Full install problems on Nas4Free 9.0.0.1.141 with LiveCD

[manny]

Hello fellow NAS users\admins,

I have encountered a problem once I try to do a full installation for Nas4Free 9.0.0.1.141 64bit on a HDD that currently has FreeNas 0.7.2.8191 64bit. The problem is once I reach the normal screen menu with the selection to install Nas4Free I chose option 9 and then select option 3 to do a full install but it fails with the following errors:

diskinfo: kern.disks: no such file or directory
ataidle error opening /dev/kern.disk
error detecting cdrom

This is interesting since I booted using the LiveCD and my BIOS had no problems detecting the CD-Rom. Also my old FreeNas 7.2 has no such problems with the CD-Rom. I been looking around but have not found a solution to this so I will continue to use 7.2 until a solution comes along. Also when booting from Nas4Free LiveCD I notice these errors during the boot process:

ahcich0: timeout
ahcich1: timeout

These are associated with my USB controllers but I have no such problems with FreeNas 7.2 and should not prevent to detect my CD-Rom.

Now for some background info on the type of hardware I got:
Motherboard: Nvidia nForce 650i ultra
HDD with freenas: Maxtor 6B300R0
NIC: integrated with motherboard
RAM: 8 GB
Processor: Intel Pentium 4
USB: integrated with motherboard

[simonlebon]

I had simular problems.
Disabling AHCI (in BIOS) did the trick for me....

[manny]

Update 1:

I figure out that the ahci timeout errors are not related to my USB but to the HDD controllers. I looked in the BIOS to disable ahci as sugested by simonlebon but I could not find a setting in there to do this. I think my mobo BIOS is to old since the latest version is P05 released by EVGA on 1/1/2009. Well I will continue to look around.

[simonlebon]

Have you tried fiddling with the RAID config settings in the BIOS ?
Or other SATA/IDE settings?

Hooking the CDROM/HDD onto another cable/port could help.

AHCI is the 'Advanced Host Controller Interface', you can best look at it as a layer on top of SATA. (it adds NCQ and hot swap functionality)

'ahcich1' stands for AHCI channel 1. A time out error can occur when there is no device attached to the port.
Perhaps your drive is connected to channel 2 (BOOTscreen?)

Maybe burning the image on the CDROM again?
(i.e. 32-bit instead of 64-bit)
Or installing from USB stick.

I had some permission issues when I switched over from FreeNAS 0.72 to Nas4Free recently, had to do a clean install, and I can tell you it takes a LOOOONG time backing up and restoring 4TB of data. I use the NAS as bulk storage in my LAN. I have tried a Synology, but that wasn't my cup of tea.
I love the way how easy it is in FreeNAS/N4F to hook a share onto a mount point (i.e. music, movies, photo, etc).

[manny]

Simonlebon,

First I want to thank you for your quick replies but I have looked at all the settings withing my BIOS and no luck. I also found out that my add-on SATA controllers might be the problem. I have 1 SiI3114 and 1 JMicron JMB363. I read on the hardware compatibility page that the SiL3114 might be troublesome and was recommended to use the latest firmware. I found out I was out of date there so I update the FW with the latest version but still no luck. I did not find any FW for the JMicon one but both are working fine using FreeNas 7.2 so I am unsure what else I can do to install N4F. As for using the 32 bit vice 64 bit I don't want to go that route since my NAS is running fine under FreeNas 64 bit. I have not tried to install via USB since the problem will still persist since it is not seeing any HDD.

BTW a funny thing happen once booting N4F I selected on the first menu to run in safe mode and it ended telling me that it could not boot and it would reboot immediately. Seems I will be stuck with FreeNas unless I get updated hardware.

[raulfg3]

SIL chipset are problematic, read this topic copied from Old forum: viewtopic.php?f=59&t=237

[manny]

Raulfg3,

I have read this and other articles describing the problems with the SIL3114 chipset but most if not all say that the controller will run fine with the latest firmware, also all these articles I read were for freenas 7.2 legacy and as I stated before I have no problems running that with this and the JMicron controller. I will however test the controllers add-ons by removing both of them and try to boot from N4F liveCD. If it does boot with no error messages then I will know what the problem is. I just have to get some time set aside today to do this and will post the results then.

[manny]

Well I tested my NAS build by removing both SATA controller cards and the AHCI timeout errors went away but I still get the same results if I try to install any options of N4F, not a single HDD or CD-Rom is detected. I noticed wile N4F was booting from the CD that it said it was waiting for xconfig or something similar and after 120 seconds it proceeded to the install menu but without cd-rom or hdd. I am convinced that my SATA controllers are not the problem here, my mobo might not be supported with N4F. Shame since I was looking forward to try it out after all the reading I did about it since I like the original FreeNas and my hardware combination is working quite well under 7.2. I guess I will go with the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" approach here and keep FreeNas 0.7.2. Thank you all for your comments.

[skabde]

The AHCI timeouts are a common problem with FreeBSD 9, some hard drives or SATA controllers are prone to problems with the new AHCI driver in version 9. I have 3 Seagate 3GB drives in my NAS, all spin down after 20 minutes idle and when I try to wake them up after a day or two the whole system hangs with timeouts. First time that happened was when I tried to start a weekly long SMART self test, which never happened since the connection broke while the drives were spinning up.

Common solution to this problem is "use FreeNAS 0.7" or "swap your drives", which both are, with all due respect, moronic answers.

A pragmatic approach would be trying the old ATA driver, which is still available (ataahci.ko), and which seemed to help many of those with the timeout problems. I'll see if there's a way to dynamically load the .ko and somehow disable the new driver, but I doubt that'd work.

Is there somewhere any info about how to build the custom kernel for nas4free? Anywhere? I'd love to try building a vintage-ata-kernel and see if it helps, but I need a starting point...

Quick edit: ataahci is already in the kernel, now I have to check if there's a way to disable ahci, which takes precedence...

[sacii]

Possibly ahci_load="NO" in the /boot/loader.conf file?