Help Troubleshooting FreeNAS Box Stopped Booting

[Chamrajnagar]

I've had this system for 5-6 years, but recently it stopped booting.

Typically I've used iKVM over IPMI to access the server, but I'm not getting a signal. The iKVM power on and off commands still work, and I can still access the IPMI web interface.

I found some log events in the IPMI interface indicating low voltage on the CMOS battery, so I replaced that. I also purchased a PSU tester and everything checks out there.

I know the Atom C2000 series had a hardware flaw, but that tended to appear after 18 months.

I've tried with one stick of RAM at a time but the memory doesn't seem to be the issue.

Motherboard has two status LEDs.

• Overheat/PWR Fail/Fan Fail LED is solid. Manual says this indicates overheat status. Not quite sure what that means as the system is starting cold. Possible it had an overheat event and now needs to be reset somehow.
• Onboard Power LED is blinking. Manual says this indicates ACPI S1 State.

IPMI interface shows POST code ff.

In the absence of a monitor to connect to the server, I need to find a way to enter the BIOS so I can start some additional troubleshooting. Just not sure if I have any way to do that.

Thanks!

 

[lambert]

You may be on the long tail of failure statistics. My 2016 FreeNAS mini just died of the the Atom C2000 bug 6 days ago. No video out, no initialization of USB keyboard. We may have gotten lucky and they ran until after the warranty expired...

 

[Chamrajnagar]

You may be on the long tail of failure statistics. My 2016 FreeNAS mini just died of the the Atom C2000 bug 6 days ago. No video out, no initialization of USB keyboard. We may have gotten lucky and they ran until after the warranty expired...

You're probably right. The symptoms seem to match up pretty closely the more I read about it.

I might try contacting Supermicro and see what they say. It sounds like they're likely to issue an RMA for this issue even outside of warranty.