FreeNAS console showing unreadable characters on boot

Eds89

Contributor
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Sep 16, 2017
Messages
122
Hi,

I just swapped the CPU in my AIO from an E5-2618Lv2 to an E5-2667V2, and now my FreeNAS VM is showing completely unreadable characters during the boot process, and I can’t tell if it’s booting correctly or not.

Before I rebuild and import my volumes, can anyone advise what’s happening here?

Image attached

Cheers
Eds
 

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joeschmuck

Old Man
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Well that is not good at all, so I'll tell you that it is in fact a bad indication.

I think you really need to follow our rules a bit and please post a listing of your hardware, did you do any burn-in testing since replacing the CPU to ensure it's stable? What VM software are you using? What FreeNAS software are you using? How did you configure the VM?

First of all, provide the primary hardware info and if you have not tested out your system, run a RAM test and CPU stress test, ensure it's stable before proceeding.
 

Eds89

Contributor
Joined
Sep 16, 2017
Messages
122
Hi,

Yes sorry, should have given some of that info, although I was prepared to rebuild the VM so thought I’d get a quick post up for first thoughts.

The board is a SM X9SRL-F, with the aforementioned CPUs.
Housed in equivalent of Norco 24 bay chassis, with a Corsair RM 850 PSU.
Hyper visor is ESXi 6.7 with FreeNAS 11.2 running as a VM, upgraded I think from originally 11.0
VM is stored on a Samsung 960 EVO SSD with an LSI 9211-8i passed through and an intel 24 port expander connected to the controller/drives.

The CPU was reported good by supplier, but couldn’t pretest due to this being the only board I have with appropriate socket.

A new VM is able to boot the installer, so I guess it’ll be a case of rebuilding the VM?

Cheers
 

joeschmuck

Old Man
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Messages
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If you have not stress tested your hardware then I still recommend you test it out. It's much better to know if your system is going to die before you add in all your data. Hopefully all the testing comes back good. Glad the rebuild fixed it.
 

Eds89

Contributor
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Sep 16, 2017
Messages
122
I haven’t actually rebuilt the VM yet, as was going to see if recoverable without all that hassle.

I think what I am getting, is this error:
“Allow magic is broken”
Although because the text is scrambled, it’s not completely clear.
I managed to get a screen of this at boot and have attached.

Is there a way I can recover my config from this VMDK to load into a fresh install?

Or, is the boot error indicating some issue with UEFI/BIOS boot mode as described here:
https://www.ixsystems.com/community/threads/uefi-grub-alloc-magic-is-broken-wont-boot.60782/
 

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joeschmuck

Old Man
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It's looking like you have some kind of corruption going on. Run the tests. You might be able to recover the VMDK file however you need to have a stable system. If you find out that your system is stable then your VMDK file looks to be corrupt.
 

Eds89

Contributor
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Sep 16, 2017
Messages
122
Is there an easy way to browse the old VMDK from a new FreeNAS install?
I have 11.2U7 installed as a new VM, with the old VMDK attached, but I can't really figure out how to to simply browse the volume to find the old config DB and copy it off the drive.

I have imported volume, and can see the disk and partition layout in storage, but it doesn't have any mount points created and I don't know how to create one.

EDIT: Nevermind, I have just run through the installer on the existing VM completing an "Upgrade" and installing in new boot environment. This seems to have cured whatever the issue with GRUB was. Fingers crossed there is no underlying disk corruption, else I'll need to try a completely clean reinstall

Thanks anyhoos.
 
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