Motherboard is a hand-me-down from an older Acer. Same with CPU (both probably from 2010. 64bit, dual core, good enough for now).

 

Ill try to keep this brief but not skip details. Ive had unraid for the better part of 4 years and while Im experienced with it, I am not experienced so much with linux command lines. Im at work, so cant try any solutions until 6pm EST.

 

2 weeks ago, I stopped the array, tried to swap cache with a hot swap disk already installed. Array wouldnt start up. After tinkering for 2 days, restart of server and then nothing. No bios. Last night I took out the pci cards (sata card and gigabit card) and unplugged hard drives, reset CMOS and then I was able to boot back to BIOS. 

 

Fresh copy of unraid 5.0.6 (was previously on RC12 version for the past 2 years). Reason for fresh copy of unraid was the fact that I thought my old flash was dead before I realized it was a Bios issue.

 

Unraid boots, comes online - nothing from IP or //Tower. Shutdown, pulled Flash, set DHCP to No, manually set IP and Subnet.. Boot tower and back up. Still nothing from IP or //Tower. Ran Ifconfig Eth0 and saw no packets moving. Swapped cable from PCI gigabit card to the onboard card. Packets moving!!! 

 

Went to the laptop, put in the IP and I see the tab's name updating, so communications are working. BUT, the webpage looks like a page from 1990 on AOL dialup (see below)

and took FOREVER to get that far. Page freezes if I try anything. Tried Ping IP from latpop and got no true hits

 

Tried swapping Ethernet cables from unraid to the switch (tower -> Gigabit switch -> Uverse modem w wireless), same result. Plugged laptop into switch with the tower, same result (thought I accept that uverse is handling dhcp, so tonight Ill try both plugged directly into that in case there is a wire fault between).

 

card removed, same issue Other thought are that I am using this network card (Netgear GA311 Gigabit Ethernet - uses Realtek, may have issues noted below  -- ((Realtek - RTL8169S, RTL8111B, RTL8111C, probably others too ***NOTE - MANY PEOPLE REPORT ISSUES WITH REALTEK, SO CHECK THE FORUMS BEFORE ASSUMING YOUR BOARD WILL WORK***)) ). But I have been using the card for 3.5 years without issues (though only on the 5.0.RC12 version of unraid). And, since Im technically not using it if plugged into on board ethernet, would that matter?

also fixed Also realized at midnight that I didnt fix the BIOS clock after resetting BIOS (just in case that mattered), which was set to 2007. Fixed that but then the board kept getting stuck with something on the Dos looking bootup in regards to finding DHCP and then failing. Wouldnt boot to unraid

 

I have a 1 year old at home, so Im on a limited amount of freetime to devote to this (and reduced brain bandwidth from a child who still likes to wake up 2-3x a night), which is why Id love a few ideas that I can attempt in a logical order rather than trying to come up with my own solutions myself.

 

Thank you!

Motherboard is a hand-me-down from an older Acer. Same with CPU (both probably from 2010. 64bit, dual core, good enough for now).

 

Ill try to keep this brief but not skip details. Ive had unraid for the better part of 4 years and while Im experienced with it, I am not experienced so much with linux command lines. Im at work, so cant try any solutions until 6pm EST.

 

2 weeks ago, I stopped the array, tried to swap cache with a hot swap disk already installed. Array wouldnt start up. After tinkering for 2 days, restart of server and then nothing. No bios. Last night I took out the pci cards (sata card and gigabit card) and unplugged hard drives, reset CMOS and then I was able to boot back to BIOS. 

 

Fresh copy of unraid 5.0.6 (was previously on RC12 version for the past 2 years). Reason for fresh copy of unraid was the fact that I thought my old flash was dead before I realized it was a Bios issue.

 

Unraid boots, comes online - nothing from IP or //Tower. Shutdown, pulled Flash, set DHCP to No, manually set IP and Subnet.. Boot tower and back up. Still nothing from IP or //Tower. Ran Ifconfig Eth0 and saw no packets moving. Swapped cable from PCI gigabit card to the onboard card. Packets moving!!! 

 

Went to the laptop, put in the IP and I see the tab's name updating, so communications are working. BUT, the webpage looks like a page from 1990 on AOL dialup (see below)

and took FOREVER to get that far. Page freezes if I try anything. Tried Ping IP from latpop and got no true hits

 

Tried swapping Ethernet cables from unraid to the switch (tower -> Gigabit switch -> Uverse modem w wireless), same result. Plugged laptop into switch with the tower, same result (thought I accept that uverse is handling dhcp, so tonight Ill try both plugged directly into that in case there is a wire fault between).

