FreeNAS 11.1 won't seem to come up

[Soundscape]

For some reason yesterday, I couldn't access FreeNAS. No services were working. I could not figure out why so I rebooted via power button.
Still wouldn't come up. Hung at "starting jails" would sit there for an hour.
Couldn't access GUI

"An error occurred.
Sorry, the page you are looking for is currently unavailable.
Please try again later.
If you are the system administrator of this resource then you should check the error log for details.
Faithfully yours, nginx."
​

Reinstalled FreeNAS and it came back up.
Restored backup, rebooted and same hung at "starting jails"
Restored factory db from CLI and rebooted.
Imported ZFS2 volume and reconfigured my SMB shares, added in my command tasks to mount_smbfs (pre init), and installed Plex Plugin.
Saved config.
Rebooted.
Now it is hung again.... this time its stuck at "starting pbid"

my OS skills are very weak to nil. I figured out most of this stuff by reading the docs and web searches.

Update 1: just upgraded to FreeNAS-11-MASTER-201712260352 nightly and the new UI loads. If I try to switch back to old it gives me that error occurred. The upgrade shows no zfspools which were previously there and also it shows none to import.

Update 2: copied factory-v1.db over freenas-v1.db and rebooted and imported my ZFS2 Pool. Added in gateway and rebooted and it came back up fine. Enabled SMB, SSH, and added two command tasks to mount_smbfs two network shares (pre init) and rebooted. Now hung at "starting jails" again... restoring factory db again and will import ZFS2 pool and see if I can recover from multiple reboots..

Update 3: after restoring factory db and importing my ZFS2 pool, I rebooted twice and it came up with no problem. Just enabled SMB service and rebooted. Came back up. Now have enabled SSH and allowed root login with password. Rebooted. Came back up. Added my tasks back in to mount_smbfs (post-init) this time and everything is working. No plugins showing up in the nightly build for some reason.

Final Update: decided to go back to 11.0 UR4 and restore a database from September. All is back in running order.

All I can think of at this point is that 11.1 didn't like the mount_smbfs (pre-init). Not sure why I had it that way. Changing it to post init to be on the safe side in 11.0 UR4

this was a 24 hour PITFA!

Here's the end of my messages log from /var/log

Code:

Dec 28 11:43:48 freenas random: unblocking device.
Dec 28 11:43:48 freenas Trying to mount root from zfs:freenas-boot/ROOT/default []...
Dec 28 11:43:48 freenas kernel: re0: link state changed to UP
Dec 28 11:43:48 freenas kernel: re0: link state changed to UP
Dec 28 11:43:48 freenas GEOM_RAID5: Module loaded, version 1.3.20140711.62 (rev f91e28e40bf7)
Dec 28 11:43:48 freenas GEOM_MIRROR: Device mirror/swap0 launched (2/2).
Dec 28 11:43:48 freenas GEOM_MIRROR: Device mirror/swap1 launched (2/2).
Dec 28 11:43:48 freenas GEOM_MIRROR: Device mirror/swap2 launched (2/2).
Dec 28 11:43:48 freenas GEOM_ELI: Device mirror/swap0.eli created.
Dec 28 11:43:48 freenas GEOM_ELI: Encryption: AES-XTS 128
Dec 28 11:43:48 freenas GEOM_ELI:	 Crypto: hardware
Dec 28 11:43:48 freenas GEOM_ELI: Device mirror/swap1.eli created.
Dec 28 11:43:48 freenas GEOM_ELI: Encryption: AES-XTS 128
Dec 28 11:43:48 freenas GEOM_ELI:	 Crypto: hardware
Dec 28 11:43:48 freenas GEOM_ELI: Device mirror/swap2.eli created.
Dec 28 11:43:48 freenas GEOM_ELI: Encryption: AES-XTS 128
Dec 28 11:43:48 freenas GEOM_ELI:	 Crypto: hardware
Dec 28 11:43:48 freenas hwpmc: SOFT/16/64/0x67<INT,USR,SYS,REA,WRI> TSC/1/64/0x20<REA> K8/4/48/0x1ff<INT,USR,SYS,EDG,THR,REA,WRI,INV,QUA>
Dec 28 11:43:48 freenas kernel: re0: link state changed to DOWN
Dec 28 11:43:48 freenas kernel: re0: link state changed to DOWN
Dec 28 11:43:48 freenas ums0 on uhub0
Dec 28 11:43:48 freenas ums0: <YSPRINGTECH USB OPTICAL MOUSE, class 0/0, rev 2.00/0.00, addr 2> on usbus4
Dec 28 11:43:48 freenas ums0: 5 buttons and [XYZ] coordinates ID=0
Dec 28 11:43:48 freenas kernel: re0: link state changed to UP
Dec 28 11:43:48 freenas kernel: re0: link state changed to UP
Dec 28 11:43:52 freenas ntpd[1981]: ntpd 4.2.8p10-a (1): Starting
Dec 28 11:43:54 freenas proftpd[2131]: 127.0.0.1 - ProFTPD 1.3.6 (stable) (built Wed Dec 13 2017 17:28:22 UTC) standalone mode STARTUP
Dec 28 11:44:56 freenas root: /etc/rc: WARNING: /usr/local/etc/smb4.conf is not readable.
Dec 28 11:45:07 freenas root: /etc/rc: WARNING: failed precmd routine for vmware_guestd
Dec 28 11:45:35 freenas ix-warden: zfs set mountpoint=none ZFS2_Volume/jails/.warden-template-pluginjail