FreeNAS on Snap Server 110 / 210

[micr0]

I thought I should start out by saying that I had been lurking within these forums for a couple of days and came to the conclusion that without another Snap Server unit on hand, I won’t success in reimaging my unit.

I had acquired a Snap Server 210 as a form of payment for a favor in doing some computer work and didn’t think that without any drives, this unit would have been almost useless to me. From what all the wiki and post about the GuardianOS, it seems like there’s no way around the whole ‘reimaging’ process.

So just last night, I completely striped the unit down to the board. Apparently, this board is used in both the Snap Server 110 and 210. What I also notice was there were two jumpers on the board. One closes to the bios battery and a second one closes to the SATA connectors.

Before all of this, I read that some of folks on here had success in installing FreeNAS on there units, but not particular on these units. I proceed to put an unused harddrive in my system and installed FreeNAS. I also configured FreeNAS with a static IP that I would know I should hit.

I took the harddrive out and popped in the Snap Server and seeing if this had any affect. Gave it a minute, pinged the unit and also ran an IP scanner just for the heck of it, nothing. It was about this moment that I saw the jumpers and wonder would happen if I pulled one of them off.

Judging from the jumper closes to the bios battery was most likely a CMOS reset, I pulled the one closes to the SATA connectors. It was from this point that the magic started to happen. The harddrive status light started to blink and there were additional LED lights close to the bios that also started to flash like status lights. (I’m not sure what the leds by the bios are indicating, but it seems like they could be used for debugging of some sort).

After a minute or two, I pinged the IP and used my IP scanner. Apparently I started to get some feed back. I opened up Firefox and ‘bam’, there it was, FreeNAS config screen with all it’s glory. Apparently I had found some sort of way for these units to act almost like mini computers and just boot directly in the hard drive.

For those with these units (Snap Server 110 / 210) and don’t have drives or images, this is a work around to having the GuardianOS.

[blue68f100]

Micr0, good info to have. Does the jumper have ID/label on the motherboard?

Were you able to look at the BIOS?

Was wondering if this is a reset for upgraded drive capacity. Some 410 users have had problems with upgrades.

[micr0]

Micr0, good info to have. Does the jumper have ID/label on the motherboard?

The specific jumper that I messed with was J9

Were you able to look at the BIOS?

Unfortunately I don't have the means or know how on doing so as they have removed the port for it. It should be safe to assume that if anybody has the know how on getting the video working, we might have a real chance to mess with these units more.

Was wondering if this is a reset for upgraded drive capacity. Some 410 users have had problems with upgrades.

That's a good question. I'm not sure if they use the same board or not. On this particular board, it mentions both the 110 and 210.

As far as any real hard ID on what the jumpers represent or even the additional pin headers are for, I have came up blank. Even researching any reassembles on data sheets came up with nothing.

Lucky for you folks, I happened to snapped a few shots of the board before I closed it up again.
(see attachment)

[matery]

Micro,
There is a way to get into Bios through com port at the back, if you use null cable and hyper terminal with following sellings 115200 8 N 1, and you can see the bios startup and booting .....
and if you press F4 at system startup, you can get into bios options and there are quite many options for tweaking.....
or else if you like, you can solder a vga scoket on to the board and then connect your monitor to it with usb key board and mouse...
I am in a similar situation my Snap server 110 doesnt show status light, looks like there is sth wrong with HDD, I am still investigating, i might give freenas a try if the image is not recoverable....

[micr0]

Originally Posted by matery

Micro,
There is a way to get into Bios through com port at the back, if you use null cable and hyper terminal with following sellings 115200 8 N 1, and you can see the bios startup and booting .....
and if you press F4 at system startup, you can get into bios options and there are quite many options for tweaking.....
or else if you like, you can solder a vga scoket on to the board and then connect your monitor to it with usb key board and mouse...
I am in a similar situation my Snap server 110 doesnt show status light, looks like there is sth wrong with HDD, I am still investigating, i might give freenas a try if the image is not recoverable....

Well hot diggity. That is definitely a full meal for thought. I will proceed on with this later tonight with the great info and maybe provide more insight on this little bugger.

[micr0]

Just want to thank matery for this hot tip. I was able to view a wealth of information pertaining to these units. A few things I found out was that, the boot up process looks at the hard drive first before doing a network boot. There is not usb boot available what so ever. So what this means is that, technically, one can use partimage to create a image of a drive, use pxe to push the image down if no OS is found on the disc. Looks like the unit also can handle hardware raid as there are a few functions about it. Besides that, I'm not sure what else you guys want me to look for.

[matery]

Its like any other PC,you just have to change the boot order in order for it to boot from other devices, it also does recognise usb and is usb bootable.
Does any one know how to boot an iso from 4gb usb stick that I have?

