SOLVED Unable to get FreeNAS to boot from USB (nForce Pro 2200 Controller incompatible)

[Lutiana]

Hi Guys,

I have spent the last few moths collecting some hardware together to get a FreeNAS box up and running on my home network. But I cannot get it to boot, though it installs without a problem. Basically it is doing this, the only difference is the boot freezes just after it says:

Loading /boot/defaults/loader.conf

The bar spins a few times, then just stops. I left in on for an hour, and the bar did not move at all.

Nothing on the net seems to be able to help me. There are some places that say to make sure the USB is set to HDD emulation in your BIOS, which it is.

I am running a Tyan K8SRE (S2891) motherboard, with dual single core Opterons (running at 3Ghz). I maxed the board out with 16Gb of Registered ECC RAM (DDR400), and there are 4 1Tb WD Black Enterprise SATA drives in there as well.

What I have tried:
1. Updated the BIOS to the latest BIOS.
2. Tried using two different usb sticks, with the same results on both - both are 2Gb sticks
3. Tried different USB ports (there are two headers and two on the back, all 6 yield the same results)
4. I have tried both FreeNAS 8.0 and 8.3, with the same results.
5. Total reset the BIOS default, no luck.


I'd really love to get this thing running, so any help will will be greatly appreciated.

 

[ProtoSD]

Re: Unable to get FreeNAS to boot from USB

Hi Guys,

I have spent the last few moths collecting some hardware together to get a FreeNAS box up and running on my home network. But I cannot get it to boot, though it installs without a problem. Basically it is doing this, the only difference is the boot freezes just after it says:

If you're getting that far, then its booting from USB. There is some other hardware it's probably having trouble with.

Try this google search for some ideas:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=freebsd+stuck+at+loader.conf

 

[cyberjock]

Re: Unable to get FreeNAS to boot from USB

Old hardware, but definitely sufficient because you have alot of RAM. I have had only 1 Tyan board, and it didn't seem to play well for me. It had random weird issues requiring me to turn off the power supply switch in the back sometimes.

My first 2 guesses for your problems are maybe you aren't using a 4GB+ USB stick and perhaps incompatibility with your hardware. Try a BIOS update and disabling unnecessary hardware in the BIOS. Using 2GB sticks can cause random problems that won't specifically tell you that 2GB isn't big enough. The manual explains it.

 

[Lutiana]

Re: Unable to get FreeNAS to boot from USB

Hmm, I'll try a 4gb stick.

On a whim I unplugged my 4 SATA drives (the 1Tb WD Black drives), and the thing boots up fine.

So why would the HDDs cause this? They are fairly new and mainstream so it would be odd that they cause this. The controller is an Nvidia nForce controller I believe, are these known to have FreeBSD issues? And if they were truly not compatible wouldn't the installation CD also not boot when they were plugged in?

EDIT: No difference with the 4Gb stick.

 

[titan_rw]

Re: Unable to get FreeNAS to boot from USB

I'm running freenas on a machine that uses nforce sata ports. No problems here. I'm running older 1tb drives though, nothing that new.

They show up in dmesg as this:

Code:

nVidia nForce MCP55 SATA300 controller

 

[Lutiana]

Re: Unable to get FreeNAS to boot from USB

This one has the nForce Pro 2200 (CK804). But seeing as the system boot when the drives are unplugged, I doubt it is the chipset. I used testdisk to erase the partition tables on all 4 drives, so they are completely blank now, but still the issue persists. I have tried every combination of the 4 drives, so it does not appear to be any single drive causing it.

I am not finding anything on google that is even vaguely helpful, so I am about throw this server out the window.

EDIT: dmesg shows two controllers as

nVidia nForce CK804 SATA300 Controllers

on the PCI bus, devices 7.0 and 8.0. So I am now every more sure that this issues has to do specifically with the HDDs. Any ideas?

 

[cyberjock]

Re: Unable to get FreeNAS to boot from USB

This one has the nForce Pro 2200 (CK804). But seeing as the system boot when the drives are unplugged, I doubt it is the chipset. I used testdisk to erase the partition tables on all 4 drives, so they are completely blank now, but still the issue persists. I have tried every combination of the 4 drives, so it does not appear to be any single drive causing it.

I am not finding anything on google that is even vaguely helpful, so I am about throw this server out the window.

Did the 4GB stick work any better? Remember, if the 2GB stick isn't cutting it you will get weird problems that will not make you think its the USB. Depending on what isn't actually stored on the thumbdrive you will have weird random bizarre unrelated results.

 

[Lutiana]

Re: Unable to get FreeNAS to boot from USB

Did the 4GB stick work any better? Remember, if the 2GB stick isn't cutting it you will get weird problems that will not make you think its the USB. Depending on what isn't actually stored on the thumbdrive you will have weird random bizarre unrelated results.

Yes, I have been using the 4gb stick for all of the testing I am doing tonight, and remember the system boots up just fine when I unplug all the SATA HDDs, so I don't think it is the stick,

I unplugged the 1Tb drives, and dug up a seagate 500Gb drive I had and only plugged it in, and it still froze at the same place. So it appears that any drive I try to use causes this issue.

 

[ProtoSD]

Re: Unable to get FreeNAS to boot from USB

I would pick a disk, plug it in and start experimenting with BIOS settings.... OR grab a FreeBSD Live boot CD, maybe 9.1, and see if that will boot.

 

[Lutiana]

Re: Unable to get FreeNAS to boot from USB

Yay! Success.

I went looking to see what hardware was supported by FreeBSD and noted that the nForce controllers were not listed in the storage section. So I went digging around in my parts bin and found that I had a 4 port PCI SATA controller (Fastrak TX4100 lite). But realized the machine only has a PCI-X 100Mhz slot. After some more research I find that I can plug a PCI card into a PCI-X slot provided the card is PCI 2.0 or higher. So I did, re-routed the SATA cables to the new PCI card, disabled the onboard SATA controllers and boom. Everything starts up and works just fine.

So I guess the nForce Pro 2200 SATA controller is not fully supported by FreeNAS.

My plan is to get one of these, and eventually go from 4 drives to 12 with 4 per storage pool. But I need to hack the case I have so it can hold 12 drives and cool them.

So can one of the admins mark this thread as solved, and maybe tweak the title so others can find it more easily.

TY to all for your help, it was invaluable.