Workaround/Semi-Fix for Mountroot Issues with 9.3!

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pkelly

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I'm using a USB 3.0 stick. All of my legacy USB BIOS settings are enabled. I have separate ones for 2.0 and 3.0. I'm still getting the mountroot issue. I've tried the initial wait fix too... I purchased this usb 3.0 stick specifically for this, so I don't really want to use a 2.0 stick. Any insight to this USB 3.0 thing yet?
 

jkmurphy1

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I have the Supermicro A1SRi-2758F and I downloaded the latest stable release of 9.3 (http://download.freenas.org/9.3/STABLE/201412312006/x64/) and I am still running into this issue even with the tunable parameter. My USB is connected to the motherboard's USB3.0.
Just in case you are still trying to figure this out...

I have the same motherboard on a new build and was having the same issues. After some digging around I discovered that 9.3 by default has USB 3.0 turned off (find 'xhci' @ http://doc.freenas.org/9.3/freenas_intro.html). I booted the system up using a 2.0 port, then added the suggested tunable (xhci_load: YES). After that, I was able to boot using a 3.0 port. I just moved my boot flash drive back onto the motherboard internal USB (which is 3.0) today and everything is working perfectly; power cycles are running as expected.

I was originally looking into this to help with the lack of USB 2.0 ports on this board. The motherboard only has 2 of them and with a keyboard, boot drive, and USB linked UPS I needed one more for convenience sake. In the bios there is also the ability to downgrade USB 3.0 to 2.0(in southbridge). I didn't have any luck with downgrading them though.

I'm running 9.3-current-201503130047. The USB drive is a Team C134 16GB (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313478).
 
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pkelly

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Just in case you are still trying to figure this out...

I have the same motherboard on a new build and was having the same issues. After some digging around I discovered that 9.3 by default has USB 3.0 turned off (find 'xhci' @ http://doc.freenas.org/9.3/freenas_intro.html). I booted the system up using a 2.0 port, then added the suggested tunable (xhci_load: YES). After that, I was able to boot using a 3.0 port. I just moved my boot flash drive back onto the motherboard internal USB (which is 3.0) today and everything is working perfectly; power cycles are running as expected.

I was originally looking into this to help with the lack of USB 2.0 ports on this board. The motherboard only has 2 of them and with a keyboard, boot drive, and USB linked UPS I needed one more for convenience sake. In the bios there is also the ability to downgrade USB 3.0 to 2.0(in southbridge). I didn't have any luck with downgrading them though.

I'm running 9.3-current-201503130047. The USB drive is a Team C134 16GB.

This worked for me too:) Thank you so much!!!!
 

radian23

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Just in case you are still trying to figure this out...

I have the same motherboard on a new build and was having the same issues. After some digging around I discovered that 9.3 by default has USB 3.0 turned off (find 'xhci' @ http://doc.freenas.org/9.3/freenas_intro.html). I booted the system up using a 2.0 port, then added the suggested tunable (xhci_load: YES). After that, I was able to boot using a 3.0 port. I just moved my boot flash drive back onto the motherboard internal USB (which is 3.0) today and everything is working perfectly; power cycles are running as expected.

I was originally looking into this to help with the lack of USB 2.0 ports on this board. The motherboard only has 2 of them and with a keyboard, boot drive, and USB linked UPS I needed one more for convenience sake. In the bios there is also the ability to downgrade USB 3.0 to 2.0(in southbridge). I didn't have any luck with downgrading them though.

I'm running 9.3-current-201503130047. The USB drive is a Team C134 16GB.

Tried this out and no luck on my X10SLH-F. If I put the USB 3.0 Drive in a USB 2.0 port and I still get a stop on rootmount.
 

Ericloewe

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Tried this out and no luck on my X10SLH-F. If I put the USB 3.0 Drive in a USB 2.0 port and I still get a stop on rootmount.

That is most unusual. What model is it?
 

radian23

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cyberjock

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I bought one of those Ultra Fits for testing. I don't have any hardware that I can use for valid testing though. Anyone in the Phoenix,AZ area want to slum it with a night of FreeNASing?
 

