FreeNAS 9.10 wont boot after installation

[Poskitosker]

Hi!

I notice that i aint the only one with this problem since i have looked through like 10 different threads about it but here we go!

I'm totally new too FreeNAS and when i have installed it to my usbdrive and reboot nothing happens. I have gone through the steps so many times that im starting to loose my mind and every time the installation process is completed and the FreeNAS installation says something like "reboot your computer and remove the cd/installation media" i have followed the instructions and when the pc boot up it cant find any OS.

The things i have tried so far:
A bucketful of different usb drives.
I have tried FreeNAS 9.10, 9.3 and 9.2.1.9
I have used a CD as installation media
I have used win32 and Rufus as installer for the .ISO file
I have used Active@ KillDisk on the usb drives
I have formatted the usb drives as FAT32 and NTFS
Several (if not all) usb ports on the computer that is supposed to be the NAS
I have disabled nearly all features in the BIOS
I have used MBR pratition scheme for BIOS or UEFI-CSM and GPT partition for UEFI for preparing the usb drive in Rufus
I have booted the installation USB drive in legacy and UEFI
I have set the boot order to the correct setting

I have probably done more but i cant think of anything else right now

The hardware in the computer is:

* FreeNAS version - 9.10, 9.3 and 9.2.1.9
* Motherboard (Model) - aahd2-hy
* CPU (Model) - AMD A4-3400
* RAM Size (in GB and model) - 1x8GB (i think its kingston) 1600MHz DDR3

If there is anything else you would like to know to help me, please tell!

I have also gone through the 9.10 manuals "2.4 installation troubleshooting" ( http://doc.freenas.org/9.10/ )

Thanks in advance!

 

[Koala]

Have you read this thread: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hardware-recommendations-read-this-first.23069/ ? Your system does not seem to meet the recomended HW.

 

[Nick2253]

Based on all the troubleshooting you've done, I would guess that it's a problem with your motherboard/FreeBSD compatibility. The only other troubleshooting steps I would recommend are:

1. Try to install FreeNAS on a SATA device and see if it boots.
   
2. Try to install FreeBSD 10 on a USB stick, and see if it boots.
3. Try to boot your USB stick in a different machine to confirm that the install process is working correctly.

Other than that, you'll need different hardware. You want to avoid consumer motherboards especially, as FreeBSD has many compatibility issues with consumer chipsets and the different devices that come on consumer motherboards.

 

[Mirfster]

Aside from the correct suggestions to use recommended hardware, there should not be any need to partition/format the drive you are installing on (USB/SSD or HDD). As a matter of fact it would be better to have no partitions at all so FreeNAS can make those itself.

I have formatted the usb drives as FAT32 and NTFS

 

[Poskitosker]

Have you read this thread: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hardware-recommendations-read-this-first.23069/ ? Your system does not seem to meet the recomended HW.

I actually did not! Thanks for the link, i guess i have to edit some hardware then (y)

 

[Poskitosker]

Based on all the troubleshooting you've done, I would guess that it's a problem with your motherboard/FreeBSD compatibility. The only other troubleshooting steps I would recommend are:

1. Try to install FreeNAS on a SATA device and see if it boots.
   
2. Try to install FreeBSD 10 on a USB stick, and see if it boots.
3. Try to boot your USB stick in a different machine to confirm that the install process is working correctly.

Other than that, you'll need different hardware. You want to avoid consumer motherboards especially, as FreeBSD has many compatibility issues with consumer chipsets and the different devices that come on consumer motherboards.

Thanks for the answer, ill have to try it out as soon as i can (we have guests at home right now and the troubleshooting is therefore paused ;-) )

 

[theaddies]

Same issue for me. My hardware is below. FreeNAS, the little window at the bottom of the browser says unable to mount boot environment.

Platform
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1231 v3 @ 3.40GHz
Memory 24509MB

 

[theaddies]

Is there some information I need to post. FreeNAS will now not connect to the internet although for some reason the plugins do seem to still work. My mother board is Supermicro
X10SL7-F

 

[theaddies]

Sorry guys / girls. I rebooted and it now says I am on 9.10. There are other problems that I will post once I figure out what is going on.