 

Other thought are that I am using this network card (Netgear GA311 Gigabit Ethernet - uses Realtek, may have issues noted below  -- ((Realtek - RTL8169S, RTL8111B, RTL8111C, probably others too ***NOTE - MANY PEOPLE REPORT ISSUES WITH REALTEK, SO CHECK THE FORUMS BEFORE ASSUMING YOUR BOARD WILL WORK***)) ). But I have been using the card for 3.5 years without issues (though only on the 5.0.RC12 version of unraid). And, since Im technically not using it if plugged into on board ethernet, would that matter?

 

Also realized at midnight that I didnt fix the BIOS clock after resetting BIOS (just in case that mattered), which was set to 2007. Fixed that but then the board kept getting stuck with something on the Dos looking bootup in regards to finding DHCP and then failing. Wouldnt boot to unraid

 

I have a 1 year old at home, so Im on a limited amount of freetime to devote to this (and reduced brain bandwidth from a child who still likes to wake up 2-3x a night), which is why Id love a few ideas that I can attempt in a logical order rather than trying to come up with my own solutions myself.

 

Thank you!

I would go back to the bios and disable the onboard network, and then switch to using the add-on card for network.  If that doesn't help out, physically remove the add-on card and use the onboard

 

Clearing your browser's cache may help out with the messed up webui

 

If there's still issues, you should post up a syslog

 

fixed the boot issue. the USB is seen as a Hard Disk instead of a USB-FDD or USB-Zip. Changed the Hard drive preference and booting into Unraid.

 

I also disconnected the pci SATA and pci ethernet cards.

 

Tried again today. Same issue. If I run ifconfig eth0 when it starts, I can see the IP address. Then I can usually get the crappy connection through the web GUI (see post 1), but then it freezes and then if I rerun the ifconfig eth0, the IP Address is missing from the result.

 

Log attached. I cant ping, or telnet, so this log was from typing the following into the command line and then pulling the results from the Flash:

cp /var/log/syslog /boot/syslog.txt

chmod a-x /boot/syslog.txt

 

Thanks for any help. Next step is to boot the USB on another PC tonight and see if its different (so I can isolate the issue as a mobo.hardware issue). Worst case I have a 3 year old mobo that had a i5 in it (just sitting idle in my parts closet). I can pickup an OK processor and just trash my current setup.

syslog.txt

fixed the boot issue. the USB is seen as a Hard Disk instead of a USB-FDD or USB-Zip. Changed the Hard drive preference and booting into Unraid.

 

I also disconnected the pci SATA and pci ethernet cards.

 

Tried again today. Same issue. If I run ifconfig eth0 when it starts, I can see the IP address. Then I can usually get the crappy connection through the web GUI (see post 1), but then it freezes and then if I rerun the ifconfig eth0, the IP Address is missing from the result.

 

Log attached. I cant ping, or telnet, so this log was from typing the following into the command line and then pulling the results from the Flash:

cp /var/log/syslog /boot/syslog.txt

chmod a-x /boot/syslog.txt

 

Thanks for any help. Next step is to boot the USB on another PC tonight and see if its different (so I can isolate the issue as a mobo.hardware issue). Worst case I have a 3 year old mobo that had a i5 in it (just sitting idle in my parts closet). I can pickup an OK processor and just trash my current setup.

Just for grins, can you just try to boot unraid 6 beta 14b on a new flash stick in the same box?  Dont start the array or anything necessarily, just curious to see if using the newer kernel version (with more current drivers) would help at all. Trying to help narrow down the actual issue.

funny, I did exactly that last night. Still no luck.

 

I installed the latest v6 from the main downloads page, on a new USB and had the same issue. Wouldnt connect. I couldnt even see an IP through ifconfig.

 

I took the USB that Ive been using for the last few days that had v5.0.6 and put that in my office desktop.  Booted right up, got DHCP, web gui works, and i checked an hour or 2 later and it was still up and the page looked good. this pc is on the same switch as the server, so I know the cables to the modem are good. I also used my wire tester to check both wires that I used to test the server and both are OK.

 

So, looks like a BIOS issue. Probably when I reset the BIOS, I lost something. Ive gone through the menus to find a way to use usb1.1 (saw that mentioned) but I cant find anything close.

 

Its an Acer M3100 (not the motherboard, but the original pc), there arent any BIOS updates on the website, but there is a LAN driver update. Not sure the best way to update the driver without having access to an operating system (I could load ubuntu from a flash and run it, but I dont have much experience loading drivers in linux). Or, I have an extra hard drive with windows (that probably came from this original pc) and it should boot to win7.

 

at this point, Im running out of diagnostic time, so tempted to just replace the mobo and move on. unless anyone else has thoughts?

Going to make my desktop (asus mobo, i3 processor) a donor and swap the parts. Ill create a new thread if any issues on that build. So, these parts are getting scrapped.