HP Proliant Microserver N40L - Upgrade to 11.2 Beta 1 and 2 Fails

[Tony Self]

I just removed the drives from my N40L and booted with the 11.2-Beta2 image and I get the same white screen.

It looks to me as though the problem is with the new boot loader.

I will report the bug shortly.


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[Tony Self]

I just removed the drives from my N40L and booted with the 11.2-Beta2 image and I get the same white screen.

It looks to me as though the problem is with the new boot loader.

I will report the bug shortly.

I have now reported the bug as Bug #44207

 

[emk2203]

Just to add to the confusion: I am running a N40L / 8 GB RAM / 5 disks as well, where the 11.2-Beta2 update went without issues. I updated through the command line, if this makes a difference.

 

[KrisBee]

@emk2203 Are you running a modified BIOS to make use of 5 data drives? Could that make a difference?

 

[Tony Self]

@emk2203 Are you running a modified BIOS to make use of 5 data drives? Could that make a difference?

No standard bios as it arrived out of the box.

However I have seen that @pjr_atl has got his N40L working with 11.2, but he does say he is using with 5 WD Reds, so perhaps a non-standard bios works.

 

[Tony Self]

Just to add to the confusion: I am running a N40L / 8 GB RAM / 5 disks as well, where the 11.2-Beta2 update went without issues. I updated through the command line, if this makes a difference.

How do you upgrade through the command line?
Do you have a standard bios?

 

[emk2203]

No, no standard BIOS. That's why I wrote "5 disks". Upgrade with sudo /usr/local/bin/freenas-update -R updateafter I login to the NAS.

Maybe the non-standard BIOS is key. I can look where I have it in a backup, but it's more than 5 years ago, so might take some time.

EDIT: Found it. Here is the description: https://homeservershow.com/blog/byo...server-build-and-bios-modification-revisited/
Get the necessary HP software here: https://www.msdonkey.com/server/bios-for-hp-proliant-microserver-g7-n54l/

You can look at my signature for the HD cage I used in the fifth slot.

 

[lotsofdan]

Another update, I went and grabbed an N54L I had lying around. Different CPU/RAM/Drives and it also did the whole grey screen blinking. The only parts shared between the 2 units is the BIOS/Motherboard which would suggest to me that's where the incompatibility lies.

 

[Tony Self]

No, no standard BIOS. That's why I wrote "5 disks". Upgrade with sudo /usr/local/bin/freenas-update -R updateafter I login to the NAS.

Maybe the non-standard BIOS is key. I can look where I have it in a backup, but it's more than 5 years ago, so might take some time.

That's what I suspected. I don't think the command line upgrade is the answer. My upgrade performs as expected, reboots and starts to load 11.2 then at some stage it reboots, I believe after it has installed the new boot loader on the boot drive. The problem I believe is the new boot loader not working, as after the second reboot it fails to load the boot loader. The same happens if I try to install from a new image, the boot loader does not install.

If you can tell me what bios you used, that may be the possible solution

 

[Tony Self]

No, no standard BIOS. That's why I wrote "5 disks". Upgrade with sudo /usr/local/bin/freenas-update -R updateafter I login to the NAS.

Maybe the non-standard BIOS is key. I can look where I have it in a backup, but it's more than 5 years ago, so might take some time.

EDIT: Found it. Here is the description: https://homeservershow.com/blog/byo...server-build-and-bios-modification-revisited/
Get the necessary HP software here: https://www.msdonkey.com/server/bios-for-hp-proliant-microserver-g7-n54l/

You can look at my signature for the HD cage I used in the fifth slot.

Ok, thanks for those links. It was interesting reading and ended up with me having an all nighter.

Your links talked about modding the 2011 bios, but when I went to HP to try and download the bios file, I discovered that there was a newer HP bios the was released in 2013. So after a lot of hassle with the HP utility that refused to flash any of my USB flash drives, telling me that the drive was write protected, I managed to flash a SD card and then clone that onto a USB drive.

I first upgraded to the new HP 2013 bios. Rather than then trying to go through the whole FreeNAS upgrade process again, I have just been using the FreeNAS 11.2 install USB which I know has failed if it doesn't show the BTX version number within seconds of displaying the white screen.

I should also mention that I disconnected my ZFS drive pool, so the only drive installed was the USB install drive.

