FreeNAS VM not booting. Help

[synthetiq]

Hello,

Kind of in a panic here. I have FreeNAS 11 running as a VM on Datastore0 in ESXi 6.5 and doing PCI-passthru to the FreeNAS, then NFS sharing back to ESXi for Datastore1.

I did a graceful shutdown of all systems to replace my UPS. ESXi booted back up but my FreeNAS VM is giving me some gibberish when booting. I'm not a *nix guru, I hope it's just a Grub/Loader issue, but I can't seem to get to a spot to troubleshoot.

I tried connecting the FreeNAS 11 ISO to the VM, but it doesn't give me an option to boot into the ISO.

Any ideas here? Anyone seen anything like this before? I managed to snag a screenshot when it first boots, but then it just continuously scrolls gibberish.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[synthetiq]

I managed to force boot into BIOS then set CDROM as boot priority. Booted using FreeNAS ISO and was presented with option of installing FreeNAS, or "c" for command line. When I hit "c" it put me in GNU GRUB version 2.02~beta2.

Following this post, I see what appears to be hard drive partitions, but I'm stuck here.

I realize I'm deviating from specific FreeNAS troubleshooting, but I'm just trying to see if this VM is recoverable. And if not, can I just reinstall FreeNAS then still be able to ZFS/mount my data on the four disks that are PCI-passthru'd to the VM.

Thanks for any help!

 

[sretalla]

can I just reinstall FreeNAS then still be able to ZFS/mount my data on the four disks that are PCI-passthru'd to the VM.

Yes... even better if you have a config backup somewhere (on your system dataset by default every day).

 

[synthetiq]

Unfortunately I can't find a backup. I don't mind starting over on the config as long as I can access the data, so that's good news.

My only question now is should I download the latest FreeNAS ISO 11.3-U5, or go for the TrueNAS-12?

 

[sretalla]

I would wait for 12.0-U1... there are some annoying bits to deal with before that, so skip it. If you need something now, 11.3-U5 is it.

 

[synthetiq]

Thanks for your input! I had just booted into the TrueNAS but backed out to FreeNAS after your recommendation.

So, good news, FreeNAS 11.3-U5 has detected the previous install and I'm *hopeful* it will pick up my settings.

I'm sorry to baby-step this, but I know the boot options are very important. Should I be installing a new boot env or formatting?

 

[sretalla]

If you're hoping to keep your settings (although you may still find them once you import the pool anyway), you need to take the new boot env. option.

 

[synthetiq]

Thanks, sretalla. The FreeNAS 11.3-U5 install successfully detected my previous settings and I'm back in business. I made a backup of the config and stored it in a safe location (not on FreeNAS ;-) ).

One minor glitch on initial boot: It froze at "middlewared: setting up plugins pwenc". I hit Ctrl+C which bypassed this and loaded the OS, but then immediately root rebooted the system and it loaded fine the second time. Not sure what that was about.

Now, to learn the new(er) interface! I guess I've been pretty behind in updates!

Thanks again