SOLVED Won't POST with 9.3 on USB

[sef]

Could it be a case of Write once as ZFS is know for, meaning that the first install it is located in a memory location accessible to boot or BIOS, but after a few updates, the start location is being pushed further up the memory map (while the former installs are still present and consuming disk space) and goes beyond a limit the BIOS cannot handle?

No, the boot partition is not ZFS, and is not written to after the install. (It's a 512k partition, of type bios-boot, that is written to by grub-install during the install (either ISO or 9.2->9.3 upgrade), and then not again. (Yet, anyway.)

 

[nvader]

@sef can you offer any possibilities why every previous release works fine, but 9.3 comes out and many people with usb drives all of a sudden have a problem.

for this particular issue, my box reboots and freezes at the bios screen after performing the 9.3 update.
I put 9.2 on another thumb drive got freenas booted and IMPORTED the zfs part from the org. 9.3 drive and it worked.
that tells me that the drive is fine, the file system seems to be in tact. but something with the boot partition/sector is hosed.
I'm not really feeling that it's an AMD issue
And I'd rather not have to go out and build an intel rig just to run 9.3 :)

 

[sef]

@sef can you offer any possibilities why every previous release works fine, but 9.3 comes out and many people with usb drives all of a sudden have a problem.

I have given some hypotheses. We've not seen this, which makes it particularly hard to diagnose.

I'm not really feeling that it's an AMD issue

I doubt it's AMD-related. It may be BIOS-related, but I suspect something with the thumb drives.

As I've asked a couple places tonight: if this reproduces for you, can you -- after the install -- get into the shell, and wait for the post-install scrub to finish before rebooting? (This is a desperate grasp for data here; as I said, we can't reproduce it, so that means we have to ask people who can to try stuff.)

 

[Apollo]

Let's look at it from a different prospective:

Can any of the member posting on this forum and having the USB issue can replicate the following:

Remove the USB boot drive, reboot or power the machine on and shortly after passing the post reconnect the USB drive.
What do you see?

On my system, it freezes as soon as I connect the USB drive.

 

[joeschmuck]

@sef

If you can give us a specific listing of what actions you would like someone to take and them provide that data, please list those steps. Pretend like they have no clue as to what they are doing and that way you will be sure to get the exact data you think you should be getting. I am going to yank my main FreeNAS machine from the basement this morning and give 9.3 a try on it. If I see any of the update issues then I will be more than happy to try anything you need.

 

[joeschmuck]

Jordan has posted that the 9.3-Beta has been updated this morning and to update your system as it hopefully has addressed the USB POST issue.

 

[ThreeDee]

system came back up normally after this latest upgrade.

 

[joeschmuck]

I have done some quick tests on my actual FreeNAS machine (The Asus one in my signature) and there is no POST issue, no hanging, no USB booting issues of any kind. I started with the USB stick I was using in my Test Rig (had yesterday mornings latest update installed), did a factory restore to it, placed it into the Asus computer and booted it up. I performed an update to get the latest version and they system rebooted three times and it actually didn't take very long. I then loaded my actual 9.2.1.8 configuration file and of course the computer rebooted twice but when it was done, it all seems to be working fine. The one issue I do have is my MiniDLNA Plugin no longer works at all, Plex appears to be working fine.

 

[jkh]

MiniDLNA plugin is broken and not coming back until someone rewrites it. It was actually incompatible with the plugin API spec but worked "by accident" until we added DHCP support for jails (which required some infrastructure changes), at which point the accident that allowed it to work was no longer present.

 

[jkh]

The problem is not a GRUB issue. FreeBSD and AMD have deeper disagreements, and it is only the "responsibility" of the software provider to be compatible with the hardware if the software provider chooses to actually care about said hardware provider. The CPU war is over and Intel won conclusively (only ARM remains a worthy competitor) so there is no need for software providers to exert much effort to support a dying variant that is also now targeting the very low end of the market and of zero interest to the FreeNAS project as well. We're never going to suggest that people run FreeNAS on their laptops. This topic is closed.