TrueNAS SCALE Stuck on "Loading Initial Ramdisk" During Boot

[CrownedMartyr]

Hi everyone,

This is my first post here so apologies in advance if I'm not following any of the forum rules or simply not providing enough information. After running TrueNAS Core on my home server for a few months without issue, I have tried and failed many times to get TrueNAS SCALE installed and running on the same hardware.

I've posted a bug report with iXsystems here: https://jira.ixsystems.com/browse/NAS-114670

After the installation appears to run successfully, at the very beginning of the boot process I receive a number of messages including compression algorithm and unsupported embedded BP errors.

The GRUB screen loads and then once it tries to boot TrueNAS, I get the following:

Loading Linux 5.10.81+truenas
Loading initial ramdisk

It just hangs here. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about this problem to even know where to start troubleshooting. I've tried various installation methods (installing to various media, electing not to use a swap space, etc., re-downloading the installer and verifying with the SHA-256 hash, resetting my BIOS settings, but nothing works). Please let me know if there is any other information I can provide. In the meantime, here's some basic info. on my server:

ThinkServer TD340
Xeon E5-2440v2
32 GB RAM (RDIMM DDR3-1600 LV)
PNY CS900 120GB SSD (boot device)

 

[Kris Moore]

Welcome to the Community!

That is a weird issue for sure, seems like it is working to load the ramdisk / kernel, but then hangs?

I'm curious, if you disconnect your storage disks at bootup, does it continue booting? Any other hardaware possibly in play here?

 

[CrownedMartyr]

Kris, thank you for getting back to me! Tonight, I tried completely removing the storage disks and booting from a USB drive and the result was the same. There's no other unique hardware involved, as far as I can tell.

To be clear, it does eventually (after 15 mins or so) go past "loading ramdisk", but only to display a seemingly never-ending, repeating log that I can't interpret (see attached).

 

[Kris Moore]

Ok, thats a different type of issue then. Before we file a ticket, can you test installing the latest nightly to confirm if its still broken with the updated kernel?

https://download.truenas.com/truenas-scale-nightly/TrueNAS-SCALE.iso

 

[CrownedMartyr]

Unfortunately, I got the same result with the nightly build too (see attached).

 

[Kris Moore]

We'll have to let one of the engineers take a look on your ticket then. In meantime I'd suggest doing all the available BIOS / firmware updates for your motherboard, make sure its not some quirk of a particular bios revision.

 

[CrownedMartyr]

Thank you Kris. I have applied the latest BIOS / firmware updates available, so I guess at this point I just need to wait for engineering to respond.

 

[CrownedMartyr]

One last update: I discovered that I am occasionally able to get it to boot, but there's no rhyme or reason as to why it boots sometimes and not others. Even if it does boot, it still sits at "loading ramdisk" for about 15 minutes. Total boot time is about 20-25 minutes.

It's up and running now, so if there's anything you need me to do while it's up, let me know.

 

[nolaquen]

For another point of reference, I'm seeing the same thing. I've tried RC2, and the latest nightly. The one time I was able to get all the way into the web GUI (on the nightly), I walked away for about 5 minutes and came back to it completely frozen on a similar screen to what CrownedMartyr posted. I don't have any issues with Debian, or TrueNAS Core 12-U8 on the same setup (basic consumer hardware):

Dell Optiplex 5070, i5-9500
32GB G.Skill RAM
Boot drive: Samsung 980 nvme
Data drives: Samsung 870 evo (2x 4TB; I'm having this issue before I ever get to create a pool)

 

[NugentS]

As a suggestion - can you run memtest on the server for say 24 hours+

 

[Kwatskop]

Hi everyone, I have got the same problem as @CrownedMartyr. Has anyone found a fix for this?

 

[Astrodonkey]

I'm having this problem as well. I was able to boot after initial install, but after changing to a static IP and rebooting I'm stuck on the above screen. I ran memtest86 through 4 passes (24 hours+) with zero errors.

 

[Astrodonkey]

Hit this again today. Seems to be intermittent, often a reboot will fix it.

