Advice - Don't use AMD M/B processor with Freenas

[slushieken]

Oh boy... I hesitate to even bring it up here as I am sure I will be told by 50 people that they had no problem, and 50 more who will say well what did you think would happen.

I spent a long time studying freenas - almost 6 months - before I committed to get one going at home for backups and file storage.

No one I saw said Don't use AMD. Just the usual warnings about how it is questionable.

I used an Asus motherboard with am3+ socket, with a 3 core sempron. The Asus m/b with AMD all support ECC memory Unregistered only - and all AMD processors support ECC, so it seemed an obvious choice to pick that up used for cheap. If it didn't work I would just put it to the side.

Problem 1 - It worked!
Problem 2 - Intermittently.

If only it hadn't worked that first time...

When I first fired it up it worked great and I installed freenas. Then I started making changes and rebooting. However it began to not boot up occasionally, giving me a black screen with no activity. A subsequent reset would bring it back up. I attributed it to used equipment, bios patch level, bios settings, etc.

Eventually it got to where it would hardly boot any longer. So I patched the bios. It began not booting again. So I attributed it to my next thought - the motherboard. I had already bought the processor and the ECC unregistered memory and so I just got a different chipset motherboard this time (went to 97 from 99).

By this point I began replacing ALL of the components. I would also change about 5-6 different bios settings, each time with a reboot. It had been 4 months now. I replaced the power supply, new HBA, etc. Each time it would work for a few boots then become sporadic again. Also my disks were occasionally throwing bus errors, making me think my disks were faulty and needed replacement (they were used as well), but one at a time...

On the internet there were lots of cases where black screen no boot was fixed by different USB sticks, power fluctuations, HBA adapters, replace HBA for the bus errors too, replace sata cables, etc.

After 6 months total time (yes it was THAT intermittent) I finally thought well wth, looked on Craigslist, found a cheap supermicro intel board with processor AND ecc memory to run it.

Everything wored immediately. No problems to note since then.

Best as I can tell you, it is problems with the HBA adapters (I tried 3 of them, no difference) and the AMD chipsets. Take out the HBA, everything works. Put it back, it becomes sporadic.

Maybe this will help someone else... Even as a hobby, this was a BAD idea for all the money and time it consumed.

Stay away from combining AMD and HBA adapters in this, or anything else for that matter - it is a real nightmare.

 

[Ericloewe]

The problem is that many (most?) consumer motherboards aren't validated for much beyond graphics cards and the handful of sound cards on the market. This also applies to many Intel consumer boards.

 

[cyberjock]

Problem 1 - It worked!
Problem 2 - Intermittently.

If only it hadn't worked that first time...

When I first fired it up it worked great and I installed freenas. Then I started making changes and rebooting. However it began to not boot up occasionally, giving me a black screen with no activity. A subsequent reset would bring it back up. I attributed it to used equipment, bios patch level, bios settings, etc.

Eventually it got to where it would hardly boot any longer. So I patched the bios. It began not booting again. So I attributed it to my next thought - the motherboard. I had already bought the processor and the ECC unregistered memory and so I just got a different chipset motherboard this time (went to 97 from 99).

And that's why I personally don't recommend AMD. It's damn hard to take an OS you've likely never used before and put it on hardware that may or may not work. You have *any* problem and come here for help and the first thing people are going to expect is for you to have some basic troubleshooting knowledge in FreeBSD. This is where you have three crowds:

Crowd 1: User is completely new to FreeBSD and is almost incapable of even discerning an error that means something has failed from an error that is expected for conditions.
Crowd 2: User is experienced with FreeBSD and is so experienced with FreeBSD they are capable of solving their own problems.
Crowd 3: They know know better and avoid AMD outright.

If you are crowd 1, you have hardware that doesn't work and no path to figure out what is wrong. If you are crowd 2 or 3 you don't need help because you're already an expert.

So you are either fscked or you aren't. Not a good place to be when you can't prove that the hardware is even compatible and go from there.

My first attempt at installing FreeNAS was a nightmare. I had a motherboard that wasn't compatible with FreeBSD. It took me 2 weeks to figure that out for certainty, and I only was able to prove it because proper hardware *did* boot from my USB stick and the improper hardware didn't. At that point I was so noob I wasn't even convinced I made the boot device properly!

It's just a shitty situation, it's getting worse, and there's no expecation it's going to turn around for at least 2-3 years in the best possible case. And in 2-3 years *if* AMD turned it around they won't be interested in supporting 3+ year old hardware. They'd be looking to the future instead of looking backwards.

