freenas 11.2 stable usb failed to boot - assistance need in fixing steps

[eaperezh]

Good day,
I have a long forgotten Dell PowerEdge 740xd running Freenas 11.2 Stable.
It has a USB pendrive Kingston datatraveler 3.0 as the boot drive.

We do not know where the config file is located and I am sure noone here has a copy of it offline.

After a few electrical issues in the datacenter, today the FreeNAS unit will not boot properly.

Code:

Boot messages:
Booting from Hard drive C:
Shortening read at 30218832 from 16 to 10
Shortening read at 4294967280 from 16 to 15
Shortening read at 4294967280 from 16 to 15
..
..
..
Trying to mount root from zfs: freenas-boot/ROOT/default [] ...
Error: attempt to write a readonly database
[: =: unexpected operator
Error: attempt to write a readonly database
[: : bad number
Error: attempt to write a readonly database

After these errors, the network interfaces are not up, so I cannot load the management interface.

Questions:
a- Is this a confirmation that the USB pendrive went bad?
b- Is there a way, from console to grab a copy of the config?

I read in another posting some steps to add a new USB drive and I wanted to confirm if theses are correct in my case as I have never ever had a failure like this.

1- get TWO new pendrives and download 11.2 as it is recommended to use the exact same version that was running.
2- AS I am using Windows, use Rufus to burn the installer image to pendrive01
3- install Pendrive01 and Pendrive02 onto the Poweredge 740xd
4- Boot the Poweredge system and select Pendrive01 as boot

5- should I perform a Fresh install onto Pendrive02?

6- Import your pool. Enable SSH, then use a SCP client like WinSCP to log into your server and go to /var/db/system/configs-{longhexnumber}/. There, you'll see directories for each Free/TrueNAS version you'd used. Go into the directory for the latest of those and download the config file.
7- Once you have that, log into the web UI and upload it. The system will take it, reboot a couple of times, and it should be back as it had been before your boot device died. As long as you weren't using pool encryption, that's all you'd need.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

 

[eaperezh]

I am glad to inform that I have created a new USB with freenas 11.2, and restored from an old config located in the nas itself and everything is now working correctly. Being this my first experience with a failed USB I can say it was a terrifying experience at first, thinking all data was lost, but now it turned to be a pleasant albeit time-consuming experience.