Get Network Info showing on FreeNAS Dashboard

[Overloke]

G'day.

 

I've spent the last, ooh, about four hours futzing around with FreeNAS, and a free PC and some hard drives I was able to pick up from work. The general idea behind it is that it's going to be an always-on backup for my Windows Server 2019 machine (since I would never remember to manually run weekly backups on external hard drives or whatever). So far so good, apart from some issues with 3rd party backup software, and then some further issues with Windows Server Backup (didn't like trying to copy the EFI partition or some such wank, so I ended up only selecting the C: drive to be backed up).

 

The only thing that is annoying me, and it's probably because I'm a pedantic bastard, is on the dashboard, FreeNAS apparently can't pull any information from the network interface. I've Googled it for about half an hour, and all of the responses are completely unrelated to my problem, and are just about getting the share to appear in Windows Explorer (which I can already do). Furthermore, all of the network information is appearing under the Reporting tab, which is odd, so it's not like it can't pull information from the NIC.

 

Hopefully it's a quick fix, but does anyone know what I can do to get the NIC information to show up on the Dashboard? I don't have my server pulling DNS duty, my Fritz!Box router seems to be more than capable of doing the job (I assume). I've also messed around with the actual NIC and DNS configuration on the FreeNAS machine itself, but nothing seems to make the information appear.

 

Cheers.

[FloRolf]

Huh that's weird. My Freenas shows all the network information as well as amount of in/outgoing traffic. 

 

What are your systems specs and especially NIC? What freenas version are you running? 

 

 

Edit: also, welcome to the forums! Please make sure to either tag people @Overloke or quote them in your reply so they get a notification and keep the conversation going. 

[Overloke]

 

4 minutes ago, FloRolf said:

What are your systems specs and especially NIC? What freenas version are you running? 

It's a Dell Vostro 230 prebuilt that I scabbed from work. It's got an Intel Core 2 Duo E7500, I threw in 8GB of RAM, and it's a mish-mash of 2 x 2TB drives and 1 x 1TB drive. Keep in mind I'm fully aware this isn't a 'safe', or 'stable', or 'sane' backup system. It was more of a learning experience than anything else.

 

The NIC is...uh, whatever is on the motherboard in that specific prebuilt. The Intel MIG41R is the motherboard, but hell if I know what the NIC is. The best I can find is 'Broadcom' and '57XX Integrated Controller', but nothing beyond that.

 

As for FreeNAS version...11.2-U7. The current latest stable one.

[Overloke]

Well, I fixed it, and I'll post it here as posterity in case anyone else Googles the same issue and can't find a direct answer.

 

• Go to Network > Global Configuration in the left-hand pane
• You must set your Default Gateway as your router, and your primary nameserver as well (unless you have some other device handling DNS)

This stumped me because, as far as I could tell in every way, I was getting network connection, I was all good. I didn't realise I had to specify the the gateway for an interface - especially because the display appears correctly on first boot. The instant you try to change the local IP address in the FreeNAS interface, it all goes to hell.