TrueNAS SCALE Stuck on "Loading Initial Ramdisk" During Boot

[emsicz]

Found this thread to say this is still an issue. Removing the above mentioned lines during boot or disabling the serial console after boot doesn't resolve the issue. I don't really know how long it takes to boot, I waited about 30 minutes, then went to bed, it was booted up in the morning. Is there anything else I can do to get this fixed?

I'm on 22.02.2.1 SCALE.

EDIT: After some tinkering I found the issue may be the SATA DOM I use for TrueNAS boot volume. The way I determined this is that I tried to reinstall TrueNAS and the install sequence hang at "Welcome to GRUB" screen. So I tried a different USB stick with Windows Server install and that too hanged during the boot sequence, while trying to run NTFS service to iterate over devices. So I tried unplugging the SuperMicro SATA DOM from it's SATA connector and suddenly all the USB sticks and installers worked fine. I reinstalled SCALE on NVMe drive and it has since worked.

EDIT 2: The issue has reappeared, even with the NVME drive being used for OS install. I have retraced my steps for both cases and this has happened when I fiddled with NIC settings in TrueNAS. The first time this has happened was when I set IP address reservation for both NICs in my router/DHCP (which is a separate hardware) and went and rebooted TrueNAS. Since that moment, TrueNAS would not boot. I have then gone down the rabbit hole to convince myself the SATA DOM is at fault. This time, I was on a new installation of TrueNAS and a new NVME disk and I was working on setting up a bridge for one of the NICs so that VMs could talk to the host over network. The bridge IP kept leasing wrong IP address so I rebooted the router and rebooted the TrueNAS to force it to lease the reserved IP for the newly set up bridge. And voila, since that reset I can't boot. I get stuck on 'Loading initial ramdisk ...' again. I have also tried disabling serial ports in BIOS (which TrueNAS complains about briefly during boot, but then continues) to no help. I also found a way to disable both NICs in BIOS of my SuperMicro board just to test whether that could be the issue, but it isn't, the boot still doesn't work and is stuck on the loading initial ramdisk message. The OS just corrupted itself in a way that also hangs OS reinstalls from boot USB stick.

I'm really stuck on this, I won't be reinstalling TrueNAS for third time. Either I can resolve this in a few days, or I need to migrate to some other OS that isn't going to corrupt itself repeatedly in matter of days.

EDIT 3: So I found that disabling EFI makes everything work, except now I can't boot from NVME drives, only SATA drives. I've also tried editing the command during TrueNAS boot sequence and I've added 'echo test2' after the line that executes 'initrd /ROOT/path to truenas' command. And the echo line executes. So in my mind, the boot somewhat works but then TrueNAS stops working for some reason:



Quiet boot is disabled in bios. Secure boot is disabled in bios. UEFI only boot is enabled, CSM is disabled.

EDIT 4: So I was thinking if the first thing in parameter sequence for boot is the command load_video, it occurred to me I kept fiddling with HDMI plug to simulate plugged monitor. This is because of Plex. Furthermore, this SuperMicro board has ASpeed GPU onboard which serves IPMI. So technically... I have 2 monitors plugged into 2 different GPU adapters. So if this thing is plugged in, EFI boot for TrueNAS gets stuck after initrd command, which is loaded after "Loading initial ramdisk..." echo. I can reliably simulate this every time. If this plug is removed from the system, everything works in EFI. If I plug it in, it breaks boot which then takes between 30 minutes and 10 hours.



I honestly don't understand any of what is happening here, but the repeatability of this makes me think this could be the source of the problem I'm hunting.

 

[heppu]

I have also this issue with ASUS Pro WS WRX80E-SAGE SE WIFI board which has the same ASpeed GPU. I tried enabling CSM, removing that console parameter, unpluging all hdmi and display port cables but nothing helped. Finally I tried adding acpi=off parameter which allowed me to boot successfully. Now I have not yet tried to revert all other changes to see if those are also required but what I can say is that acpi=off was definitely required for my machine to boot.

 

[geethsg7]

I have also this issue with ASUS Pro WS WRX80E-SAGE SE WIFI board which has the same ASpeed GPU. I tried enabling CSM, removing that console parameter, unpluging all hdmi and display port cables but nothing helped. Finally I tried adding acpi=off parameter which allowed me to boot successfully. Now I have not yet tried to revert all other changes to see if those are also required but what I can say is that acpi=off was definitely required for my machine to boot.

having the same issue, where did u add the parameter? I am new to all this stuff.

 

[heppu]

having the same issue, where did u add the parameter? I am new to all this stuff.

Using that hack actually caused bunch of other problems so do not do that. I ended up solving this by disabling the ASpeed GPU from bios and then also removing usb devices that were connected via GPU's USB-C port.