RedBear

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I just encountered this "drop to mountroot" issue with a brand new ThinkServer TS440 (model 70AQ000YUX, motherboard FRU code 00FC658, MFG date 1502) and the same SanDisk Ultra Fit CZ43 32GB USB 3.0 flash drive mentioned above (model SDCZ43-032G-G46). Front USB 3.0 ports, back USB 3.0 ports, back USB 2.0 ports, same issue in all ports on the machine. Switched to a SanDisk 32GB Cruzer Fit USB 2.0 flash drive (model SDCZ33-032G-B35) and... no problems whatsoever in any USB port.

This was with the "FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-201504100216.iso" image. Fairly recent, I assumed it wouldn't have any major issues. Just for kicks I downloaded the latest as of a few days ago, the "FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-201505130355.iso" image. With the newer image I have NO PROBLEM booting from the USB 3.0 drive. Hmm. It works, but since there is apparently no clear idea of the cause of the issue or announcement of a fix I think I'll stick with the USB 2.0 drive.

According to the diagram on the inside of the case cover there is an additional USB 2.0 header on the motherboard with 11 pins in a two-row configuration, but I can't even find solid information about exactly what kind of USB header adapter to buy so I have no way of testing it.
 

rogerh

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According to the diagram on the inside of the case cover there is an additional USB 2.0 header on the motherboard with 11 pins in a two-row configuration, but I can't even find solid information about exactly what kind of USB header adapter to buy so I have no way of testing it.

AFAIK usb 2 headers are completely standardised, and will fit any usb 2 case socket leads or usb 2 bracket lead. USB 3 is also standardised, but different. If you have usb 3 sockets on your chassis you can get a standard adaptor to connect the usb 3 flying lead to the motherboard usb 2 header. (Just make sure you don't get the opposite way round adaptor!)
 

Ericloewe

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AFAIK usb 2 headers are completely standardised, and will fit any usb 2 case socket leads or usb 2 bracket lead. USB 3 is also standardised, but different. If you have usb 3 sockets on your chassis you can get a standard adaptor to connect the usb 3 flying lead to the motherboard usb 2 header. (Just make sure you don't get the opposite way round adaptor!)
Right.

However, there's no 11-pin USB header. There's the 9 pin + key USB 2.0 header and the 20 pin USB 3.0 header.
 

rogerh

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Right.

However, there's no 11-pin USB header. There's the 9 pin + key USB 2.0 header and the 20 pin USB 3.0 header.

So I suppose it is some proprietary thing. If the pin diagram is on the case cover it may turn out to be a superset of standard if we're lucky. The standard pinout must be on the internet.
 
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Don't know if this info might be of some use to someone.

I also got hit with this mountroot issue. First on 2 mirrored Ultra Fit's 32GB and later on a single one. I rebooted and loaded the 'initial install' boot environment, uploaded my config database and averything worked fine again. I cloned the boot environment and made the clone active and after a reboot everything works like a charm. However, updating to the latest FreeNAS version broke it again. So i booted into my cloned boot environment again and will now wait until i have another USB stick to install it to. I'm actually quite curious why the update breaks things.
 

Adi

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Got hit with this issue as well. Tried upgrading a box running an ASUS Z8NA-D6 with v9.1.1 to latest 9.3 stable.

Got the mountroot issue. Tried the fixes proposed in this thread and nothing worked. I managed to upgrade to 9.2.1.9 in the mean time and will probably stay at this version until a fix will be available in freenas 9.3 or the future 10.0 release.
 

cyberjock

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Adi,

The issue doesn't seem to be "fixable" for some hardware (some hardware is fixed by changing BIOS settings for the USB). So I wouldn't hold your breath on the fix actually coming in 9.3 or any other future version unless it happens by random chance.

When this issue was first identified when 9.3 was in beta (and even before beta) it was well documented that this issue occurred. For many, the answer was the unpalatable "sorry your hardware just doesn't seem to work right and please buy proper server hardware". FreeBSD isn't even compatible with all hardware itself, which just exemplifies the reason why we recommend server hardware specifically.

I don't find Asus to be a bad choice for desktops, but as a server I consider them to be a relatively poor choice because of their limited experience in the server market.
 

