FreeNAS Stable 9.3 - Unable to boot USB

[zorkxy]

I have the same machine as OP (HP DC7800) and found this post via Google. Unfortunately I haven't been able to apply the gdisk fix successfully.

Exactly what parameters should be used when creating the hybrid partition? E.g. should both original partitions be included, and how should the bootable flag be set on them?

Every parameter combination I have tried so far results in an unbootable drive. :(

This is the partition scheme of my USB stick:
Note the "*" is the bootable flag

Under OSX Terminal:

Code:

bash-3.2# diskutil list
/dev/disk4

  #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
  0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *8.0 GB     disk4

  1:                       0xEE                         16.9 KB    disk4s1

  2:                       0xEF                         524.3 KB   disk4s2

  3:                    FreeBSD                         8.0 GB     disk4s3

  4:                       0xEE                         20.5 KB    disk4s4

Under Gdisk:

Code:

bash-3.2# gdisk /dev/disk4
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.10

Partition table scan:
  MBR: hybrid
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with hybrid MBR; using GPT.

Command (? for help): r

Recovery/transformation command (? for help): o

Disk size is 15605760 sectors (7.4 GiB)
MBR disk identifier: 0x00000000
MBR partitions:

Number  Boot  Start Sector   End Sector   Status      Code
   1                     1           33   primary     0xEE
   2      *             34         1057   primary     0xEF
   3      *           1064     15605719   primary     0xA5
   4              15605720     15605759   primary     0xEE

PS: You have to hybrid your partition table on your USB stick AFTER having installing Freenas on it

 

[hungarianhc]

I'm not sure if I entered some option incorrectly, but this is a big bummer. I came down for the weekend to visit my parents. I figured I'd upgrade their FreeNAS while I was down here. Now I have a blinking cursor, and the darn hybrid mbr thing didn't seem to fix it. Now I'm heading home, and I feel like a bit of a buffoon, as I'm leaving their system in a worse state than I left it... sigh. Would be nice if this got fixed up.

 

[SweetAndLow]

I'm not sure if I entered some option incorrectly, but this is a big bummer. I came down for the weekend to visit my parents. I figured I'd upgrade their FreeNAS while I was down here. Now I have a blinking cursor, and the darn hybrid mbr thing didn't seem to fix it. Now I'm heading home, and I feel like a bit of a buffoon, as I'm leaving their system in a worse state than I left it... sigh. Would be nice if this got fixed up.

You could anyways just wipe it and reinstall. Might even be quicker than upgrading.

 

[hungarianhc]

You could anyways just wipe it and reinstall. Might even be quicker than upgrading.

That's what I did. Well, at first I tried to upgrade via the GUI. No dice... I got a blinking cursor. Then I used the CDROM ISO to boot to the CD environment and install to the flash drive that way. Installation was successful, but again, I got a blinking cursor. I was able to boot into a 9.2.X flash drive or a Nas4Free 10 environment without issue. Would love to see this fixed.

 

[SweetAndLow]

That's what I did. Well, at first I tried to upgrade via the GUI. No dice... I got a blinking cursor. Then I used the CDROM ISO to boot to the CD environment and install to the flash drive that way. Installation was successful, but again, I got a blinking cursor. I was able to boot into a 9.2.X flash drive or a Nas4Free 10 environment without issue. Would love to see this fixed.

I don't think there is a fix for this. It is user error and can't really be controlled. You need to remove all boot records from the USB. This can be done by using dd directly on the usb or by using fdisk type utility. I could be wrong but this is how I understand your problem as well as your solution.

 

[hungarianhc]

I don't think there is a fix for this. It is user error and can't really be controlled. You need to remove all boot records from the USB. This can be done by using dd directly on the usb or by using fdisk type utility. I could be wrong but this is how I understand your problem as well as your solution.

What do you mean by "user error?" Typically this indicates that I have done something incorrectly. I have done multiple upgrades / installations of FreeNAS in recent weeks, and this one is no different.

According to this thread, the problem isn't related to the users, it's related to motherboards not being able to boot from GPT, as opposed to MBR. I see one of the users in this thread had an older HP Server, which is the same hardware I use for my FreeNAS server. I tried the Hybrid MBR trick, and I couldn't get it to work properly. In any case, based on this thread, it doesn't look like the decision is going to be reversed any time soon. Frustrating.

 

[cyberjock]

No, the decision definitely won't be reversed... likely ever. gpt brings lots of new and exciting features that are needed. I could be mistaken, but we use grub as the boot loader, and it only supports booting from ZFS with GPT. So there is no "alternative" and I doubt that MBR support is coming anytime soon for grub. Just getting ZFS booting to work well and be feature-complete has taken more than 2 years of active development by the grub guys.

The short is that tech is marching forward. MBR is dying and that does mean that a lot of hardware won't be compatible with FreeNAS anymore. But as I said in the other thread that I just replied to you in, my test system is 7 years old and boots from gpt just fine. It's the first gen i7 (nahelem) and works just fine. If your system is older than that, it uses a FSB and will be a very poor choice for FreeNAS. If it is the same or newer and isn't supporting gpt that is a choice your motherboard manufacturer has made and is not the fault of anyone else except the manufacturer (and maybe you for buying it with this kind of limitation). You may see gpt support by upgrading your BIOS to the latest, assuming your manufacurer provides updates.

In short, this isn't going to be "fixed", likely ever. From the perspective of the developers nothing is "broken".

In FreeBSD 10 a lot of older "legacy" hardware that is less than 7 years old is supposedly removed (can't support hardware forever). So I have no doubt there will be a handful of users crying foul when they upgrade and their hardware is no longer supported by FreeBSD 10/ FreeNAS 10.

 

[Ericloewe]

Fortunately, FreeNAS does not require Windows levels of obsessive hardware support.

Note that even Windows OEM machines must boot from UEFI starting with Windows 8. The only reason legacy BIOS and MBR aren't dead is inertia.

 

[clarknova]

Fortunately, FreeNAS does not require Windows levels of obsessive hardware support...The only reason legacy BIOS and MBR aren't dead is inertia.

Unfortunately, for the hardware we're discussing in this thread, the problem is not that FreeNAS doesn't support legacy, but that it has only made half a leap toward modern. If FreeNAS supported UEFI we would not have this problem.

Case in point, I have a couple of machines that boot operating systems from MBR disks just fine using legacy BIOS. FreeNAS 9.2.1.9 is one of these. These same two machines also boot operating systems from GPT disks just fine using UEFI, including Ubuntu and Windows. But FreeNAS is apparently screwy, and wants to boot a GPT disk from BIOS, something that is required by no other OS that I can name. Obviously this works on some hardware, because people are still using FreeNAS, but not on all.

When FreeNAS eventually makes its way into the UEFI world, threads like this will cease. Meanwhile, people unfortunate enough to be trying to work with the double whammy of peculiar hardware and peculiar software are going to continue to have this problem.

For the record, the hybrid MBR workaround does not work with an Acer Aspire X3470, so it's back to the drawing board for me.