[blue68f100]

Micro, Thanks for posting the photos and jumper ID for others to learn from.

[bitor]

Great information....for the Snap 110 & 210! Keep us posted on anything new.


bitor

[micr0]

Damn you matery for all this great information. LOL. Ok folks, a little update on how this bios does it's boot order. Apparently it will only allow two device in the boot order, so choose wisely. Second, as matery mention, the unit does boot usb devices as long as one has it set in the bios to do it first.

This is fantastic cause, I just purchase a microSD usb adapter, crammed FreeNAS on it and now I got the entire drive all to itself. This would make my raid setup really happy when I do go down this route later down the road.

[matery]

micr0, any luck with free NAS???

[micr0]

matery,

It's working GREAT! Although there is no way to control the fan speed in Freenas, I'm going to source out for a high speed low dbi fan to coup with the fan noise. Other than that, I've been having fun rsyncing my files to it.

Micr0

[Chevelle]

Can you post any more information?
I acquired a Snap Server 110, with a bad hard drive. Installed FreeNAS on a hdd connected to a Dell PE800 with a static ip, put it back in, and nothing.

[micr0]

What was the status on your LEDs when you fired up the snapserver? When I had the jumpers connected, I would get two solid green lights. One for power and one for the hdd. Once I removed the jumper, that's when all the magic happened. Have you gone into the bios to double check all your settings? From hyperterminal, I was able to see the system boot up to the point of when freenas was starting to load up. After, that it was just a matter of bringing up the web interface to login.

[Chevelle]

Ok, I got to watch it boot until I see the FreeNAS boot screen, and that is it. I try pinging the ip, I get nothing. Any ideas?

EDIT: And just to add, it seem to reboot about every 2-3 mins for some reason.

micr0, can you tell me what is listed in "/dev/"? I believe its try to boot to "/dev/ad4s1" and it should be "/dev/ad0s1".

[micr0]

Well, here's what my dev folder contains.

dr-xr-xr-x 6 root wheel 512 Sep 16 15:53 .
drwxr-xr-x 19 root wheel 512 Sep 16 15:53 ..
crw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 0, 29 Sep 16 15:53 acpi
crw-r----- 1 root operator 0, 58 Sep 16 15:53 ad4
crw-r----- 1 root operator 0, 59 Sep 16 15:53 ad4p1
crw-rw-r-- 1 root operator 0, 55 Sep 16 15:53 apm0
crw------- 1 root operator 0, 28 Sep 16 15:53 ata
crw------- 1 root wheel 0, 43 Sep 16 15:53 atkbd0
crw------- 1 root wheel 0, 10 Sep 16 15:53 console
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 0, 49 Sep 16 15:53 crypto
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 0, 11 Sep 16 15:53 ctty
crw-rw---- 1 66 68 0, 40 Sep 16 15:53 cuad0
crw-rw---- 1 66 68 0, 41 Sep 16 15:53 cuad0.init
crw-rw---- 1 66 68 0, 42 Sep 16 15:53 cuad0.lock
crw-r----- 1 root operator 0, 64 Sep 16 15:53 da0
crw-r----- 1 root operator 0, 65 Sep 16 15:53 da0a
crw-r----- 1 root operator 0, 66 Sep 16 15:53 da0c
crw------- 1 root wheel 0, 5 Sep 16 15:53 devctl
cr-------- 1 root wheel 0, 52 Sep 16 15:53 devstat
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root wheel 512 Sep 16 15:53 fd
crw------- 1 root wheel 0, 16 Sep 16 15:53 fido
crw-r----- 1 root operator 0, 4 Sep 16 15:53 geom.ctl
crw------- 1 root wheel 0, 17 Sep 16 15:53 io
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 6 Sep 16 15:53 kbd0 -> atkbd0
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 7 Sep 16 15:53 kbd1 -> kbdmux0
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 5 Sep 16 15:53 kbd2 -> ukbd0
crw------- 1 root wheel 0, 24 Sep 16 15:53 kbdmux0
crw------- 1 root wheel 0, 8 Sep 16 15:53 klog
crw-r----- 1 root kmem 0, 27 Sep 16 15:53 kmem
crw-r----- 1 root operator 0, 56 Sep 16 15:53 md0
crw-r----- 1 root operator 0, 54 Sep 16 15:53 md1
crw------- 1 root wheel 0, 53 Sep 16 15:53 mdctl
crw-r----- 1 root kmem 0, 26 Sep 16 15:53 mem
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root wheel 512 Sep 16 15:53 net
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 8 Sep 16 15:53 net1 -> net/bge0
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 7 Sep 16 15:53 net2 -> net/lo0
crw------- 1 root wheel 0, 3 Sep 16 15:53 network
crw------- 1 root wheel 0, 48 Sep 16 15:53 nfs4
crw------- 1 root kmem 0, 15 Sep 16 15:53 nfslock
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 0, 6 Sep 16 16:02 null
crw------- 1 root operator 0, 63 Sep 16 15:53 pass0
crw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 0, 9 Sep 16 15:53 pci
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 0, 60 Sep 16 16:10 ptyp0
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 0, 12 Sep 16 15:53 random
crw------- 1 root wheel 0, 36 Sep 16 15:53 speaker
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 4 Sep 16 15:53 stderr -> fd/2
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 4 Sep 16 15:53 stdin -> fd/0
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 4 Sep 16 15:53 stdout -> fd/1
crw------- 1 root wheel 0, 14 Sep 16 15:53 sysmouse
crw------- 1 root wheel 0, 37 Sep 16 15:53 ttyd0
crw------- 1 root wheel 0, 38 Sep 16 15:53 ttyd0.init
crw------- 1 root wheel 0, 39 Sep 16 15:53 ttyd0.lock
crw--w---- 1 ryuen tty 0, 61 Sep 16 16:10 ttyp0
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root wheel 512 Sep 16 15:53 ufs
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root wheel 512 Sep 16 15:53 ufsid
crw-r--r-- 1 root operator 0, 47 Sep 16 15:53 uhid0
crw------- 1 root wheel 0, 45 Sep 16 15:53 ukbd0
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 6 Sep 16 15:53 urandom -> random
crw-rw---- 1 root operator 0, 31 Sep 16 15:53 usb
crw-rw---- 1 root operator 0, 30 Sep 16 15:53 usb0
crw-rw---- 1 root operator 0, 32 Sep 16 15:53 usb1
crw-rw---- 1 root operator 0, 33 Sep 16 15:53 usb2
crw------- 1 root operator 0, 62 Sep 16 15:53 xpt0
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 0, 7 Sep 16 15:53 zero
crw-rw---- 1 root operator 0, 57 Sep 16 15:53 zfs

