Can't boot after updating V 11

[John Fitzpatrick]

Two weeks after a fresh install of Version 11.0, I elected to install the updates shown as needed in the GUI. They downloaded, installed, and the reboot began. However, it failed with this error: "This is a Freenas data disk and cannot boot system. System halted". The system was operating normally prior to this on a 9 device home office network.
Hardware: ASRock C2550D41, 32 GB ECC RAM, 7x2TB WD Red drives in Z2 array. Boot device is a San Disc 32GB USB.

 

[nojohnny101]

Your system is trying to boot from one of your disks that is part of your pool. Just go into the BIOS and change the boot order to prioritize your boot media (whatever it is).

I've seen this behavior when updating from time to time.

 

[Ericloewe]

Just remove everything except the boot device from the boot priorities list to seriously mitigate this issue.

 

[John Fitzpatrick]

Thank you. i'll try that when I get home tonight. I wish I'd set things up so I could access the box when away. Can you direct me to the part of the manual explaining that process ?

 

[Evertb1]

Thank you. i'll try that when I get home tonight. I wish I'd set things up so I could access the box when away. Can you direct me to the part of the manual explaining that process ?

You should read the manual of your motherboards bios about that (the section handling the boot stuf).

 

[John Fitzpatrick]

Thank you, I have.

I have tried to re-establish the boot device priorities in place prior to the upgrade. Unfortunately, I cannot enter the motherboard bios with the FreeNAS boot USB in place: after the splash screen, the boot-up goes straight to the error message.

With all the drives and the boot USB removed, I can enter the bios, but the boot priorities selection is greyed out, which would be normal.

What is odd is that with the drives reconnected, when I remove the boot USB and attempt to enter the bios , I get the same behavior-- "This is a FreeNAS data disk...etc.", and a halt. Something is reporting a FreeNAS environment to the bios ram, and that could only be the HD data array.

All I can figure is that during the upgrade the OS start-up area got corrupted so that during the boot sequence the bios doesn't recognize the USB as bootable and skips it. When it goes down its sequence to a hard drive's boot partition, it reads an OS specific file that indicates a non-bootable FreeNAS device, and it halts.

I'm going to reinstall 9.3.

 

[Stux]

Thank you, I have.

I have tried to re-establish the boot device priorities in place prior to the upgrade. Unfortunately, I cannot enter the motherboard bios with the Freenas boot USB in place: after the splash screen, the boot-up goes straight to the error message.

With all the drives and the boot USB removed, I can enter the bios, but the boot priorities selection is greyed out, which would be normal.

What is odd is that with the drives reconnected, when I remove the boot USB and attempt to enter the bios , I get the same behavior-- "This is a Freenas data disk...etc.", and a halt. Something is reporting a Freenas environment to the bios ram, and that could only be the HD data array.

Not really. Its perfectly expected since the issue appears to be your BIOS is configured to boot off the HD array.

All I can figure is that during the upgrade the OS start-up area got corrupted so that during the boot sequence the bios doesn't recognize the USB as bootable and skips it. When it goes down its sequence to a hard drive's boot partition, it reads an OS specific file that indicates a non-bootable freenas device, and it halts.

I'm going to reinstall 9.3.

As has been said, if you attempt to boot off the drive array, that is the error you get.

You should be able to enter the bios with devices connected. Try repeatedly pressing, DEL, or F1, F2, or F8, or F12, or F11, etc as your machine reboots. See your manual (or the splash screen) the exact key to press... repeatedly.

 

[Evertb1]

Thank you, I have.
What is odd is that with the drives reconnected, when I remove the boot USB and attempt to enter the bios , I get the same behavior-- "This is a Freenas data disk...etc.", and a halt. Something is reporting a Freenas environment to the bios ram, and that could only be the HD data array.
I'm going to reinstall 9.3.

There is nothing odd about that. If you don't interrupt the POST sequence quick enough to go to the bios setup, your system will continue the POST and seek possible boot candidates (a drive with boot info). If the only drive(s) found is(are) not bootable you get an error. And I agree with Stux. As soon as your computer is in POST start hitting the <F2> or <Del> key. Both should work on your motherboard according to the manual. Don't wait until you see the splash screen.

If I had your trouble with a USB stick that is suppose to be bootable I would do the following things until I had a solution:

• Try the USB stick on another computer see if it boots there
• Put the USB stick in another port see if it boots there
• Try to force the motherboard to the boot menu to see if the stick is even visible as boot option. If it is choose it and see what happens. Hitting the <F11> key during POST puts you in the boot menu on some Asrock boards. Otherwise try <F12> . I am not sure if you can enter the boot menu from Uefi.
• Create a new bootable stick and try that one.
• etc. etc.

By the way. I have used bootable USB sticks about as long as it is possible to boot from them and I have seen several of them that gets corrupted. If I create a bootable disk on an used USB stick I always clean it up first. Just to be sure that I start on a clean slate. There are tools available to do that but if you have a Windows computer "Diskpart" will do the trick as well. Tools as Rufus are supposed to do the clean job before making the stick bootable but better safe then sorry. I have had some sticks that every computer I own just refused to boot from. They always end up in the trash can.

 

[John Fitzpatrick]

I'm reasonably sure the problems are the result of something in the update process, not hardware, but I'll test the drive to see if it failed coincidentally.

The problem isn't not hitting the escape or F2 keys quickly enough to bring up the BIOS configuration screen before it tries to load an OS. When this particular American Megatrends BIOS reads its USB table, it appears to catch a pointer to the boot loader prior to detecting the keyboard. That may be why I'm unable to divert the process to configuration prior to it halting. It appears as through the USB drive is simply no longer being detected, but that doesn't explain the non-boot device error or why the bios won't accept a keyboard input unless the array is removed.