 

[Sykotik]

Iv just got this issue , loading initial ramdisk , have installing truenas for the past days ~ , i have booted the PC ( HP elite desk 800g with a 7600 cpu ) a good few times now , at least 10 in total and everything worked just fine.
how ever after shutting down the pc last night , i booted it this afternoon , to this issue .. , how ever i had synology DSM installed on the PC before hand , and it some times would just hang at boot and not fully boot up
so my question is: is it a hardware problem ? i thinking of buy some some new parts and building
from reading the thread it's affecting all manner of PC's..

 

[Astrodonkey]

Iv just got this issue , loading initial ramdisk , have installing truenas for the past days ~ , i have booted the PC ( HP elite desk 800g with a 7600 cpu ) a good few times now , at least 10 in total and everything worked just fine.
how ever after shutting down the pc last night , i booted it this afternoon , to this issue .. , how ever i had synology DSM installed on the PC before hand , and it some times would just hang at boot and not fully boot up
so my question is: is it a hardware problem ? i thinking of buy some some new parts and building
from reading the thread it's affecting all manner of PC's..

I still see this problem from time to time after rebooting. I don't have any USB devices plugged in, and it usually corrects itself after a reboot (or two).

On my system anyway, I haven't found the cause. But, this is just a home lab so... whatever.

 

[Sykotik]

I still see this problem from time to time after rebooting. I don't have any USB devices plugged in, and it usually corrects itself after a reboot (or two).

On my system anyway, I haven't found the cause. But, this is just a home lab so... whatever.

While messing around the past days , iv had a wireless keyboard plugged in , how ever i removed the usb for the keyboard last night , thinking i won't be needing it any more and it will not boot at all , i have tried a good 5/6 times and noting , will not boot at all WebUI wont connect and plex is not working , so it stuck boot.

 

[Sykotik]

Ohh it changed , it's now stuck at Loading initial ram disk after a boot with the wireless keyboard dongle plug in
well this feels like a complete waste of time , couldn't get plex to work and now this :(

 

[NugentS]

I suggest running memtest for 24 hours

 

[Sykotik]

I suggest running memtest for 24 hours

It's only 8gb of single stick of ram , do you think it's worth buy some new ram- say 2x 8gb ? , tbh their cheap as chips at the moment.

 

[NugentS]

1. Its worth testing - that way if its bad you know what was wrong
2. Its ZFS - its always worth having more memory. I consider Scale to be minimum 16GB, with Core at 8GB - but thats just my opinion.

Its about all I can suggest as you haven't posted your hardware as per forum rules

 

[Sykotik]

1. Its worth testing - that way if its bad you know what was wrong
2. Its ZFS - its always worth having more memory. I consider Scale to be minimum 16GB, with Core at 8GB - but that's just my opinion.

Its about all I can suggest as you haven't posted your hardware as per forum rules

I'll test it how ever - like you say it's best to have more ram , so just ordered some more ram 2x 8gb sticks
if the old ram is fine ill save it for a build later .

 

[Sykotik]

Did a memtest test and it passed
I did notice the ram was in the farthest slot so moved it closer ,
It booted but can't access the webui

The network cable is connected!

 

[Sykotik]

manage to boot ,
but now all the setting look like their have been reset
but my dives still have the data on them

how to i get my setting back up that i have spend ages configuring?

 

[NugentS]

Do you have a copy of the config?

 

[Sykotik]

I don't, guess I'm going to have to redo anything.
( I really hope all the data is there , spent a good day transferring it all over)

 

[NugentS]

Can you import the pool?
You won't have you shares - but you will have the data on the pool, if you can import it?

If you type "zpool import" - or possibly "sudo zpool import" at the shell - what happens?

 

[Sykotik]

Yes figured that out last night , how ever like you say no shares or apps ( plex) are showing.

I'm guessing if I set it the same way as I did originally, I should have access to the my media?

 

[Sykotik]

1st , sorry for hijacking the thread , my bad!!
2nd im back up and running , reset my settings ( thankfully i remember them )
got plex back and running , strangest thing . it had two plex servers running , ( one was ages ago when i first tried Truenas a few months back but couldn't get it working - but started working last night )

and thanks too @NugentS for the help :) really appreciate it.

 

[aakside]

I just had this issue after rebooting yesterday, and thanks to emsicz's post, I was able to resolve it by unplugging my identical HDMI dummy plug, but that leaves me with a couple of questions. First, here's some context around how I use my NAS server: I have a Gigabyte MZ01-CE0 with two GPUs (one for transcoding/media libary-related tasks, and one for gaming). I run several apps, including Plex, and I also run a Windows VM (using the gaming GPU + HDMI dummy plug) which I use to play games remotely through Parsec.

1. Can I ever successfully reboot my server while keeping the HDMI dummy plug in? I saw that heppu mentioned disabling the ASpeed graphics, but I haven't attempted this yet. Would doing so affect any of the use cases I mentioned?
2. Should I just run my Windows VM on another machine? I want to avoid obtaining more hardware to do this, but I found it difficult/tedious getting a Windows VM with GPU running in TrueNAS SCALE, and this additional issue with the dummy plug makes me wonder if I will continue encountering difficulties with this arrangement. Any feedback is appreciated.