SOLVED checksum fail while installing FreeNAS 11.3

[HeadCase]

I can feel your frustration mistermanko. I have experienced about the same. I had my freenas running since 9.3 and it has been updated to 9.10 (cant remember exact versions). Going to 11.x version started a lot of problems just like yours. I tried usb2 kingstons that i have used earlier, tried new usb3 kingston (2 models) and also sandisk stick (32gb and 64gb). Every single one had problems and I tested them in all possible ports of mb (usb2 and usb3). Eventually I gave up and put old 500gb laptop drive to sata and installation worked on first try.
My system is:
Supermicro x10sl7-f
Intel xeon e3-1230v3
24gb ddr3 ecc

Pools were not connected at that point. And cdrom was connected to sata.
Now when i think those usb installs were done when i had pentium g3260 processor on that server.

 

[mistermanko]

@twitchingtongues hope you resolved your issues.

@HeadCase I'm rather conviced that they changed some parts of the installer between 9 and 11 that call specific functions (crypto i.e) in the CPU. That's where we did struggle. I'm still not 100% sure that it is my cpu rather than my motherboard. I switched to MICRON RAM in the meantime and issue still persists, what let's me think it's not a cpu-ram-related problem. A different mobo is on the way, let's see if it makes anything different.

All in all, the whole FreeNAS ordeal did cost me a good chunk of money I did not plan to spend on a file-server...
I hope the new board fixes it for me. Well, there is still a CPU to swap out for something else... ahh fuck...

 

[mihai]

I had this problem on two HP Microservers.

What solved it for me was to replace the USB boot disks with an SSD disk.

 

[GAmedia]

Hi, I've spent the whole day trying to install a fresh 11.3 U1 over my previous 9.3. NO WAY!
Have used every USB stick around from every brand and capacity, also burned several DVD with the triple downloaded and SH256 checked ISO! NO WAY!
I do not think that anyone could waste all this time in an update that should be stupid, smooth and painless!
I'm very disappointed with such lack of seriousness and professionalism in releasing a bugged system in such a critical area of use!
I'm wondering how valid and reliable these new versions actually are!
I will probably have to switch to the competitor to have an updated system that does not cost me other whole days of anger!
Tomorrow i will make one last attempt with both a mechanical hard drive and ssd!!!

 

[sretalla]

Hi, I've spent the whole day trying to install a fresh 11.3 U1 over my previous 9.3. NO WAY!
Have used every USB stick around from every brand and capacity, also burned several DVD with the triple downloaded and SH256 checked ISO! NO WAY!
I do not think that anyone could waste all this time in an update that should be stupid, smooth and painless!
I'm very disappointed with such lack of seriousness and professionalism in releasing a bugged system in such a critical area of use!
I'm wondering how valid and reliable these new versions actually are!
I will probably have to switch to the competitor to have an updated system that does not cost me other whole days of anger!
Tomorrow i will make one last attempt with both a mechanical hard drive and ssd!!!

If you would like some help, perhaps you can start by explaning what NO WAY! entails... what exactly did you try that resulted in the process not working?

Also, the upgrade (it seems this is your plan) from 9.3 to 11.3 is not supported. You would first need to upgrade to 9.10 from 9.3.

You need to do your homework about what's supported before complaining about things that don't work as you expect.

 

[Redcoat]

Searching this forum, In a March '19 post, moderator Chris Moore described a safe approach for the upgrade to the then-current 11.2 from 9.3:

"First, upgrade from 9.3 to 9.10 because that changes the underlying version of BSD:
https://archive.freenas.org/9.10/STABLE/9.10.2-U6/

After that, upgrade from 9.10 to 11.1 because that does another upgrade to the underlying version of BSD:
https://download.freenas.org/11/11.1-U7/

<snip>
Then, you can go to 11.2, which does yet another upgrade to the underlying version of BSD:
https://download.freenas.org/11.2/STABLE/U5/ "

 

[GAmedia]

If you would like some help, perhaps you can start by explaning what NO WAY! entails... what exactly did you try that resulted in the process not working?

Also, the upgrade (it seems this is your plan) from 9.3 to 11.3 is not supported. You would first need to upgrade to 9.10 from 9.3.

You need to do your homework about what's supported before complaining about things that don't work as you expect.

Hi, for me NO WAY have just one meaning! No way to install!
AND IT IS A FRESH INSTALL (as I wrote), NOT AN UPGRADE! clean USB of every brand and size! but no way at all to make it install!
My system works perfectly with the 9.3 install! So I COMPLAIN with an install that can't be used to actualize a previously working machine!
That is! And for shure I'll not spend any more money to change the hardware again! (dual xeon 5430L server with IBM1015 HBA and 24Gb ram).
kind regards.

 

[sretalla]

There's a good chance that your system could have a problem with the FreeBSD bootloader. This was switched in 11.1 if I remember right, so you could test that theory by using the last version of FreeNAS still using GRUB... Try 11.0 and see what happens.

You're still not helping a lot in explaining that it doesn't work at all (so I'm having to guess that you mean it installs but doesn't boot after that or won't even boot the installer). It was helpful to learn that you're trying to do a fresh install... would be interesting to know how you're going about it? (wiping the stick first or just selecting it from the list with the installer and allowing it to overwrite).

 

[mpyusko]

%Packages/base-os-11.3-U2.1-bc86b76ae495004d25ba5747c17e5282.tgz has invalid checksum

Trying to upgrade to 11.3. Just updated to 11.2-U8 about 10 minutes ago with no issues. This is the 4th time in a row I have received the same error message trying to attempt the 11.3 upgrade.

