NAS doesn't boot without a screen attached

[Mirfster]

Gigabyte Brix S, model GB-BXI3H-4010

According to the specs it has 1 x HDMI and 1 x Mini DisplayPort; but no VGA. Aside from just being a wrong type of system for FreeNAS altogether...

The nas boots up perfectly when the hdmi port is connected to a screen but when I try to boot it up without a screen attached, the nas does not respond at all - even if I plug in the hdmi cable after pressing the power button.

I wonder if @rsarro and @garyc also have systems that only use hdmi and/or displayport?

Maybe that is the commonality?

 

[danb35]

I'm building a Freenas box for a friend out of a Gigabyte Brix S

Why? Literally nothing about that machine is a good choice for use as a FreeNAS box, even if headless booting worked properly. There are plenty of NAS OSs out there that would be a better choice, if you have to use that hardware. Otherwise, consider something that's actually designed to be a server like the Dell T20.

But to the problem at hand, have you tried installing a different non-Microsoft OS? I'd suggest some flavor of Linux, and/or perhaps FreeBSD or PC-BSD (or possibly even all three), and see what they do. If they don't boot either, that would pretty definitely exclude FreeNAS as the cause of the problem, and indicate that it's a stupidly-designed motherboard/BIOS.

 

[Paul D]

OK cool so you understand that you shouldn't use that system for freenas? Only having 1hdd is not the point and you should just use a usb attached external drive.

Where is it written that FreeNAS MUST be used with multiple hard drives in a RAID array? FreeNAS appears to be perfectly happy operating with 1 drive for the OS and 1 for storage, aside from this one problem. (A problem which, admittedly, is unlikely to be FreeNAS's fault. But this certainly seems like the first place one might go for some insight, no?)

I don't understand the point of this rigid adherence to massive storage arrays if the OS works fine on lesser systems. "Good choice for use as a FreeNAS box" is subjective. Everyone's needs (and budget) are different. Just because FreeNAS is all but infinitely scalable doesn't mean it HAS to be used for massive RAIDed storage applications.

Anyway, this seems more like a philosophical question and I'm not interested in some old school nerdier-than-thou flamewar. Clearly I'm not the only one having the problem at hand, and not everyone who's having this problem is using an all-in-one mini PC, therefore the problem is not necessarily the choice of hardware. My personal FreeNAS box (with a 12TB ZFS2 array, for you sticklers) only has HDMI and DVI on the mobo and it works fine as a headless machine, for the record.

I'm here asking about my car making a funny noise and you're telling me I shouldn't have bought a Toyota. That's about as unhelpful as it gets.

I will try some flavor of live Linux off a USB thumb drive or something, just to see if I get the same result (indicating it's a BIOS issue). So thanks for that suggestion anyway.

 

[Paul D]

If not, you can plug in a dummy monitor adapter...

Now THAT is a helpful suggestion. How did I not know, after 20+ years of geekery, that such a thing existed? LOL BRILLIANT!

 

[depasseg]

I'm here asking about my car making a funny noise and you're telling me I shouldn't have bought a Toyota. That's about as unhelpful as it gets.

Not quite. You're here saying my headlights turn on automatically in the rain. And because you are using a relatively unknown car on a forum that generally services trucks, most of us are left scratching our heads. Maybe your car doesn't have the option to not turn the lights on when a rain sensor is activated. Maybe the headlights are linked to the wipers. We don't know. Oh and by the way, if you try to tow an ATV with that car you are likely going to have a challenge. We've seen it before and people have destroyed their transmission.

 

[Ericloewe]

Where is it written that FreeNAS MUST be used with multiple hard drives in a RAID array? FreeNAS appears to be perfectly happy operating with 1 drive for the OS and 1 for storage, aside from this one problem. (A problem which, admittedly, is unlikely to be FreeNAS's fault. But this certainly seems like the first place one might go for some insight, no?)

I don't understand the point of this rigid adherence to massive storage arrays if the OS works fine on lesser systems. "Good choice for use as a FreeNAS box" is subjective. Everyone's needs (and budget) are different. Just because FreeNAS is all but infinitely scalable doesn't mean it HAS to be used for massive RAIDed storage applications.

Anyway, this seems more like a philosophical question and I'm not interested in some old school nerdier-than-thou flamewar. Clearly I'm not the only one having the problem at hand, and not everyone who's having this problem is using an all-in-one mini PC, therefore the problem is not necessarily the choice of hardware. My personal FreeNAS box (with a 12TB ZFS2 array, for you sticklers) only has HDMI and DVI on the mobo and it works fine as a headless machine, for the record.

I'm here asking about my car making a funny noise and you're telling me I shouldn't have bought a Toyota. That's about as unhelpful as it gets.

I will try some flavor of live Linux off a USB thumb drive or something, just to see if I get the same result (indicating it's a BIOS issue). So thanks for that suggestion anyway.

There's very little point in using FreeNAS with a single drive. At that point, you get all the disadvantages of ZFS with half of the advantages - so you'd probably be better off with something simpler and more lightweight.

