TrueNas scale crashing

TrueNAS General
1

Hi all,

I’m new here and need a little help.

I’ve been using TrueNas for years as a Nas/Plex server. I have an AMD 3600, forget which motherboard, 32gb Corsair 3600mhz ram and 4x 4tb SATA HD. It’s never let me down, always works.

Recently I decided to treat myself and buy the bits to make a Nas with more space. I bought another AMD 3600, same chipset but different brand motherboard, 32gb ram, but this time bought a PCI sas controller and 7x 12tb sas drives.

I went to install truenas and saw that jails are being discontinued so installed TrueNas scale. As I wanted this Nas to just be for media I installed Plex server via the app store and immich for photos.

I started copying (luckily copying) data across from the old Nas and left it running over night. Next morning I couldn’t log into the Nas via the web portal. It had a loading bar and had a message saying it was trying to contact the server. I restarted the whole thing and continued copying. At some point that day the copying got stuck but didn’t fail, the speed just dropped to 0. I tried to log in again and had the same problem. Restarted it and everything was fine.

I’m new to sas drives and thought I had messed something up so took everything apart, put it all back together again, updated all the bios’/drivers I could find and went to bed. Next morning, same problem, couldn’t log in. This time I wasnt copying, so don’t believe it’s to do with hardware/sas drives. I restarted the box and went away for work for a week.

When I got back I realised that Plex had never restart when the box had been restart and I could log in fine! I restarted Plex and next morning couldn’t log in. I decided to wipe the whole thing, re installed TrueNas scale and found a guide to install Plex correctly, followed it to a tee, incase I had made a mistake previously. Started copying files again over night and next morning, same problem. Turned off Plex for three days, no problem at all.

It seems that whatever I have done is causing Plex to crash the system, but as I haven’t changed any settings, everything is default from the 2nd install, I can’t work out what it is. There are no logs in TrueNas indicating an issue. All my drives pass every scan with no errors, Lastly I found that if I plug in a monitor and look at the console after it’s got stuck, I don’t see the 1-9 options, I get a whole bunch of code which I don’t understand and I can’t scroll up or down to investigate. It’s like it’s stuck. I have attached an image of it.

If anyone has any ideas, I would really appreciate it as I’m pulling my hair out!

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Small update: I re-installed TrueNAS yesterday. I bought a new 256gb M.2 SSD for the boot drive incase that was dying. I also bought a SATA 500gb SSD drive to have a separate pool for applications like plex server and immich. I set everything up, following the installation guide to a tee. Set some data copying over night. woke up this morning and its crashed again. Had to hard reset the box. Once its rebooted, no problems at all. no errors, nothing

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Ok, was copying files back to the new NAS when the pool suddenly became unhealthy. Managed to capture this on the monitor, I think my SDF drive has a problem. Just need to work out which one it is now…

IMG_20250418_184531
IMG_20250418_1845311920×1442 298 KB

4

Just a quick update for people having the same issue as me.

I’ve finally confirmed and solved the issue was the HBA getting too hot.

After adding a couple more case fans and a 50mm noctura fan directly on the HBA heatsink blowing up and away from the heat sink, all issues have gone. No drive errors, no ZFS errors, no crashing.

If you have weird issues like I’ve had, then try cooling your HBA first, it will save you a lot of time and stress!

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5

Good find with that HBA!

Whenever I see one of those CPUs I can’t help but point out that it can have a problem at low power states. If you haven’t already, set Power Supply Idle Control in the BIOS to Typical in case you run into this issue.

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Very common issue :slight_smile:
The heatsinks on these types of components are designed for enterprise scenarios where they’d be sitting in a datacenter rack with high static pressure fans screaming away 24/7, so not as passive as they may look at first glance.

In a homelab scenario though, you probably don’t want a group of 40mm fans screaming at however-many-thousand RPM, so needs a little bit of directed airflow in it’s place

Good find!

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I did not know this, I’ll check my settings. Thanks for the tip!

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I bought four 10000rmb fans (forgot the brand) and at full tilt they are loud, however I have PWM’d them based on the motherboard BIOS CPU temp in a nice quiet curve. With four of them at 10%-15% speed, they keep everything cool enough and they are no louder than my ubiquity switch.

The noctura fan on the HBA is quiet so I just run that full tilt! See how long it lasts :rofl:

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