Adi

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Adi,

The issue doesn't seem to be "fixable" for some hardware (some hardware is fixed by changing BIOS settings for the USB). So I wouldn't hold your breath on the fix actually coming in 9.3 or any other future version unless it happens by random chance.

When this issue was first identified when 9.3 was in beta (and even before beta) it was well documented that this issue occurred. For many, the answer was the unpalatable "sorry your hardware just doesn't seem to work right and please buy proper server hardware". FreeBSD isn't even compatible with all hardware itself, which just exemplifies the reason why we recommend server hardware specifically.

I don't find Asus to be a bad choice for desktops, but as a server I consider them to be a relatively poor choice because of their limited experience in the server market.

Thanks for the reply. I am now tempted to update the BIOS on the ASUS board in the hopes that it fixes this.. Might be a long shot but maybe worth it in the end.

Thanks for your suggestions.
 

jlewis

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Ok, I made the same mistake that numerous other users on this thread have made by purchasing the SanDisk Ultra Fit SDCZ43-o32G-G46...

I have a Supermicro SSG-5018A-AR12L, an adequate system...

I was originally testing the install on a generic 16G usb stick but it was having read issues, so I knew it's days were numbered as well as another 2G USB stick I received from a Parallels sales person which seemed more stable but it was obviously too small and after several reloads I started seeing read failures as well, I was using these flash drives until I received the ultra fit which I am planning on utilizing as a mirror to a SATA DOM I'm waiting to arrive...

Upon running through the install using 9.3-STABLE-201506292332, it failed to boot after GRUB. I did note, there was at least once during a reset, the system failed to even see a boot device but upon a complete poweroff/poweron cycle it would boot to GRUB and then fail again.

After a couple of tries of installing, I figured I'd give version 10 a try at which point it did successfully boot up after install. It does appear fixed utilizing version 10.1-201507311047-e283668...

I didn't like the immediate issues I saw with the pre-release so I went back to the stable 9.3 release I stated above and starting mucking with BIOS settings...

I found having these USB settings allowed freenas to successfully boot:

Legacy USB Support [Enabled]
EHCI Hand-Off [Enabled]
USB Mass Storage Driver Support [Enabled]
Port 60/64 Emulation [Disabled]

USB Hardware Delays and Time-outs:
USB Transfer Time-out [20 sec]
Device Reset Time-out [40 sec]
Device Power-up Delay [Auto]

Mass Storage Devices:
SanDisk [Hard Disk]

I would lean more towards this being a kernel issue based off of what I've seen although it appears that it can be mitigated utilizing various techniques...

Update:

Upgraded to new 9.3.1 stable release, system again started to fail to mount root...

Booted back to prior release, things work...

Noticed a new 9.3.1 stable release 201509022158, again failed to mount root...

I'll trying to changing settings again to see if it addresses the issue...

I'm am curious on what could have changed with 9.3.1

I'm certainly thankful for the forethought of maintaining the previous boot images...
 
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Limitedheadroom

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Aug 21, 2015
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Complete noob here, building my first ever NAS based on a Asrock c2550d4i, 16Gb ECC ram and ran into the mountroot issue. I followed this guide on the build: http://blog.brianmoses.net/2015/01/diy-nas-2015-edition.html
and he made no mention of running into this problem with very similar hardware. I'm running the latest stable build of 9.3 and could see when I went in to add the delay that there was already one of 30000 there. This motherboard only has USB2 ports and doesn't seem to have a legacy setting in the BIOS, so I didnt think it would make a difference if I was using a USB3 flash drive. I upped the delay to 50000 and it still didnt work. Tried the only other flash drive I had available but still had the problem. For the hell of it I tried adding a delay of 500,000, it was a long wait, but then it booted! I'm going to try reducing the wait time and see how low I can get it.
 

DrKK

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For the hell of it I tried adding a delay of 500,000, it was a long wait, but then it booted!
Well that is certainly something. Could something be wrong with the flash drive? This behavior might be explained by an excessively slow flash drive, or one that is half-broken.
 

Limitedheadroom

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Yeah, it is an old drive. I only used it because the brand new Integral USB3 drive I bought to run from wouldn't install onto, kept saying there was no space on the drive. I've bought another 2 new SanDisk cruzer Fit USB 2 drives to try now
 
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