System will freeze while booting after upgrade/fresh install

[Stijn Hendrickx]

My HP Proliant ML310 G4 server doesn't have a spare SATA. But! I do have 2 IDE ports and I will try to boot from an old IDE drive.
Other possibility, just to test, is to remove my 4 SATA drives an install Freenas 9.3 to another SATA disc, just to see if it boots... But I'd like to use the USB stick option (Green IT ) as a final solution.

 

[joeschmuck]

Thanks for taking a stab at it. I almost mentioned the IDE drive but those are not easy to find these days. I think I have three working IDE drives stored away just waiting for me to throw them away.

You know, if I had this type of problem, I'd have already tested the hell out of it last month.

 

[bestboy]

it's hanging (5 minutes so far) at a few steps into the install

I've not tried 9.3 yet, so I cannot really help out. But from what I can see on the forum the installer is lacking some kind of feedback while it's doing its stuff (has always been that way). This is especially problematic as the installation on an USB stick is terribly slow. I hope you guys keep your cool, have patience and don't jump to conclusions and reboot...

 

[Ericloewe]

If you have IDE, CF cards are a very interesting option. They only need a passive adapter that takes PATA and power.

 

[Stijn Hendrickx]

I installed 9.3 to an IDE disc via the CD-ROM. After the install I dropped to the shell and executed "zpool scrub freenas-boot" and "zpool upgrade freenas-boot". All went well, but still no Freenas 9.3 boot on my HP Proliant ML310 G4.
After boot, the system continues after the BIOS (this is a progression in comparison with the USB stick). But then I get the screen I attached.

 

[titan_rw]

"zpool upgrade freenas-boot".

Where-ever did you see that you should run that? If I remember right, upgrading the boot zpool is fatal to future booting, as grub doesn't support pools that are > v28. I think there was some attempt to prevent this from happening if you did a "zpool upgrade -a", but being that you specifically told it which pool to upgrade, you might have made your boot zpool un-bootable.

The scrub is fine, but the gui automatically kicks those off on every install and upgrade too I think.

 

[hunter]

I have an idea but you may not like it... If you have a spare SATA port, install either a cheap SSD or hard drive (laptop hard drive will do nicely). For compatibility reasons it's best to move that drive to the SATA0 (first bootable drive) connector.

Actually I'd like someone to try this to see if it solves this problem. It's not the ideal solution, especially if yo do not have any available SATA connectors.

Thanks for the idea joeschmuck, you got my hardware up and running again! I had a SATA hard drive that I wasn't using. It's 500 GB but I don't mind "mortgaging" it for a while to have freeNAS working again. I really hope the developers do find a solution to the problem with USB thumb drives.

So, I burned a boot CD, temporarily attached it to my box with USB (the CD is USB), installed FreeNAS 9.3 onto the spare SATA hard drive, and it works like a champ. The last step, was to import the old configuration savings from 9.2.1.9--it had no problem upgrading that database.

 

[Stijn Hendrickx]

I think I have bad new for the HP Proliant users: http://h20565.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/...248036&docId=emr_na-c02873092&docLocale=en_US

"The problem resides on the fact that all operating systems initialize the logical drive in MBR mode, which can only address up to 2Tb of partitioning.

GPT is a replacement of MBR, where GPT can address up to 9.4Zb.

But, initializing the boot logical drive as GPT (by other means) will not work, as ProLiant BIOS are not EFI/UEFI complaint, and this is a requirement to boot off GPT volumes."

Is there a workaround? E.g. using two USB sticks? One to boot and proceed to the other holding the Freenas...

 

[joeschmuck]

@hunter Glad there was a work around for you, I hope others can make it work as well but it sounds like not everyone will be able to make it work.

 

[Suryjuto]

Having similar issue here. Can't boot past the post with the USB stick inserted. Have tried with multiple USB sticks (SanDisk Cruzer, Lexar, no-name generic). I was running great on 9.2 for well over a year. Did the GUI-based upgrade and now stuck where several others are. Able to get further with no USB stick installed but that doesn't do me much good. Also on the latest BIOS on my Gigabyte MB

 

[Stijn Hendrickx]

Check if your MB supports UEFI or EFI and if it can load GPT.
Check: http://www.gigabyte.com/microsite/276/3tb.html

 

[Suryjuto]

Check if your MB supports UEFI or EFI and if it can load GPT.
Check: http://www.gigabyte.com/microsite/276/3tb.html

Nope. Motherboard isn't listed in that link. It's a GA-EP45-UD3L running an E8400 Core2Duo -- old reliable :)

 

[Suryjuto]

Had an old drive and SATA card laying about. Installed both and installed 9.3 from USB and booted just fine.

Edit:
Everything is back up and running just swimmingly. And I've got another USB stick back to use! Win-win!

 

[74m]

Ok guys, my initial problem is solved. I have just tried an other usb stick (kingston) and the failure is gone!

Thanks for your help... And for highjacking the thread!

;)

 

[Stijn Hendrickx]

Sorry for the highjack, 74m.
Has anyone made any progression?

I think https://bugs.freenas.org/issues/6968 is related.
Anyone tried the ISO http://download.freenas.org/test/FreeNAS-sef.iso? Please feedback what happens when booting this iso.

Thanks!

 

[Mike N]

I gave up and installed an old IDE HD and installed onto it. Works fine, and NAS actually is more responsive too, which is interesting

 

[bob_v2]

Now, for the installation, you need TWO usb keys: one with the image, one for the system. And at least a 8gb key for the system.

 

[joeschmuck]

So it sounds like for many people just moving over to a SATA or IDE port has solved the issue. It's not ideal but it's a path forward.

 

[danb35]

Now, for the installation, you need TWO usb keys: one with the image, one for the system. And at least a 8gb key for the system.

No, you don't need two USB keys. You need installation media, which could be a USB key, a CD-ROM, a disk image mounted over IPMI, or probably a number of other things. And then you need system media to install to. The system media can't be the same as the installation media. I'm seeing a number of people noticing this, with varying degrees of surprise and/or distress, and thinking it's something new with 9.3. I don't see how this is anything new--you've never been able to install onto the installer boot device.

 

[Bmck26]

Ugh.... I did an upgrade, and on the last reboot now the machine hangs at BIOS before even getting to memory check.

Remove the USB key, and machine works as it should (but doesn't boot FreeNAS obviously).

I put the ISO on a new 4gb key and booted the machine off it, then installed the old 8gb key to try and do install onto it. Now I get this:

gpart: geom 'da0' Operation not permitted
dd: /dev/da0: Operation not permitted
The FreeNAS installation on da0 has failed

I'm getting this same message. I'm trying to use a mushkin 32gb usb stick that I had as a spare. I still have my original installation on my old sandisk cruze 8gb model but I was having some performance issue after upgrading so I was going to try a fresh install on this stick and restore my config, but I can't get past this point.