Abrupt 'boot loader not found' error

[jal]

Hello,

I've got a Freenas system that has long been functioning just fine, been running it for several years. I had a power outage, and now when it comes up it dumps me to the UEFI shell or complains about not finding the boot loader, depending on BIOS settings.

The only recent change to this system was that a couple months back one of the two thumb drives I use for the boot pool went bad. I `zfs replace`d it and checked that the mirror was intact again. This is the only event I can think of that would be relevant.

I see the `da` devices scroll by in the UEFI listing, but I can't find a partition with a filesystem the shell will recognize as a file system. I just pulled one of the boot drives and `zpool imported` on a FreeBSD VM. It looks normal (aside from being degraded because I only mounted one of the pair).

It also occurred to me that this might not be UEFI; it might be "legacy" and the BIOS flipped a switch somehow. The boot pool was built a long time ago with a different motherboard and I honestly don't know what I did. But Legacy and combination settings don't work.

I'm not really sure where to go from here. Anyone have any suggestions?

This is a homebrew system, 11.2-U5 (I think, but of course can't check - I updated it fairly recently and the release notes look familiar) Supermicro X10SDV-TLN4F with 128G RAM and 6 WD Reds. USB boot drives are stubby little 16G Sandisks.

 

[sretalla]

It sounds like you have a bigger problem with your boot sticks than you thought.

Try building a completely new one (different drive). Maybe this is a good opportunity to switch to SSD boot.

If your system dataset was moved to your pool disks, you will be able to get your old config back from there.

 

[jal]

It sounds like you have a bigger problem with your boot sticks than you thought.

Try building a completely new one (different drive). Maybe this is a good opportunity to switch to SSD boot.

I'm using geli FDE. What's the best mechanism for moving the keys?

Also, just out of curiosity, why are you pushing using SSDs?

 

[Jailer]

Also, just out of curiosity, why are you pushing using SSDs?

Because usb stick are notoriously unreliable as a boot medium. With the low prices of SSD's these days it makes more sense to use one as a boot device.