Unable to Boot after fresh install

[zach86]

Hey Guys,

New to FreeNAS. Spent a bunch of money to build what I need for my NAS, and in the process, I didn't skimp for what I need.

CPU: Xeon E3-1220V3
Mobo: Supermicro X10SL7-FO
Ram: 2 x 8GB Crucial CT2KIT102472BD160B
2 x 120GB Sandisk SSD's (For whatever, no real plan yet)

And will be running 8 x 3TB WD Red's. (4 new ones, 4 in my current old QNAP, which I will be migrating all data to FreeNAS, and then creating a second pool with the other 4 drives.)

So I've been playing with FreeNAS in Virtualbox, and really want to love it, but have been having issues getting it running on my new hardware. Ran MemTest86 for a day and a half to check my ECC memory, no errors, rock solid and stable....

Ended up installing it on one of the 120 GB SSD's before I realized I wouldn't be able to use it for storage, but got it up and running for the most part, minus going into great detail with configuring, I decided I'd try installing it to a USB stick instead.

Well, what a big treat I was in for from that point on. Error after error after error after error. Can't even boot from the install still on the SSD, it just absolutely freaks out. Attempted re-installing about 5 times on 2 different USB sticks, tried installing from USB3 ports, Also tried disabling USB3 in the bios (XHCI Mode) and used a USB2.0 port, no luck. It installs no problem, says it installed without errors, but after rebooting and letting it load up, I'm greeted with so many errors its ridiculous, I just really want to get this up and running so I can start copying 5 or to TB of data over.

I've attached some screenshots of the IPMI interface as its booting

Please please can someone offer some suggestions as to what to do? Been at this for 2 nights now and am just wanting a solid working NAS, and the feature set of FreeNAS really appealed to me, ZFS, Snapshots, the reliability (hah, maybe after its actually running) aspect to name a few.

 

[m0nkey_]

What type of USB drives are you using to boot? Are they USB 2.0 or USB 3.0? If you want to go USB, the most recommended is the Sandisk Cruzer Fit or Ultra Fit.

 

[SweetAndLow]

did you check the hash of the iso that you downloaded to make sure it matched what you actually got? seems like you just have a bad install and i suspect the iso is truncated.

 

[Mirfster]

Ended up installing it on one of the 120 GB SSD's before I realized I wouldn't be able to use it for storage, but got it up and running for the most part, minus going into great detail with configuring, I decided I'd try installing it to a USB stick instead.

Out of curiosity:

1. Are the original SSDs attached as well?
   • Wondering if they have been wiped or if the installation of FreeNas still resides on them as well?
2. What do you have your BIOS boot order set to?
   • Would assume that you want to have FreeNas installed on the USB sticks and them set as the first boot device instead.

If this is a new build and you do not have any existing data, I would suggest that you disconnect all the hard drives and try to install with just your USB sticks attached. If all goes well, then attach your drives, but would recommend that you wipe those SSDs first (if they do not have any valuable data on them).

At the very least this will assist to isolate the issue; if it is with the USB Controller/Sticks or a bad ISO.

 

[zach86]

What type of USB drives are you using to boot? Are they USB 2.0 or USB 3.0? If you want to go USB, the most recommended is the Sandisk Cruzer Fit or Ultra Fit.

Hey there,

I tested two different Kingston DataTraveler G4 16GB, cleared each one before installing. Though I can see if I can pick up a completely different brand after work today or tomorrow to re-test. :)

 

[zach86]

did you check the hash of the iso that you downloaded to make sure it matched what you actually got? seems like you just have a bad install and i suspect the iso is truncated.

I did, and everything checked out. Strange thing though it seemed that the first time I saw this happen wasn't even with the USB drives, but with the SSD, when I messed up something early on in the configuration process, and decided I'd start from scratch so I tried the "Restore to factory defaults" within Freenas. And upon re-booting it freaked out just like in the screenshots above, so I rebooted and selected the "Initial Install" boot option and that loaded just fine from the SSD.

 

[zach86]

Out of curiosity:

1. Are the original SSDs attached as well?
   • Wondering if they have been wiped or if the installation of FreeNas still resides on them as well?
2. What do you have your BIOS boot order set to?
   • Would assume that you want to have FreeNas installed on the USB sticks and them set as the first boot device instead.

If this is a new build and you do not have any existing data, I would suggest that you disconnect all the hard drives and try to install with just your USB sticks attached. If all goes well, then attach your drives, but would recommend that you wipe those SSDs first (if they do not have any valuable data on them).

At the very least this will assist to isolate the issue; if it is with the USB Controller/Sticks or a bad ISO.

1. The original SSD's are still attached
2. The Boot order in the bios, I have disabled everything except the Virtual CD/DVD Drive (which IPMI uses to mount the iso to), and the Bootable USB drive, I disabled every other boot option so it wasn't trying anything else. It gets to the bootloader on the USB stick fine, and starts to load without problems, but after about 10-15 seconds it just starts spewing errors and never gets to the point where I can log in to the web gui, it gets stuck in a loop at some point...

 

[Mirfster]

I would suggest wiping the USBs, making sure no hard drives (SSDs included) are attached and trying a fresh install. Then see if the issue is still present. If not, then wipe the SSDs too then attach them.

By wipe, I mean a clean wipe. Like if you used "DiskPart" on a Win 7 and above machine, not just a "Format".

*** Careful with DiskPart, if you select the wrong disk and the use the "Clean" command... Poof.....

 

[zach86]

I would suggest wiping the USBs, making sure no hard drives (SSDs included) are attached and trying a fresh install. Then see if the issue is still present. If not, then wipe the SSDs too then attach them.

