Asrock N3700 booting from Flash Drive - ROOT MOUNT ERROR

[Jerizo]

Hello there,
I recently aquired a N3700 Asrock board and am currently experiencing difficulties getting freenas to run.
Tried several versions, including 8.xx 9.xx and 10 alpha releases.
Always get stuck with ROOT MOUNT ERROR.

When trying to install freenas (burned on usb drive with win32disk) onto another usb drive, I get stuck with Root Mount Error code 19.
So I use VM to install freenas on usb drive.
Trying to boot off that usb drive I get stuck with Root Mount Error code 2.

I originally got a Sandisk Ultra fit 16gb usb drive and after reading about some issues with that drive in conjunction with freenas, got another 16gb drive, Kingston DTSE9G2, which I read a recommendation for freenas on.

The system is running the latest bios and has 16gb of ram installed.

I have done a ton of research trying to fix this, I though it might be time to ask for help.

***
Was able to resolve issue with help from similar thread on similar board.
Root Mount Errors were alleviated by correctly setting the tunable "xhci_load" to "YES"

 

[TR4L]

How do you set the tunable? Is it something that requires successful installation? I can't seem to get it installed. Doing more research because I'm a noob. Thanks for any input!

 

[m0nkey_]

The fix was posted in the forum by DrKK a while back: https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...semi-fix-for-mountroot-issues-with-9-3.26071/

 

[Jerizo]

DrKK's fix did not help in my case.
I eventually just passed the flash drive through to a VM and set everything up in that environment. Once the tunable (in web interface) was set, my physical system was able to boot without issues.

 

[DrKK]

I think he might have been able to solve his issue by using a USB 2.0 port. Sounds to me like this was some kind of USB 3.0 issue, which is not unheard of with FreeBSD. ? Also, @TR4L can you be more descriptive of the problem you're having? If you look my previously referenced post in this thread, you'll see in that solution there is a part where you stop the GRUB boot screen, and add a loader tunable. If you get as far as the GRUB boot part, you will be able to add the xhci_load tunable there in the way described for the delay tunable in that post.

 

[TR4L]

I think he might have been able to solve his issue by using a USB 2.0 port. Sounds to me like this was some kind of USB 3.0 issue, which is not unheard of with FreeBSD. ? Also, @TR4L can you be more descriptive of the problem you're having? If you look my previously referenced post in this thread, you'll see in that solution there is a part where you stop the GRUB boot screen, and add a loader tunable. If you get as far as the GRUB boot part, you will be able to add the xhci_load tunable there in the way described for the delay tunable in that post.

@DrKK my problem is that when I get to the installer, my USB fails to show up. I have used 8 different USBs (3 different USBs, 2 different kinds of one maker, 2 makers). All my drives show up. It seems like the USB ports on my mother board get turned off when it gets into the loader. Sorry for the late reply, I was out of town and unable to work on this.

Edit: I am booting from a boot disc, when booting from USB, I get this about 8-10 times:
ahcich2: Timeout on slot 0 port 0
ahcich2: is 00000000 cs 00000001 ss 00000000 rs 0000001 tfd 2451 serr 00000000
cmd 0020c017

Then it says this for a while:
Trying to mount root from cd9660:/dev/iso9660/FreeNAS_INSTALL []...
mountroot: waiting for device /dev/iso9660/FreeNAS_INSTALL ...

Then goes to mountroot>

I'm wondering if fixing this issue (and getting it to boot from USB instead of disk) will let the installer see my USB drive?

 

[DrKK]

If, when you start the installer, the USB thumb drive(s) fail to even show up at all, and you can rule out a bad thumb drive, then this has nothing to do with FreeNAS at all. This has to do with either the USB ports being bad (unlikely), or some setting in the BIOS is wrong (turn ON "legacy USB", turn off USB 3.0 /XHCI support, and so on, may help), or for whatever reason, the drivers cannot recognize your USB drives.

 

[David T]

DrKK's fix did not help in my case.
I eventually just passed the flash drive through to a VM and set everything up in that environment. Once the tunable (in web interface) was set, my physical system was able to boot without issues.

Could you be more specific as to what you did? I'm really struggling to get this going on my N3700. I had to install FreeNAS to a USB in VMware, then I couldn't get it to boot in VMWare from the usb so I got it to boot off of the USB in virtualbox. I finally got it running so I could set ahci_load="YES" but it still hangs trying to mount. I'm going to try a different USB key.

 

[David T]

BAH. xhci_load, not ahci_load.

 

[Jerizo]

Well, setting the tunable in Virtualbox is really all I did. That allowed freenas to boot on my physical machine without issues on this USB key - Kingston DTSE9G2.