FreeNAS 9.3 freezes Dell PC in BIOS stage

[kai80]

I've been running FreeNAS 9.2 on a 8GB Samsung USB drive on my old Vostro 200 Desktop (Core2Duo, 8GB RAM, three WD 2GB Enterprise drives). Now I've installed 9.3 on this stick and the system freezes when the BIOS/intel splash screen pops up. Nothing works, even NUM-LOCK. Without the drive inserted everything works. The BIOS boot menu freezes after inserting the drive again.

I've tried another 8GB flash drive from Verbatim. Same result!

Any ideas?

 

[dlavigne]

What are the boot and USB options like in the BIOS?

 

[Fish in a Barrel]

I am having the same issue.

This is a home-built with a Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3R board. I can boot off any USB stick with Windows, FreeDOS, Linux, or FreeNAS 9.2 on the stick, but 9.3 locks it up hard during POST.

Edit - And to add insult to injury, my ancient Athlon 64 X2 machine boots the 9.3 USB stick just fine. Too bad it doesn't have a useful number of SATA ports.

 

[xt4c]

I've had exactly the same issue with my Dell too: insertion of the USB stick freezes the system at the BIOS stage. It also freezes up the keyboard and mouse inputs. I tried different USB sticks to no avail. In the end I've had to go back to 9.2.1.9.

 

[Fish in a Barrel]

So this probably isn't very helpful, but I "solved" this by buying a new motherboard. I got the cheapest AMD bundle with 6 SATA ports Microcenter had in stock, and now I'm golden. For $75 I was able to work around the problem, which was worth it to me.

ASUS A88XM-A with A6 6400K Black Edition 3.9GHz Dual-Core Socket FM2, if you're wondering.

Living near a MicroCenter rocks.

 

[xt4c]

So this probably isn't very helpful, but I "solved" this by buying a new motherboard. I got the cheapest AMD bundle with 6 SATA ports Microcenter had in stock, and now I'm golden. For $75 I was able to work around the problem, which was worth it to me.

ASUS A88XM-A with A6 6400K Black Edition 3.9GHz Dual-Core Socket FM2, if you're wondering.

Living near a MicroCenter rocks.

I solved it too by using an ssd connected to one of the sata ports loaded with 9.3 on it. So it looks like the problem resides with USB ports.

 

[commeng]

same problem with an Asus DSBV-D server board. No sata boot option for me..

Has anyone submitted a bug on this?

 

[xt4c]

same problem with an Asus DSBV-D server board. No sata boot option for me..

Has anyone submitted a bug on this?

Perhaps this should be submitted as a bug but 1) I've no idea how to do that and 2) I fear my old Dell desktop pc is no longer considered worthy of having Freenas installed on it, despite the fact that it's got an intel chip inside it and works perfectly well using 9.2xxxx.

 

[hhx888]

It's like something's wrong with the FreeBSD 9.3

When I tried to install from a USB drive to a USB drive, I got stucked at the bios stage too. I used the new nas4free version. (I know it's not the Freenas, but the new version is updated to the 9.3)
When I tried to install from a CD to the USB drive, it was all good.

After this, I tried to install the Freenas new stable version, and the results are the same like with the nas4free, if I tried the USB to USB method.

I don't know what is the problem, I have an AMD config. (yea, I know it's not supported officially, but it worked fine with the older versions of Freenas, or nas4free.)

I will try the USB to USB install on my desktop pc. (i7-2600, Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H)

 

[Scott Aldinger]

I am having the same issue with an Asus DSBF-D12 server board. Tried installing on a VM just for giggles, passing the USB through. STILL wont detect the USB stick and boot (on the server OR the VM.) There is something else going on here... though I admit the USB I'm using is only 4gB (I've got 2x16GB ones coming in the morning.)

 

[DanL]

Same issue with an Atom-based server board. I've tried using a couple of different USB drives from different manufacturers and get the same results.

 

[Scott Aldinger]

Received 2x16GB usb3 adata s102 drives today. Attached them my VMware 11 workstation, installed, and had them both promptly skipped over as non-bootable media.

Other FAILED media tried, OCZ Rally2 4GB, Kingston DT160 16GB, and Patriot XT 16GB.

Edit: tried booting my desktop (asus Maximus VI Formula) off of the adata's WORKED... well sorta ahci timeouts so never fully got there, but past the trouble point! Also tried rebooting my ESXi server with them (ASUS ES700-E7 server) and it LOADED COMPLETELY.

Should probably mention this is with the latest build 201501162230

 

[Scott Aldinger]

Just tried 2 different usb to sata adapters, still a no go. I think we can rule out a media issue here

 

[Scott Aldinger]

I filed a bug report. It's looking to be an issue with GPT, possibly only on USB. Will take the time to narrow it down shortly.

 

[cyberjock]

I saw your ticket about the issues with your system. Your board is almost certainly the cause of your woes. There's a reason why our hardware recommendations thread doesn't include boards made by Asus. They make great desktop boards, but 99% of desktops do not need to do things that are obscure like booting GPT from USB. No, there is no intention of going back to MBR. GPT is the future, and as technology marches on people will be left behind if they don't want to upgrade.

Even ignoring the fact that it's from Asus, that board is pretty old. The last review was from 2008 on Newegg, which puts that board at about 7 years since it was last reviewed/discontinued. I wouldn't expect a board that old to be compatible with the latest and greatest. I don't even recommend systems that are older than x58, and that chipset came out in Nov 2008.

I've used VMWare Workstation for years, and booting from USB devices on VMWare Workstation has always required workarounds. Even on Workstation 11, there are links to stuff like http://www.virten.net/2014/12/howto-usb-boot-a-vm-in-vmware-workstation-11/ that talk about dong UEFI booting from USB only, which means there's even more things that can potentially break with USB booting. In short, the fact that USB booting doesn't work in VMWare really doesn't prove anything since it's not something you can rely on to work properly every time without fail. I do use FreeNAS in a VM on a hard drive and it works just fine for me though.

Sorry.

 

[Chris Thompson]

Hey everyone, I too had this issue over the weekend. I was interested why the USB drive froze my machine (Dell Optiplex 740) so I put it into my laptop and wouldn't you know, it booted just fine. I run Fedora on my laptop so I decided to investigate the USB itself further. I noted that the boot partition on the original USB for 9.2.x was flagged as "BOOT" (according to the standard partition utility in Gnome). The new 9.3 was marked as "GRUB_BOOT", weird, ok maybe my bios doesn't like GRUB_BOOT? On a hunch I flagged the partition as "BOOT" and tried to boot on my Dell again. Worked like a charm!

Looking around late last night, however, I did see a bug which said that there was an old error somewhere where the installer would not mark the partition as "ACTIVE" (aka "BOOT" as I understand). Perhaps this bug is resurfacing?

 

[Chris Gallardo]

I am having the exact same issues described here. I am on an evga x58 board. 9.3 locks up immediately if the usb stick is inserted. 9.2.x runs just fine. Another thing that may help with troubleshooting for people smarter than me is that even after formatting a usb stick that had 9.3 on it, that stick still locks up my machine.

 

[diedrichg]

And everyone is using USB 2.0 ports, right?

 

[Chris Gallardo]

Yes. My x58 board only has usb 2

 

[Allephe]

I am too having this issue, been using 9.2 without problem in a 16GB Kingston. I was wondering, why this version does not have an .IMG option to download? is there a way to convert .ISO to .IMG?