DarrylM
Dabbler
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2020
- Messages
- 13
A few days ago, I upgraded from 11.2 to 11.3. Initial failure (from disk capacity being reached) required that I increase capacity of USB Boot device from 8Gb stick I’d been running since FreeNAS 9.3. Increased freenas-boot pool size to 64Gb, finished installation and saw the new Angular UI (pretty)!
I typically don’t leave my server running; I boot it only when making backups or needing to restore files. Two days ago, I had the server running when a series of power outages occurred in my area. The UPS to which server is connected also suffered a battery failure and did not protect the device. The server was subjected to multiple power fluctuations and unplanned power cycles. Upon trying to reboot the device, I found it would no longer do so.
Before looking at FreeNAS and FreeBSD bootloader messages, I booted first to the BIOS and found that one of the Western Digital drives was not recognized. I examined and reseated each of the drives and rebooted, but experienced same issue. Thinking that possibly the BIOS might have been compromised, I reflashed to highest supported level. After resetting the boot sequence priority to find the FreeNAS boot USB, a reboot confirmed that all three drives were now online. However, server still won’t mount the FreeNAS zfs file system. After a seemingly normal FreeNAS boot, server displays following messages:
Solaris: NOTICE: Cannot find the pool label for ‘freenas-boot’
Mounting from zfs:freenas-boot/ROOT/11.3-U1 failed with error 5.
Loader variables: Vfs.root.mountfrom=zfs:freenas-boot/ROOT/11.3-U1
followed by the mountroot> prompt. Entering “?” results in a four line “List of GEOM managed disk devices”
I researched the forums and ran across this older post: https://www.ixsystems.com/community/threads/workaround-semi-fix-for-mountroot-issues-with-9-3.26071/ Here’s a snippet: “Here's the problem. Apparently, for whatever reason, there is a small bit of time/lag that occurs between when the GRUB takes over, and when your thumb drive is *actually* accessible in a /dev/da0 context. If, at the point that access is attempted, and it's not available, THAT is when you drop to mountroot, and then you're screwed.” The solution involved setting FreeNAS tunables.
Symptoms sound similar to what I’m experiencing. Only problem is that the scenario was under FreeNAS 9.3 and used the GRUB boot loader. Nonetheless, I followed the guidance, hitting the escape key after seeing FreeNas screen and being dropped into the boot loader. Only thing is I didn’t see how to edit any tunables or set overrides.
Through some combination of key pressing, I briefly saw the file name /boot/defaults/loader.conf appear. This sounds like the place where boot parameters would go. Only I can’t access it for editing from FreeBSD bootloader or mountroot.
It is also entirely possible – likely, even - that I don’t know enough about FreeNAS to correctly diagnose and repair the problem. So, before I make things worse, I’m asking the community for help. I’ve also included screenshots and am happy to perform additional diagnostic steps I might have missed. Maybe the solution is as simple as re-installing FreeNAS on a different USB device and trying to restore my config file? Thank you in advance.
I typically don’t leave my server running; I boot it only when making backups or needing to restore files. Two days ago, I had the server running when a series of power outages occurred in my area. The UPS to which server is connected also suffered a battery failure and did not protect the device. The server was subjected to multiple power fluctuations and unplanned power cycles. Upon trying to reboot the device, I found it would no longer do so.
Before looking at FreeNAS and FreeBSD bootloader messages, I booted first to the BIOS and found that one of the Western Digital drives was not recognized. I examined and reseated each of the drives and rebooted, but experienced same issue. Thinking that possibly the BIOS might have been compromised, I reflashed to highest supported level. After resetting the boot sequence priority to find the FreeNAS boot USB, a reboot confirmed that all three drives were now online. However, server still won’t mount the FreeNAS zfs file system. After a seemingly normal FreeNAS boot, server displays following messages:
Solaris: NOTICE: Cannot find the pool label for ‘freenas-boot’
Mounting from zfs:freenas-boot/ROOT/11.3-U1 failed with error 5.
Loader variables: Vfs.root.mountfrom=zfs:freenas-boot/ROOT/11.3-U1
followed by the mountroot> prompt. Entering “?” results in a four line “List of GEOM managed disk devices”
I researched the forums and ran across this older post: https://www.ixsystems.com/community/threads/workaround-semi-fix-for-mountroot-issues-with-9-3.26071/ Here’s a snippet: “Here's the problem. Apparently, for whatever reason, there is a small bit of time/lag that occurs between when the GRUB takes over, and when your thumb drive is *actually* accessible in a /dev/da0 context. If, at the point that access is attempted, and it's not available, THAT is when you drop to mountroot, and then you're screwed.” The solution involved setting FreeNAS tunables.
Symptoms sound similar to what I’m experiencing. Only problem is that the scenario was under FreeNAS 9.3 and used the GRUB boot loader. Nonetheless, I followed the guidance, hitting the escape key after seeing FreeNas screen and being dropped into the boot loader. Only thing is I didn’t see how to edit any tunables or set overrides.
Through some combination of key pressing, I briefly saw the file name /boot/defaults/loader.conf appear. This sounds like the place where boot parameters would go. Only I can’t access it for editing from FreeBSD bootloader or mountroot.
It is also entirely possible – likely, even - that I don’t know enough about FreeNAS to correctly diagnose and repair the problem. So, before I make things worse, I’m asking the community for help. I’ve also included screenshots and am happy to perform additional diagnostic steps I might have missed. Maybe the solution is as simple as re-installing FreeNAS on a different USB device and trying to restore my config file? Thank you in advance.
