SOLVED HELP! Mountroot after replacing boot drive

[objecttothis]

Here is the situation. I have a ZFS pool and had two 16GB USB flash drives mirrored as boot devices running FreeNAS 11.1-U5. Then I began getting a Critical message telling me that one of the two USB flash drives was unavailable. I tried re-mirroring it, replacing it with identical USB's but could never get it to reconnect. In my research several people recommended SSD's over flash drives because of the reliability of flash drives over time. So I picked up two identical Samsung 16GB 2.5" SSD's and installed them in the system with the USB drives still in place.

- I then logged in and detached the second USB that was listed as unavailable.
- I then attached one of the two SSD's, which was successful.
- I then did a replace of the other USB with the second SSD.
- The critical message went away and turned green.

- I then shut down the server and pulled the two USB flash disks.
- On reboot I entered the BIOS and changed the boot configuration to boot to the SSD's but on reboot I get an error telling me to insert a boot device and press any key. It seems that FreeNAS did not transfer the boot data to these drives or there is some other problem.
- I reinserted the old USB flash drives but those now will not boot. I'm assuming the detach procedure removed the data from the "unavailable" USB and the replace procedure on the other USB did the same.

- I happened to have another USB (identical to the previous) that had a mirrored copy of 11.1-U1 on it and I am able to boot to it but during the boot process it stops at a mountroot prompt. (see image) I'm assuming that this is because I was running 11.1-U5 before this all started.

I'm not new to computers, but I am still in the process of learning FreeBSD administration.

Question 1: Is there any way for me to get past this prompt and continue the boot so I can recover and properly transfer the boot media to these SSD drives? I've tried several different commands without any luck. My ZFS is setup on three identical Western Digital drives (ada0,ada1,ada2) The two identical Samsung 16GB SSDs that I would like to be my boot drives are ada3 and ada4 respectively. da0 is the 16GB usb thumb drive which has 11.1-U1 on it. "CNAS" is the name of my ZFS pool. Alternately is there a way to upgrade the USB flash to 11.1-U5 without being able to boot it?

Question 2: If I can't boot to this USB, do I lose my ZFS pool? There is a lot of very valuable data on that which "not good" would be an understatement to lose. Is it possible to prepare a Freenas install USB and then install it onto these new SSD drives and not lose my zfs pool?

Question 3: What am I missing about the process of replacement from USB to SSD? It was pretty straight forward and ada3/ada4 were listed as the mirrored devices. I thought I was home free when the critical message went away and the boot devices were listed as available.

 

[Elliot Dierksen]

Regarding question 2, the pool is completely separate from the boot device. No need to worry there. If you can boot the old media, do that and then save off the config file. Remove old boot media, and put in new boot media. Re-install on new boot media, and then import saved config. After a reboot, you should be all good. Do the re-install using the same exact version.

 

[objecttothis]

Regarding question 2, the pool is completely separate from the boot device. No need to worry there. If you can boot the old media, do that and then save off the config file. Remove old boot media, and put in new boot media. Re-install on new boot media, and then import saved config. After a reboot, you should be all good. Do the re-install using the same exact version.

That's helpful. Now just figuring out how to boot to the old media. I have not used mountroot before, so my unfamiliarity is a bit of a hinderance.

 

[Elliot Dierksen]

If your configuration isn't complex, it might be easier to just redo that from scratch. The pool with the data on it is unaffected. One of the really cool features of FreeNAS, IMHO.

 

[objecttothis]

The general configuration no but the FAMP server I am running on a jail is very complex in terms of number of hours hardening and maintaining it.

 

[Elliot Dierksen]

Did you point the system data set to your pool (like below)?

If so, there should be saved copies of the config stored in there someplace. I haven't had to do that yet, but I know there are other in the forum that do. If not, perhaps we could mount one of your old USB boot media drives and extract the config from there. You'll have to do that from FreeNAS or something else that understands ZFS. You won't be able to do that from a workstation.

 

[Chris Moore]

What am I missing about the process of replacement from USB to SSD?

Nothing. What you did should have worked. I would suggest double checking your BIOS boot order. It is entirely possible that the BIOS won't boot from anything other than SATA-0 or some such.
What is the hardware you are using?

 

[objecttothis]

Nothing. What you did should have worked. I would suggest double checking your BIOS boot order. It is entirely possible that the BIOS won't boot from anything other than SATA-0 or some such.
What is the hardware you are using?

I am running an ASRock Rack E3C224D2I with 3 WD 1.0TB Yellow label drives for my ZFS pool and 2 Samsung UM410 16GB 2.5" SSDs that I was trying to setup as my boot drives. Prior, I was running 2 Kingston Cruzer Fit 16GB USB Flash drives.

The motherboard has 4 SATA3 ports and 2 SATA2. Originally I ran the two SSD's on the SATA 2 ports (SATA-4 and SATA-5). From your message I tried switching those to SATA-0 and SATA-1 respectively then setup the boot options in the BIOS and I still get the "insert boot media" message.

So something interesting to me is that I created a FreeNAS install flash drive with 11.1-U5 on it which is what I was running. I boot to that and then it asked me if I wanted to do an upgrade to the version that is already on the SSD's which leads me to believe that this is an issue with the SSD's not being bootable for some reason.

 

[Elliot Dierksen]

I tried switching those to SATA-0 and SATA-1 respectively then setup the boot options in the BIOS and I still get the "insert boot media" message.

That is telling you that your system BIOS is selecting the FreeNAS data pool as a boot device. Look around in your BIOS settings and try to change it so it selects one of the media that has a bootable FreeNAS install on it.

 

[objecttothis]

Fixed it. I updated the BIOS from 3.30 to 3.50 and then the boot menu gave me a UEFI option for the SSD's. I selected that rather than the AHCI version in the boot order and it booted them fine! I must admit to peeing a little bit in my pants.

 

[Chris Moore]

I updated the BIOS from 3.30 to 3.50

Nice. I am happy it worked out.