Dell R710​

2X Intel E5640 Xeon CPUs ( Dual Hexa-core, 24 threads)​

96GB DDR3-1333 Reg EEC DIMM​

250 GB Samsung 850 EVO (L2ARC)
1 TB Intel 660p (ZIL/SLOG) PCIex4 bus​

6x 3 TB WD RED NAS 5400 RPM (raidz2)​

16 GB Sandisk Ultra USB 3.0 (internal USB 2.0 port)​

LSI SAS-2011-8i HBA PCIex8 @5GT/s​

4x Broadcom Limited NetXtreme II BCM5709 Gigabit Ethernet​

And to note, I have not found anywhere that says FreeNAS should not be installed to USB. (Perhaps people are confusing it with Xenserver/XCP-ng?)

 

[sretalla]

And to note, I have not found anywhere that says FreeNAS should not be installed to USB. (Perhaps people are confusing it with Xenserver/XCP-ng?)

I think the notes here make it pretty clear... you can do it, but it can be a bad idea particularly if not using top quality USB hardware... if you're not convinced you need an SSD after reading it, we can't help you when your USB stick dies.

1. Introduction — FreeNAS®11.3-U2 User Guide Table of Contents

www.ixsystems.com

 

[mpyusko]

I think the notes here make it pretty clear... you can do it, but it can be a bad idea particularly if not using top quality USB hardware... if you're not convinced you need an SSD after reading it, we can't help you when your USB stick dies.

1. Introduction — FreeNAS®11.3-U2 User Guide Table of Contents

www.ixsystems.com

The big draw to FreeNAS to begin with was the fact USB installation was the preferred method, since all the internal drive bays are used for the storage array. As a rule, I preemptively image them to new USBs every 12 months, this maintains integrity and newer flashdrives are increasingly more resilient.

FYI.... I have a 9.10 box that runs off mirrored flashdrives and it's it's current uptime is 545 days.

That being said, the current flashdrive in this box is only a couple months old, so it's highly doubtful it is corrupt. Add in the fact I had zero issues running the latest 11.2-U8 update 10 minutes prior, and that raises more concern of a bug in the 11.3 upgrade/verification process. Reading through this thread, it appears to be a fairly common issue.

 

[mistermanko]

I'm just jumping in to say that my issues - and with it the cause of this thread - was not remotely related to boot drive issues. So it could be your thumb drives or not, you only find out if you try other ones or ssd boot drives.

 

[mpyusko]

The big draw to FreeNAS to begin with was the fact USB installation was the preferred method, since all the internal drive bays are used for the storage array. As a rule, I preemptively image them to new USBs every 12 months, this maintains integrity and newer flashdrives are increasingly more resilient.

FYI.... I have a 9.10 box that runs off mirrored flashdrives and it's it's current uptime is 545 days.

That being said, the current flashdrive in this box is only a couple months old, so it's highly doubtful it is corrupt. Add in the fact I had zero issues running the latest 11.2-U8 update 10 minutes prior, and that raises more concern of a bug in the 11.3 upgrade/verification process. Reading through this thread, it appears to be a fairly common issue.

I upgraded RAM (Changed out all the sticks). upgraded CPUs (replaced both.... obviously). and even migrated the L2ARC to new(er) 500 GB SSD. After all that, it still failed the checskum validation upgrading to 11.3-U2. I ordered a USB to SATA cable and switched my FreeNAS-Boot to the "old" 250 GB SSD, previously using for the L2ARC. After resilvering completed, I pull the flashdrive from the mirror, rebooted and set the BIOS to boot from the new location. When it came back online I tried the upgrade again from 11.2-U8 to 11.3-U2. It downloaded, and installed without any checksum failures.

Note: I am still booting via USB, but from a SATA Samsung 860 Evo SSD instead of a 16 GB Sandisk Ultra UDB 3.0 flashdrive.

(The L2ARC SSD resides in the "optical" bay)

 

[mpyusko]

For the benefit of all...

As you'll see above, I had this issue and solved it by switching to an actual SSD connected to the USB port. A post-mortem of the original flash drive was interesting to diagnose. I did a simple dd if=/dev/zero of=(usb flashdrive) bs=512 count=1 to wipe the partition table. Then I switched to my win10 machine to play with it. My workstation has 72GB RAM in it so windows disk-cache can tend to get rather enormous. In fact entire ISOs can stay redident in RAM for a fair amount of time, which became evident with this experiment.

With a clean partition table, I fromated the flashdrive as usual. Then I picked a large ISO faile from my repository and ran a SHA256 Checsum against it. It came back with the expected result. (The file read loaded the entire ISO ~9GB into RAM). I then copied and pasted the ISO to the old flashdrive. Watching Task Manager I noticed a steady write to the Flashdriv, but no read activity from the source volume (a sign it was all coming from RAM). When the IOS finished copying, I ran a SHA256 against it. I noticed there was no read activity coming from the flashdrive, during the process. It completed with a matching result. Scratching my head a minute, I decided to unplug the flashdrive and reinsert it. Then when I rans the same SHA256 against the ISO file on it, theye was substantial read activity from the flashdrive and it came bag with an incorrect value!!! Ah ha.... a failed flashdrive! To be certian, I tried the same test on three onther USB flash drives of various ages I had kicking around my desk. They all passed.

1. wipe flashdrive's existing partition table and create a new volume
2. find a large ISO or file to use for test. (Small files came back with passing checksums)
3. run a SHA256 against the ISO to confirm it's hash.
4. copy the ISO to the suspect flashdrive
5. remove flashdrive from USB port and reinsert. (This will ensure the the file will be read from the drive and no the cache)
6. run a SHA256 against the ISO to confirm it's hash
7. compare results.

Notes:
I used "CentOS 7 Everything" ISO with a published checksum so I could confirm my source ISO was valid prior to testing.
You could perform the same test method using basic CLI tools on pretty much any OS, I just happened to have a windows workstation handy.