Boots to EFI Shell - safe to try reinstalling FREENAS ? Where to start?

[Dave Conrad]

I have a FreeNAS computer running for 4 years or so with no problems. All of a sudden it is booting to a EFI Shell.

First I see ....

and then this....

While booting there is an option, press Ctrl-C for Avago config utility. This gives me this...

From what I can see i can't anything wrong hardware wise. The BIOS and configurations seem intact. The Supermicro motherboard has IPMI interface has a health check showing all is good and there are no alerts in the log besides the case was opened years ago.

Unfortunately, I don't remember what version of FreeNAS was installed on this box. I was just using it solely as a network file server. It's been so reliable I haven't had to touch it since it was set up (and yes, I know I should have given it more 'love' :( )

Any and all advice and/or help would be greatly appreciated, even just where to start as far as reading manuals, what manuals to read, etc.. I'm lost with not knowing if this shell i am in is part of freenas, or something else. Typing help shows a list of commands that scrolls past too quickly to find anything that might help me get a version number from the command prompt. I tried uname -a and some other things, but nothing is recognized. I think i might be in the wrong shell / command line.

Like I say, I'm sure where to even start :(

I don't think my hardware isat issue, but the specs are ...

Searching your forum posts I found something possibly similar https://www.ixsystems.com/community/threads/supermicro-x11-wont-automatically-boot.45168/ but he says UEFI and my shell just says EFI

His resolution was reinstalling FreeNAS which i'm willing to try. Is there a guide or walkthrough that will help me to reinstall without damaging my filesystem ?

The biggest challenge i see here is possibly gathering information about my installation (FreeNAS version, raid array style, i.e. RAID 0 or 1 or whatever) I hadn't realized that I would forget things like this and I can't find where i documented it :(

I know this sounds dumb but I'm so stressed out (the business i started is down to me just working it and I haven't had time for proper maintenance and stuff :( )

Thanks in advance for any help you might be able to provide, or even steering me in the direction of where to start!

 

[Samuel Tai]

This is not the FreeNAS shell. This is the UEFI shell.

First, try typing in blk1:, and then ls. (Try the same with blk2:.) If you get output that includes an efi directory, you've found a boot disk. Then try cd efi, and ls again. If this is a valid UEFI directory, you should see a boot directory. Again, try cd boot, and ls. You should see a file named BOOTx64.efi. Run BOOTx64.efi.

 

[Dave Conrad]

Thank you so much for your quick reply! Powered the system back up after opening the case to refresh my recollection of what was inside. Checked all the cables were snug etc. When it powered back up, FreeNAS loaded this time.

I have no idea what was wrong, the cables didn't seem loose or anything but i didn't touch much else. I had rebooted 5 times before opening the case. I wonder if something may be intermittently failing / ready to fail or if touching the cables just got it back up and running.

I've learned my lesson and am currently documenting everything I can document. FreeNAS build 9.10.2-U5 (561f0d7a1)

Is there an easy way to quickly dump all of the settings to a file or anything like that? I'm treating this like it may fail at any moment just to be safe.

In the case there are 3 WD reds at 4TB each, a WD blue 1TB, and a usb flash drive 8GB plugged directly into the motherboard. I take it that is what it boots from, and possibly what failed? thoughts?

 

[Samuel Tai]

There should be a button to save your config under System->General. Current best practice is not to use USB thumb drives as boot volumes, due to their unreliability. You may want to get a small SSD to use as a boot volume, and then mirror the boot drive as described in Section 5.3.1 of the 9.10 Guide.

 

[Dave Conrad]

Thank you so much ! !