UEFI GRUB: Alloc Magic is Broken (won't boot)

[zoomzoom]

My server was down for a while due to RMA'ing the serverboard, and I got everything reinstalled yesterday. I immediately did an update via the WebUI from 11.0 to 11.1. Installation went fine, however upon rebooting, GRUB returns the message:

Code:

	Booting `Normal Bootup'

alloc magic is broken at 0x7983dd20: 0
Aborted.  Press any key to exit._

• The boot devices are mirrored 32GB PNY Turbo USB3 drives

• I assumed something went wrong with the update, so I reinstalled 11.1 from a USB, and upon rebooting, same exact error
  • I think the hex location was different each time, but I could be wrong

Is there something I need to edit in GRUB before it tries to boot FreeNAS?

• To rule out a dirty RAM contact, I removed the 4 DIMMs, cleaned the contacts with alcohol, and reinstalled; however the same error, with the same hex code/location, is displayed.

 

[Ericloewe]

What hardware is this?

 

[zoomzoom]

In my signature =]

FreeNAS
SilverStone DS380 | AsRock C2750D4I | Intel 2.4gHz 8C Avoton C2750
32GB Crucial CT5008061 U-ECC 1.35v | StarTech PEXESAT322I
SSD | Samsung 850 EVO 120GB
2.5" | { HGST: HTS721010A (3) } Z1
3.5" | { WD: WD60EFRX (2) | Seagate: ST5000DM00 (2) ; ST4000DM00 (3) } Z2 ; { ST4000VN000 (8) } Z2
FreeNAS 11-U1| { PNY Turbo USB3 32GB (2) } Mirror

 

[zoomzoom]

I'm getting same error at a different address space with the 11.0-U3 install media, so it appears this is either related to the USB drives I'm using for the boot disk or RAM.

• I'm currently installing to a different USB drive and will update once I've ruled out USB drives and RAM

 

[Ericloewe]

C2750...

Anyway, this seems to be squarely a GRUB problem. Since multiple installs haven't solved the problem (I assume you wiped the boot drive between these attempts), try a different boot device. Also make sure that the ISOs match their posted checksums.

 

[zoomzoom]

The issue is UEFI and GRUB, as it appears there's a misconfiguration of GRUB to load a UEFI install. Selecting BIOS as the install method works perfectly fine.

I'll open a bug report in the morning and post the link.

 

[Ericloewe]

That's weird, I have an 11.0-U4 install on UEFI and everything works.

 

[zoomzoom]

It's also not isolated to the two PNY (USB3) drives, as I also tried two different SanDisk (USB2) drives, and a 120GB 850 EVO. All four USB drives, if installed with UEFI selected in the installer, failed with the alloc magic error, but if BIOS was selected in the installer, booted fine.

Even weirder, with the 11.1 install media, when I installed to the 850 EVO, which had previously been apart of a single drive pool for backup logs, the install would complete successfully, but when it went to boot, it came up as (paraphrasing) "this drive is a NAS drive", like it's still apart of a pool, and refused to boot. I installed to it twice and each time, the same error.

• I did verify each time that I was indeed selecting the 850 EVO, as it became far more efficient to simply load the boot menu and select a drive, rather than go in the BIOS each time I tried a different boot disk.

These two things seem to imply there's something wrong with GRUB in the 11.1 install media that causes issues when selecting UEFI install inside the installer, or when it updates a UEFI 11.0 install to a UEFI 11.1 install through the WebUI.

I'll repeat the installs tomorrow in order to provide a comprehensive bug report. Do I need to record everything via the jviewer, or is there a way to log all install activity from the point the installer loads through to when it reboots?

 

[ic_attila]

Hi,

getting the same error, after rebooting my server.

Welcome to GRUB! alloc magic is broken at 0xZZZZZZZZ: 0 Aborted. Press any key to exit.

Specs: Asus P10S-X mb, with 4401 BIOS, in UEFI mode (CSM Support --> Disabled)
CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1220 v5
RAM: 64 GB DDR4, ECC, Kingston
BOOT drive: ADATA SU800 120GB and PATRIOT Burst 120 GB in mirror connected to mo.bo SATA controller
Data Pool: a lot of disks on an intel RS3WC080 controller and an intel expander, but I think this is not important at the moment.

FreeNAS version is: 11.1-U6

I'd like to apply the U6.3 update, and before that I thought it would be nice, to give a reboot to the server. So I rebooted it, and from that point I getting this error.

On my second FreeNAS device, which is an older, therefore not UEFI enabled, this process (reboot, apply the update) went smooth.

Is there a way, to get grub working again, or my best option to reinstall and reconfigure FreeNAS?

 

[Simon Mackenzie]

This is weird. I download the 11.2 ISO. Used Rufus 3.1 and 3.4 to write it to a USB thumb drive. When I insert it into a USB port on the server reports:
ISO9660/FREENAS: corrupt or invalid GPT detected. ISO9660/FREENAS: GPT rejected -- may not be recoverable.
Have used two different thumb drives and verified the ISO download, all with the same result on a sever running 11.1-U6.3.

 

[zoomzoom]

@ic_attila The only fix I found was to install the update via USB, selecting to format the boot media, rather than installing into a new boot environment.

@Simon Mackenzie Rufus should be formatting the USB as MBR for booting BIOS or UEFI, with filesystem FAT32. Try with those settings and see if that fixes your issue.

 

[ic_attila]

@zoomzoom I'm confused a bit. Is this mean that I will have to do the complete system configuration again? This is a bit weird, that I'll loose all my config due to an update... And why this is not happening on the older legacy BIOS systems? I done this update on three "old" systems without a problem. Only the shiny new UEFI based server broke down... this is really sad...

EDIT: discard my first sentence.

 

[zoomzoom]

@ic_attila No idea why it happens, but likely something in the update payload isn't executing correctly.

All you need to do is save your configuration file with the password seed to a directory on your PC that has ACLs only for your user (password seed isn't encrypted), download the 11.2-RELEASE-U1 ISO, create a bootable USB using Rufus, then boot it.

• During the install process, choose the option for it to boot from UEFI.
• Set a temporary root password during install... DO NOT use your permanent root password during install, as the WebAdmin will not have HTTPS support until you import or create a SSL cert through the WebUI.