New to TrueNas | Having some issues | Networking and IP's

Apps and Virtualization
1

Hi Everyone,

I recently decided to dive into TrueNAS Scale and start building my own setup. This has been my first experience with Linux and NAS systems. It’s been a fun…ish 2-3 weeks as I’ve been learning everything from nothing

My Issues:

  1. IP Binding After Eel Update: Since updating to Eel, I noticed that all apps launch with truenas.local:port rather than machineip:port. I can access them by manually typing the IP, but after a while, even that stops working. Eventually, I can only access apps via truenas.local:port, and the “WebUI” buttons next to the apps fail to actually launch a window let alone load the correct address.
  2. 403 Error on Direct IP Access: When trying to access machineip:port after it stops working, I get a 403 error. Only truenas.local:port seems accessible. I’ve checked my networking settings, and they seem correct unless im overlooking something.

Given these issues, I’m wondering if there’s a setting I’m missing or if I need to reconfigure something for Eel to handle local IP access properly. Before I reset everything again from scratch, I thought I’d reach out for any advice.

My Journey So Far: I’ve got most of the hardware and ran a test setup, spending around 120+ hours figuring things out and learning how the system works. I started fresh a couple of times—once to add new drives and format them correctly before realising Eel allowed adding drives to an established pool (I bought SAS instead of SATA drives, so I had to get a SAS controller) and later to configure my networking and apps.

At one point, I set up a majority of my apps manually via the shell to make sure it was actually working. Eventually, I discovered Dockage and Jailmaker, so I restarted to try those out. Then, just as I had things in place, I realised Eel version of TrueNAS Scale was released, so I updated and started over.

Thankfully I have only loaded test data onto the machine so I haven’t lost anything but my valuable time but then again, I’m learning, so its worth it.

My Setup (if you’re curious):

  • Motherboard: Gigabyte A520I AC ITX
  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600G
  • RAM: Corsair Vengeance 32GB 3200MHz
  • CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-L9x65 Low Profile
  • Cache Drive: Samsung 860 EVO 250GB SSD
  • Boot Drive: Crucial BX500 1TB SSD (considering swapping with the cache drive for more space)
  • SAS Controller: LSI 9300-8i
  • HDD Pool: 5 x Exos 7E8 6TB SAS HDD (RAIDZ1)
  • Case: Jonsbo N2
  • Networking: IO Crest 10 Gigabit M.2 Ethernet card on the way
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  1. You haven’t said what your intended use is for this NAS once you are happy with the build, but I suspect your Cache Drive is L2ARC and this will not benefit you a jot. Firstly you have too little memory for L2ARC (min 64GB), and for your amount of data 32GB should give you excellent performance using standard ARC which is always present in main memory. (It is possible that you mean SLOG - which isn’t a write cache but does something similar - but again you may not get any benefit from this either.)

  2. Make sure that your SAS controller is flashed with IT-mode firmware. Run the following commands and copy and paste the results so that we can see your current firmware:

    • sas2flash -list
    • sas3flash -list

  3. You should buy a decent quality small SSD to use as a boot drive - only 16GB is needed, the rest will largely be wasted. If not, you definitely should use the cache drive as the boot drive.

  4. Definitely new users should start with EE and avoid app migrations later.

  5. You will want a separate SSD pool for your applications and their data. The 1TB drive would be great for that. Ideally it would be mirrored, but if not then you can replicate it to the HDD pool as a backup.

1 Like
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Hi! Thanks for the reply,

You’re absolutely right, I completely forgot to mention the purpose of my NAS setup, my bad! I do photography and videography, so my initial goal was to back everything up, but I quickly realized how many additional things I could do with this setup. Beyond backups, I’m hoping to use it as an external Steam folder if I end up getting my desired transfer speeds, as well as for Plex/RR apps (movies, music, shows, and books), Pi-hole, occasional game servers (like Assetto Corsa and Minecraft), hosting PhotoPrism for photography management, Collabora/Nextcloud, and, finally, a simple website that acts as a portfio.

You’re correct with your assumptions, it’s currently ZFS L2ARC. I figured that transfer speeds might be limited because of the motherboard’s 1GB Ethernet port which is why I ordered the 10Gb M.2 Ethernet adapter to improve that and have read that the L2ARC wouldnt be useful with 32GB of ram but didnt even realize I had it set as L2ARC.

In short, it’s turning into an “everything” NAS, I was also considering using Dockage to manage some/most of the apps, wondering if it’s worth setting up some things that way.