By wipe, I mean a clean wipe. Like if you used "DiskPart" on a Win 7 and above machine, not just a "Format".

*** Careful with DiskPart, if you select the wrong disk and the use the "Clean" command... Poof.....

Thanks very much for the suggestions Mirfster,

I have quite a number of years of experience with Windows of all forms, so no problems there. To make things easy and not have to shut down start up shut down start up my main desktop, I'll likely just mount a bootable linux ISO to delete all partitions directly on my FreeNAS box, saves pulling and plugging drives in and out.

I wonder if it was still just detecting something on the SSD that was still plugged in, since I didn't wipe that after trying to install to the USB stick. Thanks for pointing that one out,

Tonight when I get home from work, I'll
- unplug both SSD's directly from the motherboard (Leaving the 4 WD Red ZFS pool plugged in should be fine though right?)
- delete the partition from the usb stick
- attempt another re-install using a usb2 port with XHCI mode disabled just to be sure
And then try booting from it to see if the errors persist.

This is one reason I wanted to come to the FreeNAS side, the support forum is great, and from all the reading I've been doing over the past 2 weeks, everyone (well most everyone) is very helpful and informative.

I will post back with my findings once I get home from work tonight. :)

 

[Mirfster]

Yeah, I am leaning towards it getting confused with something on the SSDs myself. Seems like you were most of the way there with the USB port configuration (XHCI mode disabled). Best of luck.

 

[jde]

2 x 120GB Sandisk SSD's (For whatever, no real plan yet)

I know it can be hard to come to terms with losing the Storage space of the SSD by using it as a boot device. But, there are several threads on this forum outlining the virtues of using SSD boot devices. In my recent build, I went with an SSD boot drive. On my earlier build I went the USB route and my next upgrade will be an SSD on that machine. Since you already have the drives and don't have a specific plan for them, I would recommend reconsidering using one of them as a boot drive. Of course, this is assuming that you get past your current problem and get freenas to install once you wipe the drives.

I just really want to get this up and running so I can start copying 5 or to TB of data over.

Just take care to properly burn in your system before putting your data on it.

 

[zach86]

I know it can be hard to come to terms with losing the Storage space of the SSD by using it as a boot device. But, there are several threads on this forum outlining the virtues of using SSD boot devices. In my recent build, I went with an SSD boot drive. On my earlier build I went the USB route and my next upgrade will be an SSD on that machine. Since you already have the drives and don't have a specific plan for them, I would recommend reconsidering using one of them as a boot drive. Of course, this is assuming that you get past your current problem and get freenas to install once you wipe the drives.



Just take care to properly burn in your system before putting your data on it.

Hey jde,

Thanks for the additional comments, I appreciate any and all input.
I did decide I was going to use one of them for installation of jails and such. I'm planning on getting Plex up and running on it as well since I'll be fully decommissioning the QNAP once data has been migrated over. It functions great for everything I've needed it for, just needed something more expandable with more space for additional drives. Aside from that, it was a champ at doing everything I needed (aside from transcoding anything higher than 720p, due to being a dual core atom processor.)

Keeping Plex's files on an SSD should provide a fair bit more of a responsive feeling when browsing my library, compared to my Qnap, a friend has it installed on a slightly better spec'ed system, but has Plex on an SSD instead, and the images and metadata load much quicker than my QNAP, so I figure keeping that on an SSD for low latency loading would be better than on the ZFS Pool/array.

After coming to that conclusion, having a second SSD for any additional storage that doesn't need redundancy or security like temp stuff is nice, though 120GB should get me though.

Last night I did try a re-install again and got FreeNAS working off the initial Boot SSD, so its at a working state there without throwing any errors or problems. I may end up just leaving it at that if testing once more with a USB stick doesn't work tonight (with both ssds disconnected during install and first boot).

Whatever the case may be, I'll provide an update and not leave anyone hanging.

As for burn-in, definitely ran Memory testing for well over 24 hours without issues, haven't done a cpu burn-in yet, although I won't be maxing it out fully, aside from running Plex, using it for storage, and maybe some additional testing, I don't think heat will be an issue, though I will do some additional testing before removing data from my Qnap and then clearing and re-using those drives to create a second pool.

 

[jde]

Remember to do hard drive burn in as well. https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/how-to-hard-drive-burn-in-testing.21451/

When I did my recent burn in, I ran mprime (prime95) stress test in a jail and badblocks on all 7 drives for about two weeks. I'm not sure of a way to draw more system power than that. When I didn't have any high temp problems with the burn in, I felt pretty confident with the system cooling design.

 

[zach86]

Just a quick update, Looks like I'll be unable to do the testing on the USB stick tonight, but as soon as I'm able to, I'll follow up with my findings, otherwise the SSD still seems to be holding up reliably. :) Thanks again

 

[philhu]

zach86, did you ever get this to work?

I built a usb boot system, it works fine, unless I add my ssd drives to the internal connectors, then the usb stick doesn't boot
Wondering how you solved all this

 

[zach86]

zach86, did you ever get this to work?

I built a usb boot system, it works fine, unless I add my ssd drives to the internal connectors, then the usb stick doesn't boot
Wondering how you solved all this

Hey philhu,

Unfortunately I gave up on it as it was getting a bit frustrating. I ended up going with Open Media Vault which is based on Debian. Works much smoother for me, and running SnapRaid across the 8 x 3TB drives with 2 dedicated to parity. Not as convenient as a real Raid solution, but works for my purposes, provides redundancy, and easier expansion if I wish to just add another drive or two to increase storage capacity later.

I'm not knocking FreeNAS, as it was extremely robust in its own way, just ran into too many issues and am not as comfortable with freeBSD vs Linux.