FreeNAS 9.1.1 Not booting anymore

[Lutiana]

Hi Guys,

So here is the back story. I have a Dell PowerEdge 2950 server with 8Gb of RAM and 6x2Tb SATA drives (configured to a 8Tb RAID6 via it's PERC 6i controller). We intend to use this server as a backup target NAS and nothing else - so we prefer using the hardware RAID card for the redundancy rather than FreeNAS itself.

A few days ago I got a 4Gb thumb drive (brand new) and installed FreeNAS 9.1.1 on to the system. Everything went fine. I had some issues working out how to configure the AD connection and get the correct permissions setup on the single CIFs share on the box. But it was all working great this morning. So I shut it down and moved to the site where it is to be housed and turned it back on.

It booted fine, but you can imagine my surprise when I noticed that the CIFs service was turned off when I tried to connect to it, further I noticed that the AD connection was gone, but was reestablished when I re-entered the admin password. Everything looked like it was working fine again, I was able to connect, create a folder, delete a folder etc.

It was very disconcerting that these settings when south after a simple shut down, so I decided to test it again just to make sure. So I did just that. And now it won't boot. It gets to the point in the two screen shots below, and no further. I can't really read any of the other info that shows during the boot since it goes by really quickly.

So I am not completely baffled as to what could be going wrong here. This was a productions machine about a month ago, and never had any signs of hardware issues (save a failed HDD, but all 6 2Tb drives are brand new). Could it be a bad thumb drive or something else?

There really is no data on this thing, so starting at square 1 is not really a problem, but I don't want this to happen again.

Thanks in advance for the help.

 

[warri]

It look like your USB stick got corrupted. Try re-installing or better a new USB stick since it could just happen again if it's faulty.

If you made a backup of your configuration file through the Settings in the Web GUI you can just restore those later, your data will not be affected. If you don't have a backup you have to redo your network configuration etc., though.

 

[Lutiana]

Do you know of any software that would allow me to test the flash drive? I need to certify it as dead before my boss will allow me to buy another.

 

[cyberjock]

Do you know of any software that would allow me to test the flash drive? I need to certify it as dead before my boss will allow me to buy another.

Really? They can't possibly be so expensive that its worth your time to test. I've never even heard of a company that is that stupid with opening their pocketbook.

Besides that, testing it is somewhat impossible. If there are reserve blocks you can't possibly test all of the sectors plus the reserve blocks.

Everyone I know would laugh at the concept of testing a flashdrive. You can pay someone at $35 an hour to spend lots of time trying to narrow down the problem, or you can just buy a new $10 USB stick and be done with it. That's not even considering possible downtime losses. Glad I don't work for your boss. He'd probably drive me to drink, and I was a sailor!

 

[Lutiana]

Well, when one works in education penny pinching becomes an art form. My salary won't come out of his budget, but the thumb drive does.

Plus I think he wants a difinitive answer on the issue being the thumb drive (without paying for a new one), though I agree with you guys it's just faster and easy to grab another thumb drive and be done with this.

 

[Whattteva]

Why don't you just re-flash the same drive? If it's still "good", then it will boot straight away after a fresh re-image. You will need to re-upload your configuration file after it completes booting.

 

[Lutiana]

Why don't you just re-flash the same drive? If it's still "good", then it will boot straight away after a fresh re-image. You will need to re-upload your configuration file after it completes booting.

This is probably what I am going to do today, but given it was doing some off things before completely dying on me I am not all that sure I can trust the flash drive much. It may simply work for a bit then go south on me again; most likely at the most inopportune moment at that.

 

[Lutiana]

Well I reloaded FreeNAS to the same thumb drive and now everything seems to be ok, my settings persist through a reboot. So for now I am going to chalk it up to a fluke.