 

[ianfs]

I'm in the exact same boat. I've had a FreeNAS system running perfectly until the last update which I ran on 6/29. After this update the system won't boot without a monitor attached. Here are the specs.

ASROCK N3700-ITX motherboard
16GB Crucial DDR3L 1600 RAM

Everything else is pretty basic case/power supply SATA drives. The ASROCK mobo had a known issue with booting but setting a tunable fixed that and the system has worked like a charm until this last update.

 

[zbyrak]

I have the same problem after update....
It doesn't matter if I connect via HDMI or DVI-D port......
If I connect monitor to DVI-D port or TV to HDMI, freenas boot normally..... When i unplug DVI-D (monitor) or HDMI (TV) freenas doesn't boot.....

HELP :)

 

[rsarro]

Right, this thread won't go anywhere without proper hardware listings. Just list everything with as much detail as possible. FreeNAS versions too, while we're at it.

My Specs:
Gigabyte GA-H170N-WIFI Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard
Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory
Intel Core i5-6600 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor
Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive x2

Running Freenas 9.10. I didn't have any issues for the last few months until the latest 9.10 update. Once I installed the update it didn't load on the reboot (since there was no screen attached). Once I plugged the HDMI in to a screen it worked fine.

 

[Ericloewe]

What happens if you use a serial console instead?

 

[clamschlauder]

Very similar issue for me, also.

FreeNAS-9.10-STABLE-201605021851 (35c85f7)
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5520 @ 2.27GHz (Qty. 2)
SuperMicro X8DA3
24GB Memory ECC
Boot: 2x SuperMicro SSD-MD016-PHI 16GB SATADOM (MIRROR)
2x IBM ServeRAID M1015 RAID Controller
CyberPower CP1500PFCLCD

Always booted without any graphics card. It has been a while but from what I remember it was recently after the last update that it would not boot without plugging in the graphics card and monitor. I don't think I ever tried it with just the graphics card and without the monitor.

Thought this might add to the troubleshooting.

 

[cyberjock]

This discussion about FreeNAS not booting without a screen attached is old news. This is controlled by the hardware. If you have a desktop motherboard, there's a very real possibility that you are stuck with this behavior. Some of the premium desktop boards will let you disable that "requirement" in the BIOS. But it is controlled by the BIOS and if the system requires it, you're at the whims of the motherboard manufacturer to make the setting visible in the BIOS.

If you choose a server motherboard you generally don't have this issue. This is just one of a bunch of reasons why we recommend server grade motherboards. :P

 

[Ericloewe]

This discussion about FreeNAS not booting without a screen attached is old news. This is controlled by the hardware. If you have a desktop motherboard, there's a very real possibility that you are stuck with this behavior. Some of the premium desktop boards will let you disable that "requirement" in the BIOS. But it is controlled by the BIOS and if the system requires it, you're at the whims of the motherboard manufacturer to make the setting visible in the BIOS.

If you choose a server motherboard you generally don't have this issue. This is just one of a bunch of reasons why we recommend server grade motherboards. :p

I'm thinking that the FreeBSD console may be blocking in the absence of a monitor, when booted from UEFI, but it's just pure speculation for now, unless someone tries with a serial console on a board with no IPMI.

 

[danb35]

This discussion about FreeNAS not booting without a screen attached is old news. This is controlled by the hardware.

The fact that it's been working for most of these users until a recent system update would not seem to be consistent with this hypothesis. If it never worked, that would be one thing, but if it worked with a previous FreeNAS install and doesn't now, there has to be a software component to the problem.

 

[wblock]

If UEFI systems hang without a monitor connected but BIOS systems do not, that would be interesting. @clamschlauder, is your system BIOS or UEFI?

If anyone has an unimportant system doing this new "used to boot without a monitor but now does not" which they can experiment on, please PM me. I have an idea, but don't want to break something with important data on it. I also don't want to post it here without testing, to avoid misleading anyone.

 

[jpaetzel]

https://bugs.freenas.org/issues/15805 has a potential workaround.

 

[Mircusx]

I am experiencing the same problem too. I have a Supermicro X11 SAE-M motherboard. The board has an hdmi and a mini display port, but not a vga.
The NAS boots up perfectly when the hdmi port is connected to a screen but when I try to boot it up without a screen attached, the NAS does not respond - even if I plug in the hdmi cable after pressing the power button.
I have sent an email to Supermicro and explained the problem. Below is their reply:

"According to your description, it seems that the issue is related to the OS. After consulting with our BIOS team, it's hard for us to fix this issue by BIOS. FreeNAS developer should provide the solution for this issue. Thank you for your understanding!"

 

[jpaetzel]

Ok, I kind of suspected that wasn't a BIOS issue. What is the output of sysctl kern.vty on your system?

 

[Mircusx]

I can only see the output of sysctl kern.vty only when the system is running (thus with the screen connected). Here is what I get:
[root@freenas ~]# sysctl kern.vty
kern.vty: vt

 

[jpaetzel]

Is your system booting off uEFI? Systems that are booting off BIOS should return kern.vty: sc