Locking up on Dell splash screen

[drummachine29]

Hi,

New to FreeNAS. I have a older Dell Optiplex 740 with 8GB ram and AMD 64 processor. I installed the latest version of FreeNAS to an 8GB USB drive that installed with no issues. I reboot after the install, remove the install media(USB) leaving the FreeNAS OS usb plugged in and my machine locks up during the Dell splash screen and won't get past that point. I've tried 3 different USB sticks with the same result. Another thing I noticed is, as soon as I plug in the USB stick with the FreeNAS OS, the Dell locks up meaning - I can wait until the Dell splash screen loads and gives me the "no boot device found screen", plus in the FreeNAS USB, and the machine locks up. The BIOS is on the latest version, I checked the boot order and also disabled any non present devices from booting (floppy, CD drive, etc). I installed the BIOS version of FreeNAS, not UEFI because as far as I can tell, my board does not support UEFI. Any tips/troubleshooting I can do would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Nick2253]

I've tried 3 different USB sticks with the same result.

Are these three different brand/model of USB stick, or three different sticks of the same brand/model?

Obviously, whatever USB stick you are using for the install media is booting no problem. Have you tried using one of the different USB sticks as the install media, and installing onto that USB stick that you were using for the install media?

 

[nightshade00013]

A quick search seems to indicate that Dell messed something up with that particular model and USB booting. Try sticking a small HDD or SSD in and install to that and see if it works. It's isn't common that this happens but it does sometimes pose a problem and you MAY be able to find an update for the bios that fixes it but the simple solution is to just use something attached via a different route.

 

[drummachine29]

Are these three different brand/model of USB stick, or three different sticks of the same brand/model?

Obviously, whatever USB stick you are using for the install media is booting no problem. Have you tried using one of the different USB sticks as the install media, and installing onto that USB stick that you were using for the install media?

Yes, 3 different model sticks. Kingston, and 2 off-brand models. And yes, I did try using one that I created the installer on with the same result.

 

[drummachine29]

A quick search seems to indicate that Dell messed something up with that particular model and USB booting. Try sticking a small HDD or SSD in and install to that and see if it works. It's isn't common that this happens but it does sometimes pose a problem and you MAY be able to find an update for the bios that fixes it but the simple solution is to just use something attached via a different route.

Yeah, I was considering that. I did find the following from a while ago. I want to try this but how do I flag the partition? What are the commands? I have a Mac and an Ubuntu VM i can use. I just need to know how to do this.

Hey everyone, I too had this issue over the weekend. I was interested why the USB drive froze my machine (Dell Optiplex 740) so I put it into my laptop and wouldn't you know, it booted just fine. I run Fedora on my laptop so I decided to investigate the USB itself further. I noted that the boot partition on the original USB for 9.2.x was flagged as "BOOT" (according to the standard partition utility in Gnome). The new 9.3 was marked as "GRUB_BOOT", weird, ok maybe my bios doesn't like GRUB_BOOT? On a hunch I flagged the partition as "BOOT" and tried to boot on my Dell again. Worked like a charm!
Looking around late last night, however, I did see a bug which said that there was an old error somewhere where the installer would not mark the partition as "ACTIVE" (aka "BOOT" as I understand). Perhaps this bug is resurfacing?

 

[Nick2253]

Could you please file a bug report with this information? And then could you post a link back here? This does sound like a regression to me.

 

[drummachine29]

Could you please file a bug report with this information? And then could you post a link back here? This does sound like a regression to me.

Done.
https://redmine.ixsystems.com/issues/28836

 

[nightshade00013]

Ok did you check your installation to verify that there was an issue or just saw where someone else had the issue and thought it may apply?

Might want to try booting the usb drive on another computer and see if it works. Maybe install linux onto a usb drive in the server and see if it will boot form that to verify if it's a problem with FreeNAS or the system.

I am guessing that you attempted to post a quote above about someone else's install but I am guessing that your addition afterwards was also bolded, if you click the little document looking icon above the post you will get a menu where you can insert a quote or just use the tags:

[ QUOTE] [ /QUOTE ]

Just put what you wanted to quote in between and remove the spaces.

 

[drummachine29]

Ok did you check your installation to verify that there was an issue or just saw where someone else had the issue and thought it may apply?

Might want to try booting the usb drive on another computer and see if it works. Maybe install linux onto a usb drive in the server and see if it will boot form that to verify if it's a problem with FreeNAS or the system.

I am guessing that you attempted to post a quote above about someone else's install but I am guessing that your addition afterwards was also bolded, if you click the little document looking icon above the post you will get a menu where you can insert a quote or just use the tags:

[ QUOTE] [ /QUOTE ]

Just put what you wanted to quote in between and remove the spaces.

I have the issue. I just so happen to see that in one of the threads.

Yes sorry, the bold is a quote from another thread on the forum and it sounds like the issue I am having.

It's not the USB drive as I tried 5 different drives. I also tried both BIOS mode and UEFI when installing the OS. So it's definitely my system but I wanted to see if there is a workaround. If it's a matter of changing the boot partition then that would be awesome. I just need the commands to do so on either a Mac or Ubuntu.

 

[Nick2253]

Oh, I understood that as you found a fix to your problem.

 

[nightshade00013]

Not sure how you would change the active partition however my suggestion still is to install a Linux OS to a USB drive and see if it will boot from that. It does a couple things:

First off it eliminates FreeNAS and its installer from the equation.
Second in eliminating FreeNAS it will allow you to confirm if it is the computer in question having an issue or FreeNAS' installer/setup.

If you install a Linux OS to a USB drive and it works then you can officially say that there is a likely issue with the FreeNAS install or something there of. If it does not boot it drops the issue 100% on to the BIOS in which case the simplest solution is to use a SSD or small HDD as the install point. My money is on the BIOS being the problem though https://www.google.com/search?num=5...0.9.398...0j0i67k1j0i22i10i30k1.0.cx79klEQFdY