StFS
Cadet
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2018
- Messages
- 6
I built a FreeNAS system about two years ago from a Dell Precision T5400, 16GB RAM, LSI MegaRAID SAS 9211-8i controller and 6 WD RED 4TB hard drives (plus 1 WD GREEN that's connected for fun, not part of the ZFS pool).
It worked fine for some time and I moved a bunch of stuff to it for safe keeping. After that it wasn't in heavy use at all, so I'm not quite sure when exactly it stopped working but now when I try to reboot the machine I get the dreaded "BTX halted" message.
I've read that going into the BIOS and selecting the AHCI option often works but that does not seem to do anything for me. In fact, I can't really find any such setting in the LSI bios. I did find something hinting towards AHCI in the Dell BIOS and that is set, I've tried changing it back and forth but that makes no difference.
I should note that all the WD disks are connected to the LSI MegaRAID controller and I've turned all SATA ports on the motherboard off which is why I'm mostly trying to find AHCI settings in the LSI BIOS.
Anyway, when I boot there are some noteworthy things:
1) The LSI "boot screen" reports all my drives as 0TB in size (attaching a picture of that).
2) If I boot into a Linux live cd and run lshw or lsblk, I can see the drives, and that they have ZFS. The size is reported correctly as well. I'm attaching output from those two commands.
I've tried making a clean TrueNAS USB stick to boot off but that still gets stuck. I'm going to try to use a fresh FreeNAS stick (an older version that might be closer to what was in use when the thing went sour) next to see if that makes any difference (but I doubt it).
I'm running out of ideas for what to try here. Any pointers on something to try, either to fix this or to provide more information for you smart people.
P.S. this may possibly have happened after an upgrade... I'm ashamed to admit that it's been so long that I can't really remember whether an upgrade went south and I gave up and was going to come back at it later. However, the fact that this happens when I use a fresh USB stick sort of makes me doubt that. There must be some other problem preventing TrueNAS from booting up with these drives connected. I know this is dumb... please don't scold me.
It worked fine for some time and I moved a bunch of stuff to it for safe keeping. After that it wasn't in heavy use at all, so I'm not quite sure when exactly it stopped working but now when I try to reboot the machine I get the dreaded "BTX halted" message.
I've read that going into the BIOS and selecting the AHCI option often works but that does not seem to do anything for me. In fact, I can't really find any such setting in the LSI bios. I did find something hinting towards AHCI in the Dell BIOS and that is set, I've tried changing it back and forth but that makes no difference.
I should note that all the WD disks are connected to the LSI MegaRAID controller and I've turned all SATA ports on the motherboard off which is why I'm mostly trying to find AHCI settings in the LSI BIOS.
Anyway, when I boot there are some noteworthy things:
1) The LSI "boot screen" reports all my drives as 0TB in size (attaching a picture of that).
2) If I boot into a Linux live cd and run lshw or lsblk, I can see the drives, and that they have ZFS. The size is reported correctly as well. I'm attaching output from those two commands.
I've tried making a clean TrueNAS USB stick to boot off but that still gets stuck. I'm going to try to use a fresh FreeNAS stick (an older version that might be closer to what was in use when the thing went sour) next to see if that makes any difference (but I doubt it).
I'm running out of ideas for what to try here. Any pointers on something to try, either to fix this or to provide more information for you smart people.
P.S. this may possibly have happened after an upgrade... I'm ashamed to admit that it's been so long that I can't really remember whether an upgrade went south and I gave up and was going to come back at it later. However, the fact that this happens when I use a fresh USB stick sort of makes me doubt that. There must be some other problem preventing TrueNAS from booting up with these drives connected. I know this is dumb... please don't scold me.
