SOLVED This is a NAS data disk and can not boot system. System halted.

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ThreeDee

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Just got latest upgrades this morning and upon reboot got this message ..nothing else comes up.
"This is a NAS data disk and can not boot system. System halted."

:confused:
 
D

dlavigne

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Check that the boot device is listed first in the BIOS. If that doesn't fix it, try bumping up to an at least 8GB USB stick.
 

ThreeDee

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hmm .. it would seem that my USB drive just died upon rebooting from latest 9.3 beta updates .. not showing in bios now anyways .. darn

It is a 4GB USB drive, so I'll throw everything on to an 8GB ..thanks for the advice
 
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gpsguy

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Try power cycling your server and see if the flash drive reappears. I've read other 9.3 messages where users have reported the same problem.


Sent from my phone
 

ThreeDee

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Thanks for the info, and I have looked at those .. but my 4GB Verbatim USB drive won't boot on other computers either. I was running the 9.3 Beta just fine since it was released up until this morning. I have an 8GB USB drive that I'm doing a fresh install on .. we'll see how that goes .

*UPDATE*
install went fine .. and now a few days later I've discovered a "quirk" in my setup that just started with the 9.3 Beta .. maybe my motherboard is going bad all of a sudden? .. upon reboot after applying upgrades, sometimes I get "This is a NAS data disk and can not boot system. System halted." .. the system fails to see the USB drive anymore.

So I plug in the flash drive to another USB port and then the system can see the drive again. Another couple upgrades later and my setup cannot see the flash drive again .. I change back to the original internal USB port and it's up and running again.
 
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potato

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freenas and some motherboard bios remember the exact usb port to boot from sometimes

if your USB stick disappears in the future, try a program like easeus partition master
you may have to delete all partitions and wipe disks
but it could also be your flash disk getting old

sometimes doing upgrades, the new version just keeps making new partition and old data gets jumbled up
that is why I prefer not to do upgrades anymore, always clean install
 
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sef

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freenas and some motherboard bios remember the exact usb port to boot from sometimes

FreeNAS doesn't.

if your USB stick disappears in the future, try a program like easeus partition master
you may have to delete all partitions and wipe disks

That is not particularly relevant.

sometimes doing upgrades, the new version just keeps making new partition and old data gets jumbled up
that is why I prefer not to do upgrades anymore, always clean install

That is not how the new shiny! updating mechanism in FreeNAS 9.3 works. It doesn't touch the partitioning, or the boot code, when doing the new-style update.
 

potato

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are you sure sef?
because I just reinstalled FreeNAS 9.3 and I clearly saw it say it could not find da0 and it rewrote the location of the bootloader
so in fact, it did remember exactly where the USB was prior

That is not particularly relevant.
If someone cannot see their USB stick you think that is not relevant?
of course, it is relevant.
freenas has botched up plenty of installs and if you want to argue otherwise you are being ignorant.
 

cyberjock

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Tired of the forums yet sef? LOL.

Welcome to my world. :D
 

cyberjock

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are you sure sef?
because I just reinstalled FreeNAS 9.3 and I clearly saw it say it could not find da0 and it rewrote the location of the bootloader
so in fact, it did remember exactly where the USB was prior

I'm pretty sure he's right, since he wrote the code that makes it all work. ;)
 
S

sef

Guest
are you sure sef?
because I just reinstalled FreeNAS 9.3 and I clearly saw it say it could not find da0 and it rewrote the location of the bootloader
so in fact, it did remember exactly where the USB was prior

That is not particularly relevant.
If someone cannot see their USB stick you think that is not relevant?
of course, it is relevant.
freenas has botched up plenty of installs and if you want to argue otherwise you are being ignorant.

I am positive FreeNAS does not in any way remember which USB slot a drive was in. The device names that FreeNAS ends up with (e.g., "da0") are based on the kernel probing order, which is timing-related more than location-related.

I am also positive that one need use a third-party application to partition a drive that one installs FreeNAS on -- the FreeNAS installer does that.

