Unable to boot after MB replacement

[isobel]

Very much a noobie, so please forgive my ignorance.

I had to replace my motherboard (ASRock C2750D4I, which I've been using for about a year+), because a capacitor blew, spilling its gut all over the place. So I got the same board and swapped with the old one. All the cable arrangement etc are exactly the same as before. But now the system will not boot into FreeNAS. Rather it just gives me the some ASRock control page. The only difference I know is that the old board was version 1 whereas the new one is 1.3.

Does this mean that I have to reinstall the whole system? If so how can I salvage the data in my pool? Is there some way to live boot into the system to fix the system or salvage the data, as one does in linux systems?

 

[Green750one]

Very much a noobie, so please forgive my ignorance.

I had to replace my motherboard (ASRock C2750D4I, which I've been using for about a year+), because a capacitor blew, spilling its gut all over the place. So I got the same board and swapped with the old one. All the cable arrangement etc are exactly the same as before. But now the system will not boot into Freenas. Rather it just gives me the some ASRock control page. The only difference I know is that the old board was version 1 whereas the new one is 1.3.

Does this mean that I have to reinstall the whole system? If so how can I salvage the data in my pool? Is there some way to live boot into the system to fix the system or salvage the data, as one does in linux systems?

Have you set the bios to use the right boot device?
Have you checked all the other components including the psu?

Sent from my G3221 using Tapatalk

 

[wblock]

But now the system will not boot into FreeNAS. Rather it just gives me the some ASRock control page.

In cases like these, it is important to post the error message so responders don't have to guess what it might show.

 

[Redcoat]

As @wblock says, more info is needed. But I will hazard a guess that you might move forward if you plug your network cable into the other LAN port as I believe it's likely that the page you are seeing is BMC (IPMI) page. If you move the cable and "it works" and you are happy with the result, that may be all that is needed. Your data should not be at all affected by the MB change.

However, it is quite likely that the some BIOS config changes either could, or even should, be made for best operation. If you do come back here to the forum for assistance, please describe the rest of your hardware, your network setup, the machine you are using to access FreeNAS, what you have done so far after installing the new MB, and what messages or screen display you are seeing.

 

[isobel]

Thank you all for your kind replies. As I said, being inexperienced, I did not know what information was necessary. So belatedly, here is the rundown of my system.

• MB: ASRock A2750D1, which include Intel Avoton C2750 Processor (2.4GHz, Octa-Core) (embedded)
• RAM: 4 x DDR3L 1600 MT/s (PC3-12800) DR x8 EUDIMM 240-Pin Memory from Crucial, 8GB each.
• HDD (for the pool): 4x WD Red, 3GB each.
• SSD (for the OS): From Toshiba, 128gb
• PSU: Corsair RM550x

Initially, I installed FN9.3, and it worked with no big issues (there were a couple of attempts at making some bhyve vm, but that did not really work out).

As for the network, the MB comes with total of 3 LAN ports: LAN1, LAN2 and IPMI LAN. Before the MB replacement, I only used LAN 1 and 2. And I reserved their IPs in the DHCP server of my router. Back then, either of the two internal IPs would give me the same FN control screen, but I would use them for different purposes. I know this is less than ideal or efficient and FreeNAS provides some options to combine them, but I was afraid to fiddle with something I barely know, when it just works as is.

Upon the suggestion about the BIOS, I tried to access it. I hooked up the server with my monitor but the monitor does not show anything. it is just black. The manual says to press F2 or Del during boot, but with the monitor showing nothing, there really is no during boot. Perhaps it is how I connected the server with the monitor: the MB only provides one D-SUB output, whereas my monitor only accepts HDMI and DP. So I used a gender that takes D-SUB and changes it to HDMI. It worked before for other system. Either that method does not work for this, or perhaps I am doing something else wrong?

I include the screenshot of the "ASRock control page" I mentioned before.

 

[Redcoat]

Hi there!

My guess was right, what you show above is the IPMI page. I have the same hardware so I am very familiar with it.