 

[bacon_o]

I had a very similar issue, and with the same hardware Lenovo ThinkServer TD340. I found a workaround by removing console=ttyS0,115200 from the GRUB boot configuration for Truenas Scale and was able to boot the system. Not sure if this will work for you. I posted my workaround in my thread Boot Issues with TrueNAS-SCALE-22.02.0.1 EDIT * doesn't persist across multiple reboots *

 

[CrownedMartyr]

The issue I reported with long boot times on the "loading initial ramdisk" process is still occurring, but the boot process does continue after 15-30 minutes or so.

However, I get stuck in a boot loop similar to the one mentioned here. Hopefully someone can come up with a solution because I have about given up on troubleshooting this further on my own.

Note that I see the same behavior on the latest Bluefin too.

 

[justsomeguy]

I had been running FreeNAS, and then TrueNAS, with no problems. Then I tried SCALE yesterday and encountered this same issue. I disabled secure boot which didn't seem to fix it, even after another reinstall. After that I checked the BIOS/Firmware and updated it to the latest version. This was a selection in my BIOS which starts networking and downloads it from the vendor. There were two BIOS updates that both came out less than a month ago, so both got applied. One states "Update Intel Microcode" and the other a generic "Optimized System Compatibility".

Anyhow, after that I was able to install both the 22.02 Stable and latest Bluefin nightly without having the issue. Only takes about 3-5 seconds on that "loading initial ramdisk" part now. It's been running for 15 hours now (no random reboots)

This is a custom desktop, so it's not a Lenovo like several other posts I've seen.

ASRock Z590M Pro4 Micro ATX LGA1200 (BIOS 2.2)
Intel Core i5-11400
32GB DDR4-3200 (PNY XLR8 16 GB x 4)
ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 256GB M.2-2280 NVMe (Boot device)

 

[CrownedMartyr]

I had been running FreeNAS, and then TrueNAS, with no problems. Then I tried SCALE yesterday and encountered this same issue. I disabled secure boot which didn't seem to fix it, even after another reinstall. After that I checked the BIOS/Firmware and updated it to the latest version. This was a selection in my BIOS which starts networking and downloads it from the vendor. There were two BIOS updates that both came out less than a month ago, so both got applied. One states "Update Intel Microcode" and the other a generic "Optimized System Compatibility".

Anyhow, after that I was able to install both the 22.02 Stable and latest Bluefin nightly without having the issue. Only takes about 3-5 seconds on that "loading initial ramdisk" part now. It's been running for 15 hours now (no random reboots)

This is a custom desktop, so it's not a Lenovo like several other posts I've seen.

ASRock Z590M Pro4 Micro ATX LGA1200 (BIOS 2.2)
Intel Core i5-11400
32GB DDR4-3200 (PNY XLR8 16 GB x 4)
ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 256GB M.2-2280 NVMe (Boot device)

Thank you for taking the time to share your troubleshooting steps. I'm losing hope that I'll be able to use this hardware to run TrueNAS since I've applied all updates I can think of.

To be clear, for the original issue you were experiencing, were you also getting stuck in a endless boot loop after it progressed past the "loading ramdisk" stage? That's my biggest issue at the moment, since my machine does, after 15 minutes or so, move past loading the ramdisk but then gets stuck in a loop.

 

[justsomeguy]

Hard to say if I would have experienced the boot loop or not. After the 20 minutes or so that it sat at the "loading ramdisk" part, it didn't even act like it was going to finish booting. Was something like one line of output every 5 seconds...and it went on like that for about 15 minutes until I gave up.

 

[sonicpink]

I just ran into this hang at "loading initial ramdisk" as well. I fixed it by re-enabling the serial port on my motherboard in the BIOS. I disabled it because I'm not using it, but it seems to be required for proper bootup in this instance.

 

[CrownedMartyr]

All, I am very happy to report that the solution @bacon_o suggested worked for me as well!

To recap, the trick was to edit the GRUB boot options to temporarily allow the system to boot by removing the line "console=ttyS0,115200". With the system up and running, I was able to implement a permant fix by disabling the serial console in the webui: System Settings --> Advanced --> Console, and set Enable Serial Console: Disabled.

Thank you all for your assistance with this!