Happy to transfer the OS over to the 250GB SSD and allocate the 1TB SSD to all apps and related data as you suggested, makes more sense if 32GB ram will limit the relevance of having a SSD for L2ARC.

Thanks again for the guidance! I’m new to all of this, but I’m learning quickly and open to adjusting my setup as I go :smiley:

Heres results of SAS Controller:
root@truenas[~]# sas2flash -list
LSI Corporation SAS2 Flash Utility
Version 20.00.00.00 (2014.09.18)
Copyright (c) 2008-2014 LSI Corporation. All rights reserved

    No LSI SAS adapters found! Limited Command Set Available!
    ERROR: Command Not allowed without an adapter!
    ERROR: Couldn't Create Command -list
    Exiting Program.

root@truenas[~]# sas3flash -list
Avago Technologies SAS3 Flash Utility
Version 16.00.00.00 (2017.05.02)
Copyright 2008-2017 Avago Technologies. All rights reserved.

    Adapter Selected is a Avago SAS: SAS3008(C0)

    Controller Number              : 0
    Controller                     : SAS3008(C0)
    PCI Address                    : 00:01:00:00
    SAS Address                    : 51866da-0-57eb-aa00
    NVDATA Version (Default)       : 0e.01.00.39
    NVDATA Version (Persistent)    : 0e.01.00.39
    Firmware Product ID            : 0x2221 (IT)
    Firmware Version               : 16.00.11.00
    NVDATA Vendor                  : LSI
    NVDATA Product ID              : Dell HBA330 Adp
    BIOS Version                   : 08.37.02.00
    UEFI BSD Version               : 18.00.03.00
    FCODE Version                  : N/A
    Board Name                     : Dell HBA330 Adp
    Board Assembly                 : J7TNV
    Board Tracer Number            : 64D008E
    Finished Processing Commands Successfully.
    Exiting SAS3Flash.
4

It’s a pity to throw in a HBA instead of going for a motherboard with 5 or 6 SATA ports and plain SATA HDDs, and the ACQ107 NIC may give you some more headaches.

How’s cooling in the N2 case?

1 Like
5

I tried TrueNAS SCALE 24.10.0.2 and had network issues so I went back to TrueNAS SCALE 24.04.2.5 that I’d been using without issue. I have a similar config as yours and have Intel nics as others were problematic. I tried TrueNAS SCALE 24.10.0.2 on a different system and it still had issues.

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Well that was the original plan, bought a nvme > 5 sata port expansion with the plans of sata and when the drives arrived was wondering why they werent working, turns out I know basically nothing about hard drives and bought SAS drives.

Thankfully the N2 hdd board supports both SAS and SATA so i ended up buying the sas controller rather than the 10gb ethernet pcie card which was my original plan

Im going for the io crest 10gb m.2. > ethernet, apparently it has 0 issues on truenas scale: The IOCREST M.2 to 10GbE Adapter – Review and Testing – NAS Compares

Cooling the n2… yeah, well, not great, I’m in Australia and its starting to get hot, so even with my room sitting at 20°C there has been some occasions where the drives got way too hot, the highest point (a/c was off and i wasnt home) was 63°C

Now Jonsbo initially ship the fan installed as a exhaust fan and draws air out of the case through the front, this is where i saw regular 50° tempratures on the N2, i switched it around and now having it forcing air through the drive bays out the front and its sitting much more frequenrly at 35°C but has gotten up to 49° so im keepying my eye on it.

Also I didnt realise how hot SAS cards got so currently i have the top off the N2 while im still getting it configured and have a fan ziptied to the side of the SAS Heatsink but the plan is to get a small noctua fan, design and 3d print a duct into the pcie io mesh so it can force some air through the heatsink

1 Like
7

Well ive been very committed to getting this working and so far, the only thing stopping this all working properly after plenty of trial and error…

is the fact that im getting 403 errors every now and again and it no longer accepting machineup:port after 5-10 minutes with some select apps, its weird because plex works perfectly fine, and so does drawio (was just testing and playing around) and they dont drop off but my pi hole and rr apps die after the 5-10 minute mark after being launched, so i cant access it externally.

Some apps im just having issues deploying in the first place e.g. photoprism but I think that might be becase the old configuration is in the same location as where im trying to deploy it, might just delete my entire photos folder and attempt from fresh to see if that helps.

Been a weird change and hopefully someone already knows the answer or I can figure it out and update here tomorrow

Will provide more updates as I go through with my little learning adventure

8

What were your network issues on 24.10? I am also having network issues with internet traffic (high google.com ping times and hit or miss access externally). However 24.4 everything is perfectly fine. Already tried replacing my physical gateway, nics, and apps.