Did you ensure your nic was also enabled in the bios? Was you cmos jumper also in the proper place? I'm unsure why your unit is rebooting unless it's having some heating issues or maybe some bad ram.

[Chevelle]

Finally figured out what is going on.
This is while it is booting in the snap.

md0: Preloaded image </mfsroot> 94371840 bytes at 0x80ec3698
GEOM_LABEL: Label for provider md0c is ufsid/4a3d45a082aedf53.
Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/md0
GEOM_LABEL: Label ufsid/4a3d45a082aedf53 removed.
Loading configuration files.
Booting platform: embedded
Looking for configuration file: kern.disks:

*******************************************************************************
FATAL ERROR!
The device that contains the configuration file (config.xml) could not be
found. FreeNAS cannot continue booting.
*******************************************************************************
Waiting (max 60 seconds) for system process `vnlru' to stop...done
Waiting (max 60 seconds) for system process `bufdaemon' to stop...done
Waiting (max 60 seconds) for system process `syncer' to stop...
Syncing disks, vnodes remaining...0 done
All buffers synced.
Uptime: 8s

The operating system has halted.
Please press any key to reboot.

Now just need to figure out why?

EDIT: Figured out why.

Manual root filesystem specification:
  <fstype>:<device>  Mount <device> using filesystem <fstype>
                       eg. ufs:da0s1a
  ?                  List valid disk boot devices
  <empty line>       Abort manual input

mountroot> ?

List of GEOM managed disk devices:
  

Manual root filesystem specification:

For some reason, its not seeing the hard drive.
micr0, what version of FreeNAS did you install?

[bgggold]

Has anyone else been able to get this to work? I have tried to boot from usb flash drive and the hard drive with no luck. It seems to hang right after the boot options menu. Looks like it could be hanging on or right after the acpi. Could it be the pc I used to create the boot device? I am wondering if it might have installed too advanced drivers or something for the snap architecture. Any help would be appriciated since I am not able to get the 1.5 tb drives to work with GOS on my 210. I guess last ditch effert is to just go with 1tb drives and see if that really was the issue with not getting my drives upgraded.

Also looked at openfiler, anyone have any luck with that?

Thanks in advance,

Brian

[bgggold]

I finally got FreeNAS to run. The trick is once you do a usb flash install from another computer add the following lines to the loader.conf file and that should do it.

you need to boot into #3 safe mode and from the webgui on the advanced tab, file editor.

browse to /cf/boot/loader.conf.

hint.acpi.0.disabled=1
loader.acpi_disabled_by_user=1
hint.apic.0.disabled=1