I'm going to disconnect the HD array and connect single SATA HD and a DVD drive and see if having those devices in place will let me reset the boot priorities. Meanwhile, if someone knows if FreeNAS places a file on HD boot sector in a Z2 array, I'd appreciate hearing.

 

[Stux]

As everyone keeps on saying it does. The "file" prints the message you're getting.

 

[Evertb1]

I'm reasonably sure the problems are the result of something in the update process, not hardware

It is certainly possible that your USB stick got corrupted during the update but most likely not because of the update. There is a difference. But then again it happened to me with USB sticks more often then any other boot device I used. That's is why I did away with my mirrored USB sticks and have a small single SSD now.

When this particular American Megatrends BIOS reads its USB table, it appears to catch a pointer to the boot loader prior to detecting the keyboard. That may be why I'm unable to divert the process to configuration prior to it halting.

Very unlikely. The BIOS is part of the hardware of your motherboard. No matter what devices are installed/connected -being it an OS drive or anything else- you should be able to enter the BIOS during the POST. Boot will be executed after the POST is finished. The POST routines are part of your computers pre-boot sequence; if they complete successfully, the boot-strap loader code is invoked. There can be several causes if you are not able to interrupt the POST with your keyboard. Wireless keyboards sometimes won't be easy detected. If you use a wired keyboard it is sometimes better to use the ports on the back of the PC etc. Lots of material about this is to find on the web.

 

[pschatz100]

Do not assume that something is horribly wrong with FreeNAS. It is possible that the USB device got corrupted during the update. USB flash drives are notoriously unreliable and when they are on the edge of failure, they tend to go bad when doing OS updates. This is common.

However, it is also possible your boot device may have two bootloaders installed: one for BIOS boot and one for UEFI boot and your motherboard is trying to use the wrong one. If this is the case, your motherboard will potentially see two devices in the boot priorities section: one named something like [UEFI]SandiskXXXXX and another named SandiskXXXXX. If you have your motherboard set for UEFI boot, then you need to select [UEFI]SandiskXXXXX and disable everything else. If you have your motherboard set for Legacy or BIOS boot (I don't know what ASRock calls it) then you need to select SandiskXXXXX and disable everything else. If you have your system set up for UEFI boot, but have selected the SandiskXXXXX, then it will see that device as a data disk when you restart.

I had this situation on a Supermicro motherboard after a fresh install of FreeNAS 11.

As has been suggested, I would disconnect your data disks as a safety measure to make certain you do not damage any data, then work out the boot situation. That will also reduce the number of devices you see in your boot priority list - which might help you figure out the correct solution. If you truly cannot enter the motherboard bios settings when devices are attached, this may indicate other problems. Have you tried confirming boot settings using IPMI?

 

[John Fitzpatrick]

Nojohnny
Thank you for your thoughtful response.
Logging into the bios is only impossible if the boot usb is inserted. I believe it's the result of the order that the bios reads and processes hardware. The usb is the only bootable device-no optical drive, hd array removed, so the boot priority is not an issue either.

The usb was altered from boot to data during the update.
I confirmed this by trying to boot from it on a different PC: I got the same error message =can't boot from a FreeNAS data disc. This on an Asus X99 motherboard, Win7 HTPC.

I'm left thinking that since the probability that a boot drive would fail in such a way as to randomly ID itself to the bios as a "FreeNAS data disk", coincidently during a version update is vanishingly small. And that pretty much just leaves a bug.
I don't say that lightly, but Occam's razor offers a big hint.
If the devs doubt or need more data, I can see if it's reproducible.

 

[nojohnny101]

Logging into the bios is only impossible if the boot usb is inserted.

Did you mean "possible"?

All of the advice on here you have been given seems to line up with what I think is wrong. What your describing I believe I understand but I have never heard of an instance where you couldn't push F2 or F11 (or whatever it is) on the keyboard to get to the BIOS. That option is almost immediately presented immediately preceding powering on. The way you are describing other hardware being detected and it starting to go the boot order of the disks says that it had already completed POST, which a computer has to do before beginning to boot. Immediately following the POST sequence (or maybe it is part of the POST process?) there has to be an option to enter a boot order menu or the BIOS.

That is why many on here have stated, it really doesn't matter what is plugged into the system, you should always been able to enter the BIOS menu regardless.

 

[wblock]

There were some systems with broken UEFI or BIOS implementations. Some were Lenovo, and refused to boot when a disk with the wrong type of partition was present. Some were HP, with a similar problem. Most of these were several years back.

On these systems, the setup screens could be inaccessible if a disk with certain contents was present. The solution would be disconnect the disk and upgrade the BIOS.

 

[pschatz100]

The usb was altered from boot to data during the update.
I confirmed this by trying to boot from it on a different PC: I got the same error message =can't boot from a FreeNAS data disc. This on an Asus X99 motherboard, Win7 HTPC.

Any disk that cannot boot can be seen as a data disk. That doesn't really mean much. Did you try installing a copy of FreeNAS to another USB flash drive? I've had problems such you are describing when a flash drive failed.

 

[John Fitzpatrick]

Very long story, short: my case had a loose USB connectiom to the motherboard and I have several look-alike USB drives. Frustration, mixed up USB drives, errors that make no sense or don't repeat-- I felt like I was playing whack-a-mole.
But once I switched the keyboard to a front pannel socket, I could get into the bios and see my problem.

Hardware intermittent faults and carelessness on my part by plugging in the wrong drive. Sorted out.

 

[pschatz100]

Glad you got it resolved.