 

[Mirfster]

Sorry guys / girls. I rebooted and it now says I am on 9.10. There are other problems that I will post once I figure out what is going on.

Hopefully in its own thread right? ;)

 

[Dieter Toews]

Hi,

I found this thread - i'm having similar problems although i'm trying to install onto old (server grade) hardware. i've got a Supermicro X7DBE+ motherboard with 64gb ram and Xeon L5408's. I'm attempting to install freenass 9.10 onto an (adaptec) hardware raid 1 array (the disks for zfs are separate and not going thought that raid adapter).

i've attached a screenshot...

I know that my hardware is 'old' - i'm just a home gamer - should i be trying to install an older freenas and then upgrade it?

 

[Mirfster]

Hi,

I found this thread - i'm having similar problems although i'm trying to install onto old (server grade) hardware. i've got a Supermicro X7DBE+ motherboard with 64gb ram and Xeon L5408's. I'm attempting to install freenass 9.10 onto an (adaptec) hardware raid 1 array (the disks for zfs are separate and not going thought that raid adapter)

You can try it without the adaptec card in there at all. Also, if that Hardware Raid Card cannot be flashed to JBOB/IT Mode, don't use it at all. You want to avoid Hardware Raid in 99% of the scenarios. Passing through the drives indiviually as Raid0 is not a viable option either.

 

[Dieter Toews]

You can try it without the adaptec card in there at all. Also, if that Hardware Raid Card cannot be flashed to JBOB/IT Mode, don't use it at all. You want to avoid Hardware Raid in 99% of the scenarios. Passing through the drives indiviually as Raid0 is not a viable option either.

I'm not trying to use the card for the drive array - only the boot disks for freenas os.

The card is an adaptec 5805 and doesn't support it mode (even its jbod mode doesn't support smart pass-though) but i am only using it for the os (like a very fancy usb key). The system had centos on it before (i don't remember the version) and it worked fine. In any-case my goal is to have the os installed on a mirror: Is it possible to get freenas to setup a zfs mirror and install itself onto that? If that is the case i could just bypass the 5805 all and direct connect the drives i want to use for the os to the mobo sata ports...

edit: i just found this:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/how-do-you-mirror-the-install-drive.30220/

i'll look into that and see what happens

 

[Dieter Toews]

solved but not straight forward!

• I physically unplugged the adaptect card after i figured our the freenas also formats it boot volume as zfs.
  
• I wanted a mirrored boot volume - (starting in freenas 9.10) i tried selecting that option in the installer (i seems to automatically created if you select two disks at install) but it wouldn't boot... it would get to certain place and then hang...
  
• Then i tried installing it on a single volume since i read that you can convert to a mirrored boot volume in the web interface - same problem.
• I tried installing freenas 9.3 as a mirrored boot volume - same problem.
• I tried installing freenas 9.3 on one of the drives - same problem.
• I tried installing freenas 9.3 on one of the drive with the other drive unplugged - Success!
• I reconnected the second boot volume drive and - hang on boot at the same place as before.
• At this point i figured out that the installer had created some problems when it tried to make a zfs mirror out of the 2 drives and and 2nd drive was making everything unhappy. I booted into a livecd debian disk that i have and used fdisk to delete all the partitions on the 2nd drive.
  
• When i rebooted freenas booted fine and i was able to add the second drive as a mirror as the freenas documentation shows. This continues to work after rebooting the system.
• I then upgraded to 9.10 and the system still reboots fine.

Freenas 9.10 probably would have worked too if i would have installed it on a single drive and then, using the web interface, setup the mirror. I guess the moral of the story is to not let the installer try to setup the mirror for you if that is what you want.

 

[danb35]

I guess the moral of the story is to not let the installer try to setup the mirror for you if that is what you want.

That shouldn't be the moral. The installer's supposed to be able to create the mirror and have it work, and I know it has worked for me in the past. If this is the case for you, it'd be good to file a bug on bugs.freenas.org with as much detail as possible so they can (hopefully) resolve it.