A few questions:

I assume you can see the above screen on a pc connected to the network right now - yes?
The monitor connected to the MB video port is showing nothing, and showed nothing when you booted up the server - yes? If you are seeing nothing it may be the adapter you are using. With luck we will be able to work without it.
I guess you have two LAN cables connected right now?
Are there solid green and flashing yellow led lights on one or both of the ports on the back of the mobo? If yes, which ports, which lights?
Are you able to look at your router's DHCP assignments on its configuration pages and find out what IP addresses the server is using now? One is 192.168.0.110 (the IPMI port as seen in the screenshot), what is the other?
Do they match with your previous reserved addresses?
How did you reserve those addresses - by using the MAC addresses of the ports?
Does the server still have FreeNAS 9.3 on it?
What are your network clients - Windows by the looks if it - yes?

If you can find the other address in your router, go to the computer where you can see the IPMI screen and type it in to the address line in place of 192.168.0.110 and see if the FreeNAS GUI comes up.

If you can provide those answers it will give me a better picture to decide the path forward. But our basic plan of action, if you are seeing the IPMI screen on a client computer, will be to disconnect the LAN2 cable and ensure that you can still see that screen, then attempt to use the "remote control" capability in IPMI to watch the server's boot process and get FreeNAS up and running, this because we don't seem to be able to use the monitor directly connected to the server.

At some point we will have to deal with the topic of using the two LAN connections - that is a problem unless you have them connected to different subnets. For our testing we will only be using the LAN1 port.

I'm going to get some sleep right now - I'll hope to see some information or maybe even good news from you tomorrow morning - in any case we will follow up when we can.

 

[isobel]

Thank you Redcoat for your kind reply. And you are mostly correct in your assumptions.

1. Yes, the screenshot I posted is from another laptop connected to the same network.

2. The connector is indeed the problem, I now realize. The one that I used was meant to convert HDMI signal to D-SUB, not the other way round. I ordered one that will do just that, just in case.

3. I have two LAN cable connected to the server, and the ports I used are named in the manual as LAN 1 and LAN 2. And there is another that I do not use, and the manual says that is the IPMI LAN.

4. LEDs are flashing on both.

5. As for the DHCP stuff, I do not know the MAC address matches with the previous settings. I will check as soon as I go home.
But I use MAC address to reserve the IPs. The reserved IPs were originally 192.168.0.106 and 192.168.0.107. After the MB replacement, the system did not take these. So it must mean the MAC address changed. It makes sense since the MAC address will have to change now that the hardware that takes care of the network stuff has changed.

6. Server will still have FN 9.3, because that is what it had before MB replacement, and I could not boot the system after the replacement.

7. By "network client" do you mean the OS of the laptop I used to capture the screenshot? It is Ubuntu Budgie 17.10, not windows.

8. As for the other IP address, I will update as soon as I go home.

 

[isobel]

Update on DHCP stuff:

Yes, indeed the new MB shows different MAC address. But strangely, even though I have connected two LAN cables into the server and on both the LEDs are flashing, the router only shows one MAC address from the MB. I know this because I ruled out all other MAC addresses on the DHCP server of my router. And the MAC addresses of the MB start with specific set of alphabet/numbers, but on the DHCP server there is only one such thing.

So there is no other IP address. There is just one. It was 192.168.0.110 when I posted the screenshot, but now it is 192.168.0.106.

 

[Redcoat]

OK, this is all just fine! We should be able to get you through this pretty easily. While typing a response to your first post, the second showed up. What you found is what I suspected. I will give you a brief explanation later...

The one that I used was meant to convert HDMI signal to D-SUB, not the other way round. I ordered one that will do just that, just in case.

Hopefully we won't need it as we will try to use the remote control feature. We may have to fight a bit with Java - we'll see.

Update on DHCP stuff:

Yes, indeed the new MB shows different MAC address. But strangely, even though I have connected two LAN cables into the server and on both the LEDs are flashing, the router only shows one MAC address from the MB. I know this because I ruled out all other MAC addresses on the DHCP server of my router. And the MAC addresses of the MB start with specific set of alphabet/numbers, but on the DHCP server there is only one such thing.

