Freenas Not Booting

[psimonius]

Hi all,

Hopefully you are kind and patient enough to help a Freenas n00b.

I bought a HP Proliant Micro Server over a year ago and successfully installed and ran Freenas 8.2 (if I recall correctly) via USB stick. I had the NAS up and running since then up until recently when I moved home.
Upon plugging the server into my new Sky Hub router I could not locate it at all. I have browsed into my router and do not see it listed as an 'attached device'. I have tried accessing the GUI via IP address but can't find nothing. I figured perhaps I needed to prompt it to boot so I hooked up an old monitor to it to see what it was displaying and it appears - to my ignorant mind - that the boot does not complete, or at least something happens that I do not recognise from when I first set up the server. Photo of the monitor below.

At this point in the boot, no keyboard inputs are recognised. I can go into the system BIOS when booting (and see that it is correctly prioritised to boot from USB) and can even select the 'F' options before 'BTX loader' appears but all this does is enter a DOS prompt scenario that I can't get out of.

Any advice is very much welcome. I have a lot of documents and music saved to the NAS that I need to access.

If I have not explained something clearly or if you have questions, please feel free to ask away.

Thanks.

 

[warri]

Maybe your stick got corrupted. Try with a different USB Stick and a more recent version of FreeNAS, e.g. v8.3.2. Your data is not affected by changing the stick, but you have to restore your old config file.

 

[psimonius]

Thanks for the advice. I have bought a new USB stick, mounted 9.1.1 to it and installed into my server. We have progress - it now boots - however, there still appears to be issues preventing a full boot by the looks of it.

I'm still as lost as to what the problem is. Any ideas?

Thanks.

 

[warri]

Weird, how exactly did you install FreeNAS on the stick? And how big is the stick?

I found some old, closed bug reports about this.
- https://bugs.freenas.org/issues/490 (no real consensus, but very old report)
- https://bugs.freenas.org/issues/1889 (use different installation medium)
- https://bugs.freenas.org/issues/1613 (fixed by different USB stick)

So either try re-installing with a different method or again another USB - maybe you can just borrow one from a friend to test it.

 

[gpsguy]

For starters, tell us more about your hardware. How much RAM do you have?

How big is the new USB stick? If it's less than 4Gb, get another one. While FreeNAS' minimum requirements says 2Gb, 4Gb are a safer bet.

As warri suggested earlier, I would have gone with version 8.3.2. Get your server working with a version something closer to your old OS, before upgrading to v9.x. Especially if you don't have the needed RAM.

 

[psimonius]

I am using the HP Proliant Microserver with 2x 4GB DDR3 RAM. I am quite confident it's not a hardware issue in that respect. The Microserver can't take any more RAM.

The new install is using a 4GB USB stick. I followed the MAC installation instructions via http://doc.freenas.org/index.php/Burning_an_IMG_File. When I originally set the NAS the up I installed via Windows so the new process is not familiar to me. I must admit I am not finding it the most straight-forward way although I have followed it to the letter. If you have alternative ways to install the IMG file via MAC, I am happy to try it.

 

[psimonius]

Ok, all sorted. I remounted the img to the USB again and it seemed to work this time. Booted fine and now re-established the storage mounts.

Thanks for your help.

 

[gpsguy]

Glad to hear you got it going again.

btw, with the right RAM, you can run 16Gb in the Microserver's. I have 8Gb in my N40L and 16Gb in my N54L.

 

[Fabbbio]

With my HP Proliant Microserver if I remove the disks everthings goes well and I can configure the freenas via web, if I insert the disk the BTX problem appear and it can't boot. In my bios I set up RAID mode and in the raid utility raid type 1 with 2 disks

 

[jgreco]

Don't do that. Use ACPI.

 

[Fabbbio]

Sorry?

 

[jgreco]

my bios I set up RAID mode and in the raid utility raid type 1 with 2 disks

DON'T DO THAT. USE ACPI.

 

[Fabbbio]

So , in bios need I use AHCI mode? and create raid from freeNAS?

 

[jgreco]

Oh. Sorry. AHCI. Too many damn abbreviations. The built in software RAID on the Microserver is for Windows.

 

[Fabbbio]

OK, I'll try.