(SOLVED) BTX halted during update to v13.0

[John45622]

Great, I'm back to square one. Switched to Legacy boot and booting from TN13 USB stick gives this, just like before. I guess this box is forever stuck at TN12U8.1 .

Summary of what I've tried:

In place upgrade from 12 to 13 from GUI (BIOS mode)I: BTX halted
New boot env. install of TN13 to same NVME in BIOS mode: won't boot at all from USB
Fresh install of TN12 in UEFI mode: wont reboot after install
Fresh install of TN13 in UEFI mode: will boot from USB but won't reboot after install (just like TN12)
Fresh install of TN12 in BIOS: works and reboots

I'm at the end of my ropes, unless anyone has another idea...

Why doesn't the box even boot in BIOS mode from the TN13 installer? So weird.

 

[chruk]

The error you got from the UEFI install is because its missing the required bootblocks, are you sure it was an actual clean install with wiped partition tables?

Going back to legacy boot wont work as you got some kind of incompatibility, so you will need to get the UEFI boot working.

If you try the UEFI again, and you get the missing boot block error again, then boot into a rescue shell, import the pool and manually install the boot blocks. This should all be taken care of by the installer though and would only expect this issue either if you didnt actually properly write the previous install or did a upgrade in place.

I am tempted to link the FreeBSD guide here for manually installing the files, but I think first make sure you have fully wiped the system pool disks (boot-pool). (data pool can preserve no problem). Then install using the UEFI option.

Just to clarify since you said you tried two UEFI installs but only showed one error.

What happens when doing "Fresh install of TN13 in UEFI mode: will boot from USB but won't reboot after install (just like TN12)" ?

 

[John45622]

Thank for those tips! I have tried to clean install TN13 at least 5 times now in UEFI mode. I positively used the "fresh install" which wipes the NVME boot disk. I enabled swap partition. The installer completes successfully every time but on reboot I get the error I posted every time. It will also not boot from the NVME after manually selecting that drive manually via the boot menu.

Not sure what else to "wipe" other than selecting "fresh install" from the TN13 Installer. Is there another option I'm not seeing? It goes through the installer successfully every time. The trouble starts on the first reboot after that. ( screen shot here https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/btx-halted-during-update-to-v13-0.101258/post-705627 )

For some weird reason the TN13 USB installer ONLY boots in UEFI mode and the TN12 installer only in BIOS mode. The latter ALWAYS installer successfully regardless of fresh install or to a new boot environment.

This server has been running all updates of FN/TN for the last 2-3 years and went through every GUI update flawlessly (set to legacy boot). The TN13 is the first one that refuses to reboot after UEFI install.

 

[chruk]

This perhaps needs a reply from someone who has worked on these TrueNAS installer images as my replies are based on my experience of FreeBSD. Sorry I wasnt able to help you get 13 up and running.

 

[John45622]

This perhaps needs a reply from someone who has worked on these TrueNAS installer images as my replies are based on my experience of FreeBSD. Sorry I wasnt able to help you get 13 up and running.

No worries, thank you for making the effort to respond!
I'll stay on the sidelines with TN12. I don't know what else to try.

 

[Zepes]

Hey,
we struggled with the same problem but we got a bit further. In the BIOS of our supermicro board is a setting under "Advanced - PCIe/PCI/PnP Config" called "NVMe Firmware Source". We set this to "Vendor Defined Firmware".
After that it was possible to install and boot UEFI Version 12 but not 13 (this stops at can't load kernel).

 

[John45622]

Weeks later and hours spent on all sorts of BIOS changes, incl. updating the firmware of the NVME etc. the final solution was to replace the NVME system drive with a different one from Micron (same vendor but different model. 2300 series M.2 SSD. Was 2200 series before). That was it. Now the TN13 installer will boot and install and reboot just fine in UEFI mode. No idea if this was just this particular NVME or a general problem of that particular model.