Well the 2013 vanilla bios failed on first boot.
I then played around with the USB bios setting to see if could get it to boot, but each setting I tried failed.

The next thing I tried was updating the bios again with the modded version. As I understand it, all the mod does is to expose two more settings tab, allowing you to fine tune some of the more advanced settings. At this stage I have not changed any of these other settings.

Again I tried the 11.2 install, but again it failed to get past the white screen.

It seems to me, that if a bios setting is wrong the most likely culprit must be a USB setting as it is the USB install drive that is failing to be read. I am using a SanDisk Ultra Fit USB drive that has an led on the front, that indicates disk activity. I don't see the led light at all when booting with the 11.2 install drive. When I am booting 11.1 and also when I go through the upgrade process I see the led flicker regularly, until with the upgrade we get to the second reboot.

What would be useful from the guys who have successfully upgraded to 11.2 is their current USB setting plus a note of all the modded setting that they have changed. If you are not sure what you have changed, perhaps you could take some pictures of the pages you know you have changed so I can compare with my current settings.

I know this could be time consuming, but I would very much appreciate your help.

 

[emk2203]

Off the top of my head, I can tell you that I didn't change more than the bare necessities for the fifth harddrive. If I get the opportunity to shut the server down, I am glad to snap a pic for you, but there's a zfs send operation in progress at the moment which might take some (long) time.

If you install this BIOS (a good idea anyway), just do the settings as per instructions from the modded BIOS page for the fifth hard disk, and that's it. I would try this first.

 

[Tony Self]

Off the top of my head, I can tell you that I didn't change more than the bare necessities for the fifth harddrive. If I get the opportunity to shut the server down, I am glad to snap a pic for you, but there's a zfs send operation in progress at the moment which might take some (long) time.

If you install this BIOS (a good idea anyway), just do the settings as per instructions from the modded BIOS page for the fifth hard disk, and that's it. I would try this first.

Thanks. I will give that a go and see what happens.

 

[Tony Self]

Well I have made those changes and it's made no difference. Still just a white screen.

I also thought I ought to try a different USB drive. I have been using the SanDisk Ultra Fit devices throughout and thought previous it is a problem with this design of flash drive. So I tried out an older flash drive I had kicking around, but again no change.

This is driving me crazy, especially when there are guys out there who have got their N40Ls upgraded.

 

[data packrat]

I have an N54L which upgraded to the 11.2 betas with no problems.
It's running the original HP BIOS, has 16Gb memory, 4 x 6Tb WD red drives, plus an SSD as a SLOG device (on the SATA port intended for a CD/DVD - I know it's a slower port, but this still speed up NFS writes significantly).
The boot devices are 2 mirrored 16Gb Sandisk Fit drives (The old ones, not the ultra fit. I found that the ultras ran hot, and tended to fail... my friend had 3 fail in a single week, and all were less than a month old)

Good luck.

 

[KrisBee]

@Tony Self I'm sure you've done this already , but have you tried using all the different USB ports on your N40L?

 

[Tony Self]

@Tony Self I'm sure you've done this already , but have you tried using all the different USB ports on your N40L?

Yes.

I am just wondering whether this could be a memory issue. I think all the guys who have managed to upgrade have got 16GB of memory installed. Whereas @lotsofdan and myself have only got 8GB installed?

 

[emk2203]

I am just wondering whether this could be a memory issue. I think all the guys who have managed to upgrade have got 16GB of memory installed. Whereas @lotsofdan and myself have only got 8GB installed?

No. My N40L has 8 GB, and my N54L has 16 GB. Both went without issues. What I noticed from this thread - the ones with success seem to have all slots maxed out. Maybe it's not the BIOS, but the harddisk filling the slot?

If the server wants to boot from the empty slot, it might just sit there. Occupied slot gives a chance to gracefully go to another option.

 

[diskdiddler]

I have N54L, with the custom SATA fix bios, 16GB of ram (hard to find the right sticks!) and 6 HDDs and it's worked fine on beta 1 and beta 2.
(Sorry, I know that's not helpful)

 

[Tony Self]

Well I think I will put things on hold for the short term and wait for Beta 3.

 

[emk2203]

Well I think I will put things on hold for the short term and wait for Beta 3.

Still interested in BIOS pics? I can shutdown the machine now and reboot to BIOS.