can't Boot FreeNAS 9.2.1.5 anymore - stops at F1/F2/PXE boot loader screen

[Viper780]

Hi everyone

As suggested in the last thread to use an USB Stick i did exactly that - so after setting up the NAS the last 8 days (mostly playing around with the plugins and copying data to the storage) it won't boot any more.
It stuck at the F1/F2/F5/PXE boot loader screen
Says "Boot: F2 ################" (and so on)

The System is a self build Home Server with an Asrock C226 WS Workstation Mainboard, 16GB of ECC Ram, 5x4TB WD Red and an SSD for user directorys, the Jails and a Database.
The Install drive is an JetFlash 760 USB3.0 Stick with 8GB (TS8GJF760).
FreeNAS Version is the latest 9.2.1.5.

I didn't remove the Stick, didn't change the BIOS version or any setting since the last 20 reboots. The Stick also won't boot furhter on an totally different PC. When i use an other USB Stick (exactly the same bought three of it) with the same image (or the latest 9.2.2 nightly from yesterday) it works. My saved FreeNAS Database with all the settings is 4 days old and i don't like to waste 4 days of work if it were possible to get the stick to boot again or or get to the database.

I know i can download an live BSD disk and can try to get my database files back - but i would prefer to write the bootloader new. The controller of the USB stick don't report any error - so i guess its OK

thats exactly why i don't want to use USB sticks.....

 

[alexg]

You should search forums for usb3.0 . The last I heard it is not supported by FreeNAS.

 

[cyberjock]

Well, for people that have your problem it's almost always a hardware incompatibility or a bad USB stick. Since it's not likely a hardware incompatibility it's probably a bad USB stick. I will say that Jetway isn't exactly a "name brand USB stick". A USB 3.0 stick is not necessarily incompatible, but the USB 3.0 ports on your motherboard shouldn't be used.

Unfortunately, if you don't have a backup of your config file you'll have to try mounting it using a FreeBSD or FreeNAS installation. Partition 4 will have your config file. It should be /data/freenas-v1.db.

You could also try reinstalling the same version of FreeNAS on your USB stick again from CDROM and hope that fixes it good enough to get your config file. But I wouldn't continue to use that USB stick anymore.

 

[Viper780]

Thx for all your replays.

just a few comments:
-USB3.0 is apparently supported by FreeNAS
-It only have to be supportet from the Bios (and for a smallpart the bootloader) for booting of it
-I've used the USB2.0 Ports so it is running ans an common USB2.0 Thumbdrive
-Transcend is the third largest Flash and USB-Thumbdrive manufacturer in the world (after SanDisk and Kingston) and the 7th largest Semiconducter company - i guess that should be enough for a "name brand USB stick". It is also the 13th valuable Brand in Taiwan (and most of computerstuff manufactuerer are taiwan based) - JetFlash is just the name for their thumbdrives (sorry my fault - i should have mentioned it in the first post)
-The stick worked for 8 days, so its most likely no incompatibility.

To the "solution"
as cyberjock mentioned it i got the database from the last partition at /data/freenas-v1.db took another USB stick (where FreeNAS 9.2.2 was on it - its an 16GB Sandisk Extreme) and just loaded it up there. Found this with a forum search, seems that this happens a lot here (and thats why using USB sticks for such things is a very bad idea!).
I made an dump of the whole stick, mounted the image with PC-BSD and copied the database. It would also work with the thumbdrive directly mounted in PC-BSD but i learned not to use the "hardware" when its possible.

I hope this is the last time such things happen - made an cron job to copy the DB everyday on an other NAS so that i have a copy of the whole config.

Thy again for help and you can close this thread (like the last one i've made here)

best regards
Daniel

 

[cyberjock]

USB 3.0 is not supported by FreeNAS. USB 3.0 support was removed in 9.2.0 because it is extremely buggy in FreeBSD. It was removed because of me. I saw a large number of users that couldn't even boot FreeNAS with it. Now most, but not all, USB 3.0 ports should work in USB 2.0 mode, but booting from them ranges from "works fine" to "doesn't work at all". So I simply recommend people use USB 2.0 ports and the whole confusion is resolved.

Where do you link Jetway to Transcend? I've never heard of this before and Google isn't really helping me. I've owned several Jetway products and never liked any of them. They all had weird quirks. On the other hand I've owned many Transcend CF cards and SD cards and never had a problem.

I'm glad you got your config back. :D