first-time status." I'm trying to build a second box with virtually identical hardware and I can't even get to the console menu screen during installation....with it stopping each time asking for "mount root."

I've tried entering a variety of things based on reading this forum and older posts with FreeNAS 7, but to no avail. My hardware is an old LaCie ethernet rack-mount device using a VIA motherboard with 256MB RAM, four 500GB SATA drives, 2 on the motherboard SATA, 2 on a SIL SATA card (supposedly supported according to hardware lists). As I said, my other NAS box is using identical hardware, except for having 512MB RAM.

I've tried installing from Live CD, tried creating an embedded USB stick....both fail with same problem. My successful install on other unit used an embedded image to USB. I didn't use the Live CD at all on that one. Most of my problems on that build came after initial installation, but again, most of those were simple unfamiliarity with FreeNAS.

I've tried installing from the LiveCD with intention of using the USB stick as the install device...tried writing embedded image directly to USB stick, which works up to the "mount root" issue.

I've tried following builds:
NAS4Free-x86-embedded-9.1.0.1.358
NAS4Free-x86-LiveCD-9.1.0.1.358
FreeNAS-i386-LiveCD-0.7.2.8191.iso
FreeNAS-i386-embedded (0.7.2.8191)

I see where 512MB is recommended but also read where it's possible to install with 256MB as long as I don't use complicated setups after installation. Any help is appreciated.

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN

[armandh]

suspect the low ram or other hardware issues

but first the ram

I only did one at 256 and it was FN7 not N4F

try 512 first

also I have had problems with bad optical drives, PATA ribbon cables, default mode chipsets

as long as the disk/usb stick will boot up in other hardware

[videomi]

I think I have another stick laying around...so will try that. But the system boots fine with it's old LaCie Windows embedded OS...and was a working system before being replaced by an upgrade...so I'm pretty sure hardware is good overall.

[daoyama]

Hi,

I see where 512MB is recommended but also read where it's possible to install with 256MB as long as I don't use complicated setups after installation. Any help is appreciated.

FreeNAS 0.7.5 and NAS4Free later use about 200MB of memorydisk for live boot system.
So you need 384MB for installation now. But it may run on 256MB I think.
If you try to install full version of NAS4Free to HDD or USB by other machine, you may boot it on 256MB system.

[videomi]

Not sure I understand what you mean when you say:

"If you try to install full version of NAS4Free to HDD or USB by other machine, you may boot it on 256MB system."

How would I go about doing that? Unfortunately I don't have a 512MB stick of RAM to replace the 256MB one in the mini ITX motherboard. It only has one RAM slot. May just use another box instead of this one although would be nice to keep it in service as a secondary backup in the rack.

[armandh]

the FN7 box that I gave to a friend was an old HP-6735 633 Mhz celeron with 256 meg of ram and one UFS formatted drive
with the config from the floppy, the live CD loaded the OS to ram [total about 200 Mb] leaving 56 Mb to operate the NAS
a single UFS drive does not take much overhead and it continues to function well for additional photo storage back up

loading the full install from a cd to a drive can be done on other hardware.
using the full version leaves more memory available for processes BUT
it also leaves the drive spinning 24/7 as opposed to running from a ram drive in memory

[videomi]

Ok...thanks. The problem on my system was the RAM. I bought a 1GB stick and was able to get through the install. On this old LaCie NAS, it shared 64M of the 256MB of memory (with the on board graphics I think), so it reported having about 192 available during bootup. That obviously isn't enough. Just for grins, after getting through the install, I pulled the 1GB stick and put the 256MB back in to see if it would run after installation, but same problem as before. So if it won't install with 256MB, it seems likely it won't run with it. Hope this helps somebody else out there....of course always good to adhere to the minimum specs of any software...just thought I'd give it a try with the original setup since this old NAS box ran for nearly 5 years with Windows XP embedded using 256MB of RAM.

Nas4Free is so much more capable though and I imagine that extra RAM provides the needed horsepower for all those extra features.

[alexey123]

But it may run on 256MB I think.
If you try to install full version of NAS4Free to HDD or USB by other machine, you may boot it on 256MB system.

Not work stable on 256 MB / I was find and add memory, it begin to run from 256+128.
Now I use such nas (how to disable ZFS?)




From test mashine:

nas4free:~# snmpwalk -v2c -c public 10.0.0.41 sysDescr
SNMPv2-MIB::sysDescr.0 = STRING: Hardware: i386 AMD Sempron(tm) 2200+ running at 1494 Software: FreeBSD 9.1-RC2 (revision 199506)
nas4free:~# snmpwalk -v2c -c public 10.0.0.41 UCD-SNMP-MIB::extOutput.0
UCD-SNMP-MIB::extOutput.0 = STRING: FreeBSD nas4free.local 9.1-RC2 FreeBSD 9.1-RC2 #0: Mon Oct 8 03:51:12 JST 2012 aoyama@nas4free.local:/usr/obj/nas4free/usr/src/sys/NAS4FREE-i386 i386
nas4free:~# snmpwalk -v2c -c public 10.0.0.41 memTotalReal
UCD-SNMP-MIB::memTotalReal.0 = INTEGER: 469952 kB
nas4free:~# snmpwalk -v2c -c public 10.0.0.41 memTotalFree
UCD-SNMP-MIB::memTotalFree.0 = INTEGER: 25988 kB