And nobody said FreeNAS is error free.
 

Apollo

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Do any of the iXSystem team have access to a USB protocol analyzer? oh wait, I recall they don't have any AMD system at hand.
Maybe any of the Freenas members out there then?
 

Serverbaboon

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This has been happening to me everytime I run the updates, I had put it down to dodgy usb stick rather than Freenas burning it into submission.

For interests sake what happens on my Hp N54L ia that on the reboot it pauses on the USB tests and on is unable to initialise the usb controller , or at least the onboard socket and so boots off the NAS disks.

Pulling out the stick allows the USB to initialise but again boots of the NAS disk ( or at least loads the block with the message) putting the stick back in and rebooting allows Freenas to reboot, powering cycling the Microserver when it is stuck at the 'Initialising USB...' prompt allows the server to boot Freenas with the correct version selected.

As I said I am assuming its my stick on the way out, unless Freenas 'wrote to the stick in special way' when I did the inital upgrade from 9.2.1x to 9.3x that is :)
 

ThreeDee

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last several updates have been without issue
 

RoboKaren

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This has been happening to me everytime I run the updates, I had put it down to dodgy usb stick rather than Freenas burning it into submission.

For interests sake what happens on my Hp N54L ia that on the reboot it pauses on the USB tests and on is unable to initialise the usb controller , or at least the onboard socket and so boots off the NAS disks.

Pulling out the stick allows the USB to initialise but again boots of the NAS disk ( or at least loads the block with the message) putting the stick back in and rebooting allows Freenas to reboot, powering cycling the Microserver when it is stuck at the 'Initialising USB...' prompt allows the server to boot Freenas with the correct version selected.

As I said I am assuming its my stick on the way out, unless Freenas 'wrote to the stick in special way' when I did the inital upgrade from 9.2.1x to 9.3x that is :)

This is the same issue that I reported in the earlier thread: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/updates-kick-usb-out-of-boot-order.25007/

Read the thread, there are some possible workarounds.
 

ThreeDee

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Fresh install of 9.3 STABLE (ISO burned to DVD) onto a brand new 64GB PNY USB 3.0 (2.o backwards compatible, Thank You Sef!) Thumb drive. Experiencing no reboot issues whatsoever now.

4GB Verbatim and 8GB PNY thumb drives with 9.3 Beta, I had the reboot issue where my setup just stopped seeing the drives altogether until I moved them to a different USB port.

I have had my server out of it's cubby hole with the side off (internal USB port on bottom of motherboard) so I can access the thumb drive easier in case issue happened again .. I think it's safe to put the cover back on and slide it back into it's hole again now ... :D

Again, Thank you Sef for the drive and FreeNAS!

SOLVED!
 

pschatz100

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Fresh install of 9.3 STABLE (ISO burned to DVD) onto a brand new 64GB PNY USB 3.0 (2.o backwards compatible, Thank You Sef!) Thumb drive. Experiencing no reboot issues whatsoever now.

4GB Verbatim and 8GB PNY thumb drives with 9.3 Beta, I had the reboot issue where my setup just stopped seeing the drives altogether until I moved them to a different USB port.

I have had my server out of it's cubby hole with the side off (internal USB port on bottom of motherboard) so I can access the thumb drive easier in case issue happened again .. I think it's safe to put the cover back on and slide it back into it's hole again now ... :D

Again, Thank you Sef for the drive and FreeNAS!

SOLVED!
I have had three thumb drives go bad in the last two years, and it has always happened when I update software (other than for updates, I don't reboot my system very often.) Let's face it, thumb drives are just not very reliable.

I am now in the habit of using a new thumb drive whenever I update. This has yielded two benefits: 1) greatly reduced risk of a thumb drive failure, and 2) preserves a backup of my previous system.

Although I buy USB3 capable flash drives, I never use USB3 ports for the boot drive. To me, any differences in speed when booting from a USB2 versus USB3 port are not important.
 
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