11.2-U8 >> 11.3-RELEASE Fails

Joined
Jul 25, 2016
Messages
6
The server is a stock iX Mini-XL with 8 - 2.7TB WD Reds. It ran continuously for ~3 years until a MB failure in December, which iX replaced under warranty. It has been running great since and was upgraded to U7 and then U8 couple of weeks ago.

  • When 11.3-RELEASE was out, I switched trains And did the update.
  • The update failed.
  • I rolled back to the 11.2-U8 boot and all was well.
  • Tried again -- no joy. Rolled back successfully
  • Downloaded a fresh iso and installed from USB keeping the old boot environments -- no joy.
  • In case it was a jail compatibility problem, did an iocage clean -a and tried again -- no joy

Finally I watched the boot sequence carefully and saw that middlewared was not starting. After ~10 minutes of timeouts the freebsd login prompt appears.
"freebsd-version" returns "11.3-RELEASE-p5",

On the console there are ntpd error messages, "error resolving pool 0.freebsd.pool.ntp.org" I assume this related to the missing middle ware.

I am now back to 11.2-U8, and I am functional. Is there "clean-up" I can do in the U8 boot that could fix the problems?

This is the second server I have upgraded from 11.2-U7 to 11.3. The first (an iX Mini) was upgraded through the complete 11.3-RC chain and all went swimmingly.

I have used FreeNAS for ~10 years and have always been able to bend it to my will, but I am far from knowledgeable on the inner workings.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.
 

bensyverson

Cadet
Joined
Feb 23, 2020
Messages
1
I'm having similar problems with 11.3. Coming from 11.2-U8, I tried to switch trains to 11.3-STABLE, but after downloading and installing 11.3, the machine reboots and becomes unresponsive.

It's hard to diagnose, because booting 11.3 in any form doesn't output anything via the serial port, SOL or VGA. I've also tried a fresh 11.3 ISO written to a USB drive—it gets to the boot loader but once the installer is loaded, I get nothing more from IPMI or VGA.

Reverting to 11.2-U8 fixes everything. I may wait this out until 12.0...
 
Joined
Jul 25, 2016
Messages
6
I suspect that if you watch the console a while -- 10 minutes or so -- you will get a freeBSD login prompt. You should be able to login as root and determine if freeBSD was updated.

Maybe someone will have something to offer once the work week starts.
 
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