(SOLVED) BTX halted during update to v13.0

[John45622]

I just updated from 12 U8.1 to 13 and now my server doesn't reboot. Gets stuck with this screen over IPMI console:
It was fine before the update. Anything I can try? I already manually selecting the SSD boot drive via the BIOS but same result.
This is a Supermicro X11SCH-LN4F. The boot drive is an SSD.

Thanks!

 

[mav@]

So far it is the first report of this kind I see.

Can you try to disconnect all other disks from the system or at least hide them from BIOS by disabling respective OPROMs to not interfere?

Your system looks new enough to support UEFI, wonder whether 13 would be able to boot if installed in UEFI mode instead of legacy BIOS.

 

[John45622]

Thank you for chiming in!
I will try that today. That boot drive was and still is the only one active in the boot sequence. Apart from USB etc. all the data drives are excluded in the BIOS. (I have one boot drive and 8 spinning disks). When I enter the manual boot menu and select the boot drive manually I get the same result. Is it still worth disconnecting the other drives in this case?
When you say "if installed in UEFI" that sounds like I'm facing a complete re-install from USB regardless, right?

 

[John45622]

So I did a bunch more re-boots remotely and at some point got to this screen which looks like it did install v13. Can I fall back to 12.8 from this menu?

I guess I'll do a re-install after testing without all other drives connected.

 

[John45622]

Ok, so I pulled all data-drives from their slots and started up. this time I got something slightly different

I then flashed a USB installer (v13) and put that in and powered up and this came up but no progress after that

 

[John45622]

Success! I flashed the USB again, this time using the "legacy" 12 U8.1 ISO and the server booted fine into the installer. So must be something with v13 installer that my machine doesn't like.
I installed via the additional boot environment option for now and didn't wipe the boot drive and TN migrated all the settings over and everything's as before which is pretty cool! I also didn't mess around with UEFI vs. legacy to avoid additional pitfalls at this point.
I'll stay away from 13 for another while until I have more time to investigate/reproduce what happened.

 

[mav@]

I'd still propose you to try just booting the 13 installed in UEFI mode. You should have separate boot order options for UEFI in addition to legacy ones. If that work, you may try to install on some other device in UEFI mode and try booting there. UEFI loader is just completely different and there is a chance it won't have the same problem.

 

[John45622]

Thing is: Since it won't even boot into the v13 installer USB stick I can't install it at all at the moment.

 

[mav@]

Installer should also support two modes of booting (legacy vs UEFI). You should have two different boot order priorities for it. Have you tried the UEFI?

 

[John45622]

Installer should also support two modes of booting (legacy vs UEFI). You should have two different boot order priorities for it. Have you tried the UEFI?

Ah right thanks. Haven't tried yet, have to find a time slot when it's not used to avoid down time during production. I'll also try to mount the ISO via IPMI and not USB to see if that makes a difference.

 

[mav@]

IPMI usually implements virtual USB device.

 

[John45622]

OK, so I finally managed to switch to UEFI and boot/install from USB successfully into a new boot environment. All goes well and after the prompt to reboot and remove the USB the server reboots and comes back with the EFI shell.
I have no idea how to proceed. Am I supposed to punch in some commands? If yes, which ones?

I tried
blk0:
then
ls
but this only returns
"...directory not specified"

Thanks!

 

[John45622]

When I reboot and go into the boot menu, this is what I get. I also tried switching back to legacy boot but that takes me back to the hang in posting number one of this thread.
Booting and installing from a 12 U8.1 iso works every time.
So weird. Every upgrade via the GUI has gone just fine from freenas to 12. 13 is the first that just doesn't boot.

 

[blanchet]

I guess that you have a HBA, because X11SCH-LN4F has only 8 SATA ports and you have 1 boot disks + 8 data disks.

If it is not already the case, it may work better if the boot disk is connected to the motherboard and not to the HBA.
You can also tried TrueNAS Scale instead of TrueNAS Core, because Grub2 has a better hardware support than FreeBSD BTX.

If your server boots both in BIOS and UEFI mode, it is easier to use BIOS because there are often strange issues with UEFI.

 

[John45622]

Yes 8 drives plus one NVME boot disk. But I wonder why everything installs fine with TN13 but then the Server just won't boot even though the installer says all is cool and settings were migrated from the previous version.
Same procedure works just fine with TN12U8.
To sum things up:
TN12U8.1 will boot from USB, install and boot just fine in Legacy mode
TN13 will NOT boot from USB in Legacy mode so can't be installed
TN13 will boot from USB in UEFI mode and will install but then not boot from the boot drive.
TN13 will also install via the upgrade page of the TN12 GUI but then won't reboot.

The only thing I haven't tried yet is installing 12U8.1 in UEFI mode and then upgrading to TN13 via the GUI.

 

[chruk]

Looks like your TN12 is a legacy boot install, which of course means it wont boot from UEFI if it has MBR instead of GPT. A upgrade to 13 will keep the existing boot format.

Also looks like for whatever reason TN13 has an issue with your legacy boot environment, the way forward is probably to convert your normal boot device to a UEFI compatible boot device, which probably means reinstalling TN on that boot device and selecting the UEFI GPT option in the installer.

 

[John45622]

Looks like your TN12 is a legacy boot install, which of course means it wont boot from UEFI if it has MBR instead of GPT. A upgrade to 13 will keep the existing boot format.

Also looks like for whatever reason TN13 has an issue with your legacy boot environment, the way forward is probably to convert your normal boot device to a UEFI compatible boot device, which probably means reinstalling TN on that boot device and selecting the UEFI GPT option in the installer.

Ah, I shall try that. A complete clean install instead of the new boot environment. Thank you!

 

[John45622]

Just to make sure I don't mess this up:
Is it safe to assume that if I have my config / keys etc. saved I can safely do a clean install of 12.x (this time in UEFI mode) and wipe the boot drive, then import the 12U8.1 config, import the pools and I should be back to where I was? Then do the upgrade to 13 or can I clean install 13 and load the config?

 

[John45622]

Ok, so I went forward and did a fresh install of 12U8.1 in UEFI mode. This time it went through but on reboot after install this happens.
Going to try again with TN13.

 

[John45622]

Same thing happens with the TN13 install. Will try TN13 in bios mode now.