SOLVED Can not boot FreeNAS

[Meester Roboto]

I run FreeNAS off of a flash drive (8gb) and have had lots of success with it. I also dual boot into windows on the same hardware (windows is on a separate HD) and have been in my windows partition for a few weeks when I needed to boot up the FreeNAS. Upon shutting down windows and booting up off the flash drive I will get to the "Welcome to FreeNAS!" menu to which it will default to auto booting FreeNAS. When doing so the screen will go blank and then the computer reboots. It does not succeed in booting the FreeNAS and no further text or prompts are displayed.

I have attempted all menu option (1-5) to boot FreeNAS in various modes and the issue still persists.

Any suggestions?

Would I be able to reinstall FreeNAS onto my flash drive and boot it up while still seeing the data located on my hard drives?

Is there a configuration file I can backup onto my computer to save the config and maintain my data?

Help?

 

[gpsguy]

Assuming you haven't messed up your FreeNAS disks with your dual boot scenario, yes, you can reinstall FreeNAS onto a flash drive and auto-import your disks. I'd use a different flash drive. See the posts from Dusan and I in this thread for details.

If you previously backed up your configuration file, you can restore it. If not, you might be able to rescue it from the old flash drive. Information on doing so, is in that same thread.

 

[Meester Roboto]

Thanks for the thread link, I will try this on a new flash drive and see what happens! Thanks.

 

[Meester Roboto]

I was able to reinstall on a new flash drive and boot it up just fine. Auto import found my volume however it did not find the AFP I had set up on the volume. I luckily found a backup of the config located in another backup of a computer that set it up initially. So lucky me. Loading that config got everything back to where it should be. In the future, is there a way to recover the AFP that I have set up on the volume without the config file?

 

[pirateghost]

Just keep a backup of the config file. It will restore your entire system settings.

Or you can just go in and reconfigure the afp share.

Sent from my Nexus 5

 

[gpsguy]

To add on to what pirateghost said, you could automate backing up your configuration file by creating a cron job that would copy /data/freenas-v1.db onto your storage array.

 

[Meester Roboto]

Right, I found the auto backup thread and am exploring that currently.

I saw that I could create a new AFP share but I was unsure if the contents were located in the afp share I had before or if the AFP share was just a way to access the contents of the FreeNAS. Not 100% clear on where my data actually is on my volume. When I put it all together I figured I had my 6tb of space and no way to access it. Creating the AFP share seemed to create a spot within that 6tb that allowed me to put and store information on my volume. Is this correct or does the AFP just act as an easy means to connect to the 6tb and use it like any old HD ( meaning that if I had not had a backup of my config file I could have just created another AFP share with arbitrary credentials and still been able to access the same info?).

 

[pirateghost]

Afp is a file sharing protocol. Your data resides on the zpool and is not affected by afp creation/deletion

Sent from my Nexus 5

 

[Meester Roboto]

That makes perfect sense when put to me in terms like that. Awesome. I set it up initially and didn't really care after I got it to do what I needed to do. Now I have a sudden need to understand it all after the scare. Thanks so much for the help and clarification.

Is there a way to change the topic from problem to solved?