Can't get to UI or web UI (BOUNTY)

[Ryan Smyth]

THERE IS A BOUNTY ON THIS FOR WHOEVER HELPS ME SOLVE THE PROBLEM. (See below.)

I'm running FreeNAS 8.0.3 or 8.0.4 (not sure) on an HP Proliant Microserver. The machine normally runs headless and I basically never access it other than as a network drive. The last time I logged in to the web admin was probably over a year ago, and the last time I logged into the machine locally was when I first set it up.

NO WEB UI
The web UI won't run. I don't get an error page - the web server isn't running.

NO LOCAL MACHINE UI
I also can't login locally on the machine. I get loader pages and gobbledygook. Here's a picture of the screen:

http://imgur.com/EAGYpgw

That just keeps repeating forever and no login screen or UI comes up.

SAFE MODE BROKEN
If I try to boot in safe mode, I get other problems and cannot access the network drive. Things are only worse like this.

CAN LOGIN AS ROOT OVER SSH (PUTTY)
I *can* login as root via SSH, but I have no clue how to do anything there as all the manuals are for the UI and I'm not a FreeBSD admin/expert.

NETWORK DRIVE IS WORKING
I *can* access the network drive when booting to the default boot menu option.

Basically, I can't do anything on the machine except use it as a drive, and now I need to change some configurations in it, but can't as there's no UI for me to use to do that.

I have no idea how to solve this, and no idea how to upgrade under these conditions.

I'd like to upgrade if possible, but really, the most important thing is for me to just be able to get the UI and web admin UI running normally again.

BOUNTY
I'm offering a 50 HUC (Huntercoins) bounty for whoever helps me solve this. (Right now, 50 HUC is about 0.065 BTC (Bitcoins) or about $38 USD.) If you can't accept HUC, I'll sell the 50 HUC and send you BTC. If multiple people participate in helping, I'll split that up proportionately, if appropriate, according to how I found the information useful and how my problem got solved.

For the bounty, there are 2 problems that need to be solved:

1) Getting the local machine UI back.
2) Getting the web admin UI back.

 

[Michael Wulff Nielsen]

I think your USB stick went bad. Create a new one and reboot with that.

 

[Ryan Smyth]

It's not running off of a USB stick. It's running off of the drives in the server.

 

[Michael Wulff Nielsen]

I still think it might be worth a try, create a new usb stick and boot the server from that. That will probably allow you to access your data.

 

[Ryan Smyth]

I can give it a shot, but I can already access the data. Accessing the data isn't the problem. It's the local machine UI and web admin that have gone wonky/missing. What I'm aiming to do is repair the current FreeNAS installation. I'll dig out a USB stick and give it a shot, but I'm not sure how that will help me fix the OS on disk. :( (I'd like to avoid having a USB stick running the machine as it's 1 more part to deal with.)

 

[cyberjock]

mwulff is probably right with reinstalling FreeNAS. Your FreeNAS installation is probably corrupt in some way. I'd do one of 2 things:

1. Install FreeNAS to a new hard drive.
2. Install FreeNAS to a USB stick.

If you have a backup of your config file that'll be useful. Otherwise you can copy your config file(/data/freenasv1.db) to your pool, then after you reinstall FreeNAS you simply auto-import the pool and create a simple network share so you can get to your config file. Then upload the config file to the server and reboot and viola, all back to normal. 8.0.4 isn't available for download AFAIK, and I'd highly recommend you upgrade to 8.3.1 or 9.2.0.

 

[Michael Wulff Nielsen]

What you're seeing there is a "Shared library" loader that crashes on loading something. I think that one of the following things has happened:

1. the FreeNAS installation is corrupt
2. The drive with the installation is dying
3. You have bad ram.

So to rule out 1+2 I suggested that you make a usb boot stick and try that.

 

[Michael Wulff Nielsen]

And your installation on the machine is dead, consider it completely gone. Your data is probably safe and well, but I would consider the installation itself corrupted.

 

[Ryan Smyth]

What you're seeing there is a "Shared library" loader that crashes on loading something. I think that one of the following things has happened:

1. the FreeNAS installation is corrupt
2. The drive with the installation is dying
3. You have bad ram.

So to rule out 1+2 I suggested that you make a usb boot stick and try that.

Sigh... I guess I'll get that all done & see if it's #1, hopefully... Off to get on with it...

 

[Ryan Smyth]

What you're seeing there is a "Shared library" loader that crashes on loading something. I think that one of the following things has happened:

1. the FreeNAS installation is corrupt
2. The drive with the installation is dying
3. You have bad ram.

So to rule out 1+2 I suggested that you make a usb boot stick and try that.

Well, it seems like the FreeNAS installation was corrupted.

BTW - Yes - it was running off of a USB drive. I'd completely forgotten about that - the microserver has the USB drive inside the case. It's been so long since I set it up that I'd completely forgotten about that and assumed that I'd installed the OS on the internal drives. (I've got a mining rig running the same way, and I'm really starting to like using USB sticks for the OS as opposed to HDDs or SSDs. USB is just so much nicer & cleaner than clunky drives.)

So, setting up a new USB drive with the most recent release (9.2.1.2) and configuring all of that now has everything working.

Michael, if you can post or PM me a HUC address, I'll send the bounty to you. If you don't want to or can't set up the Huntercoin wallet client (the QT client), then get an account at https://www.poloniex.com/ and copy the HUC address under the "Balances" tab and I'll send it there (you can then trade it for BTC, etc.). Just make certain that the address is correct, because once it's sent, it's sent. The address will look something like: "HBT6ysHvtdMuvw7yacAZm5GV5K2ZcdR8cu" (no quotes).

Thanks for the help. Wasn't quite the result I had hoped for, but things are working once again and I've been able to reconfig the things I needed to.

 

[Ryan Smyth]

BTW - How can I change the thread prefix to "Solved"?