So there is no other IP address. There is just one. It was 192.168.0.110 when I posted the screenshot, but now it is 192.168.0.106.

By default our MB's IPMI is bound to LAN1 - the board has in fact three MAC addresses, but both LAN1 and the BMC can be accessed through a single connection to LAN1. A connection to LAN2 is not advised if it is not on a different subnet from LAN2, (something a typical consumer router setup will not provide) - if you make such a connection on the same subnet it may appear to work but in fact be doing nothing (not carrying any traffic). So, I suggest you proceed from here with only one connection to LAN1 - through which you will access the BMC (IPMI) and FreeNAS once we find its IP and you can see the MAC address of the LAN1 interface in your router (at which time you'll have both MACs and can then reserve/assign IP addresses for them).

As soon as you are ready to make a trial run, from your laptop client (BTW I'm in windowze-land and don't know how Ubuntu behaves) open up the IPMI screen, click on "Remote Control" and select "Console Redirection", then press the "Java Console" button. Then will have some interaction with Java (maybe even requesting updates to it) but hopefully you will arrive at a point where you have the FreeNAS console window which will contain the web GUI interface IP address... if FreeNAS has indeed booted up successfully.

If it's not there it's likely that your boot device was not selected in BIOS. In that case, leave the console window open and go back to the "Remote Control" tab, but this time select "Server Power Control" and select "Reset Server" radio button (the default) and hit "Perform Action".

Watch the console window as the server reboots and when prompted access the BIOS to adjust the boot order as necessary. Once that is done the server should boot up successfully and the console screen should appear, and you can find the GUI address for FreeNAS.

Once you access it you can capture the MAC addresses and set up the IP's - and you should be good to go.

Let us know how you get on.

I don't really think you need a "Good Luck" wish now as you are so close, but I'll give you one anyway - "Good Luck!" - just in case.

EDIT: Here's a screenshot of what you'll see under "Remote Control, Console Redirection":

 

[Redcoat]

One other point - to get good mouse use on your laptop in the redirected console (if you need it) you may have to select the "Relative Mode" on the "Mouse Mode Settings" page under "Configuration".

 

[isobel]

I can't thank you enough Redcoat! It is back! Thank you so much!!

Initially though, even though I finally got to the BIOS, it would not let me select the Toshiba SSD as my boot device. As I was poking around the BIOS trying to find the cause for that, I realized that the SATA cable wirings are all wrong. First the SSD was not connected to the Avoton processor directly, which I think is why I could not choose it as the boot device. The second thing is really embarrassing, so let me just say, I seem to not know the difference between 2 and 3... Apparently reading integers is beyond me.

Anyhow, I moved the SSD to SATA_0 (which, according to the diagram in the manual is one of the SATA port that the processor directly deals with) fixed the rest of the wiring (moved them to the 4 ports under Marvell 9230), rebooted the system, went into BIOS, but it still would not let me choose the SSD as the boot device. BUT, it let me boot into the SSD at the "boot screen" (the screen where there is the ASRock logo and F2 for BIOS, F11 for Boot device, etc). I pressed F11 at the boot screen and there is that prodigal SSD. I selected the SSD and the FreeNAS is back!

I fixed the router setting so now the server functions as before the MB replacement. Not being able to set the proper boot device at the BIOS bothers me some, but I think I can live with this. After all, it is not like I reboot the server everyday.

Thank you again, Redcoat!

 

[Redcoat]

Great, glad to have been of assistance.

With respect to selecting the boot drive, I know the experience you had when in the bios. It seems to fight you on holding the choice, and as I recall it wouldn't let me delete the other items from the list of choices either, so I took the same F11 route as you. It doesn't bother me any - it merely confirms my opinion about AMI's crappy BIOS implementations and my frustration with the MB manufacturers' acceptance of them.

Don't hesitate to come back to the forum for assistance - there are lots of great people here who can enhance your experience with FreeNAS.