In the forums own defense though, we haven't *ever* recommended AMD until very recently. So you could easily argue that by not recommending it we definitely weren't saying it was okay. ;)

 

[anodos]

And that's why I personally don't recommend AMD. It's damn hard to take an OS you've likely never used before and put it on hardware that may or may not work. You have *any* problem and come here for help and the first thing people are going to expect is for you to have some basic troubleshooting knowledge in FreeBSD. This is where you have three crowds:

Crowd 1: User is completely new to FreeBSD and is almost incapable of even discerning an error that means something has failed from an error that is expected for conditions.
Crowd 2: User is experienced with FreeBSD and is so experienced with FreeBSD they are capable of solving their own problems.
Crowd 3: They know know better and avoid AMD outright.

If you are crowd 1, you have hardware that doesn't work and no path to figure out what is wrong. If you are crowd 2 or 3 you don't need help because you're already an expert.

So you are either fscked or you aren't. Not a good place to be when you can't prove that the hardware is even compatible and go from there.

My first attempt at installing FreeNAS was a nightmare. I had a motherboard that wasn't compatible with FreeBSD. It took me 2 weeks to figure that out for certainty, and I only was able to prove it because proper hardware *did* boot from my USB stick and the improper hardware didn't. At that point I was so noob I wasn't even convinced I made the boot device properly!

It's just a shitty situation, it's getting worse, and there's no expecation it's going to turn around for at least 2-3 years in the best possible case. And in 2-3 years *if* AMD turned it around they won't be interested in supporting 3+ year old hardware. They'd be looking to the future instead of looking backwards.

In the forums own defense though, we haven't *ever* recommended AMD until very recently. So you could easily argue that by not recommending it we definitely weren't saying it was okay. ;)

I think it is a bad sign when you have an AMD person writing to the FreeBSD mailing list asking if Opteron processors are supported. :) http://marc.info/?l=freebsd-amd64&m=135049912220159&w=2

 

[slushieken]

All good points. I have the ability to solve even complex issues in freebsd in general, so I thought I fell in to Crowd 2, but really I should have already been in Crowd 3.

I also knew better than to bring my issues to the forum when I am using AMD ;)

Even going in, I justified it to myself by saying it is just an experiment not production so I can give it a shot, it will work or it won't. It's when it doesn't fall clearly into either camp that having too much knowledge actually becomes a hindrance. The lack of clarity and consistency will really fool you into thinking you have made progress when in fact your just pissing in the wind. If I had not known any better how to t-shoot I would have probably just assumed it was the hardware much sooner...

I appreciate the responses all - I didn't think anyone would really give a darn! :)

 

[cyberjock]

I appreciate the responses all - I didn't think anyone would really give a darn! :)

We *do* care. We'd love for it to work. But on an all-volunteer forum it's a situation where you have to pick your battles. AMD has been a battle that has been lost to such a high percentage when there's a problem that it's something we all run from because we know better.

If we know we're going to be defeated, why spend massive resources trying anymore? At some point you have to say "hey, just don't use that and save yourself the heartache" and that's pretty much where we are (I think).

I'm a practical guy, and if AMD could get the job done for 1/2 the price I'd be all for people using it. But the problem is that it's a mess to find the specific AMD hardware that "can get the job done".

 

[pschatz100]

I think the whole AMD topic is confusing because older versions of FreeNAS seemed to support old AMD configurations better than the current versions - so people think AMD systems should be OK. Obviously, this is not always the case.

When I first went with FreeNAS 0.7, it was on AMD. When I finally updated to FreeNAS 8, I was still using AMD. When I updated to version 9, on the same hardware that had been running version 8, I began to have problems with networking (the motherboard had a Realtek nic.) I thought this was strange, as my system had been stable for a very long time before the update, but I chalked it up to dropping support for old devices in FreeBSD. As it so happens, I found a good deal on a used Supermicro board and fitted it with a Core i3 processor. No problems, since.

Looking forward, it looks like FreeNAS will be dropping support for certain older components and technologies. Whether this is due to FreeBSD or FreeNAS priorities, I don't know, but the trend is clear. I'm also betting that older Intel servers will be supported for a long time where support for AMD systems will continue to dwindle.

It would be nice to see an updated list of supported hardware when 9.3 is released.

 

[jgreco]

In the forums own defense though, we haven't *ever* recommended AMD until very recently.

Well, you being a relative n00b and all, you're forgiven for being totally wrong.