FreeNAS 9.10 USB Boot Error

[Lwb1977]

I recently had to upgrade my old freenas 8 box as the motherboard died, so I replaced the mobo/cpu/ram/ps/freenas version with this:

Asrock Z97 Extreme6
Intel Pentium G3220 Haswell Dual-Core 3.0 GHz LGA 1150 54W
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
Corsair CX750M Power Supply
FreeNAS-9.10-STABLE-201606270534 (dd17351)

I kept my original 8 2-TB Seagate 7200 rpm SATA drives.

I realize that the board and RAM are not optimal for freenas, but the board had 10 SATA ports and I was in a time crunch and it was quickly available. I was booting my original freenas setup from an old OCZ USB stick, and it booted back up quickly, with no errors with the new hardware, but the onboard NICs were not recognizes in freenas 8. So, I grabbed a larger 16GB Sandisk Cruzer USB stick and installed FreeNAS 9.10-STABLE from a DVD. Now, the problem is, FreeNAS DOES boot up, but it takes roughly 20-25 minutes to do so and gets CAM Status errors during the whole process. Screenshot below.

I tried a couple of different USB sticks and even a Western Digital USB drive, but nothing changes. 20 minute boot time with those errors. But, once it boots up, everything works fine. I was able to import my old volumes and set up a Plex jail no problem. Transfer rates are excellent. I am currently booting freenas from the WD 120gb USB drive. So, is there anything I can do or should I just accept the massive boot time and go with it? I mean, things seem to be great once it boots up, but those errors make me question if it's truly stable or not. I appreciate any suggestions.

 

[BigDave]

So, is there anything I can do or should I just accept the massive boot time and go with it?

I have a Z86 Extreme6 (my desktop, not my storage server), it has 6 SATA ports controlled by the PCH
and 4 SATA ports controlled by an ASMedia ASM1061 controller (completely separate chip-set).
When you have a total of 8 drives, I'm assuming at least two of them are gonna be hooked to the
OTHER controller. FreeNAS sometimes does not like this situation and this could be the cause.
If you care about your data, get your pool on to recommended hardware.

I realize that the board and RAM are not optimal for freenas, but the board had 10 SATA ports and I was in a time crunch and it was quickly available.

IMHO this statement above should read "totally inadequate" instead of "not optimal". Get your data backed up
soonest. I'm not kidding...

 

[Lwb1977]

I realize that the Z97 has 2 SATA controllers, and 2 of the drives are on a different controller, but I ran Freenas 8 like this on a different board for 2+ years with no issues. Oh well. Getting different hardware at this point in time is just not feasible. I suppose I could look for a supported controller card that would support all the drives.

 

[joeschmuck]

Thankfully you have already mentioned that your hardware is not correct for a FreeNAS server but I will still offer some friendly advice and I'd like to here the outcome...

First a few questions...
1) Were you running a ZFS pool or UFS formatted drives?
2) What exactly happened to your old system? Do you think the hard drives could have failed too?

So do these steps in the order I laid out. I do this because I don't know your experience level and it will help to hopefully get you to a functional system.

WARNING: Do not try to restore your old configuration file, it's likely not to work, but if you do attempt it, the risk is on you.

1) Grab a copy of FreeNAS 9.3 (current version)
2) With your system powered off, disconnect all your hard drives (that means power connectors too).
3) Using a freshly formatted USB Flash Drive, insert it into your system.
4) Power on your system and enter the BIOS setup.
5) Under your boot devices, ensure you are using LEGACY and not UEFI. It shouldn't be a deal breaker but you want the most compatible option you can get. And I don't even know if UEFI is an option for that board.
6) Boot up and install FreeNAS 9.3 and pay attention to how this goes. Hopefully all goes well.
7) Reboot (part of the installation process) and see if you can get to the FreeNAS GUI. You may need to go back into the BIOS to set the USB stick as the primary boot device.
8) If you can get to the GUI, setup anything you desire like a static IP address.
9) Power off your machine via the GUI.
10) For the heck of it, power you machine on and ensure it boots up without issue. If it works, power it down again.
11) Now you can connect up all your hard drives.
12) Power on and enter the BIOS again, this time ensure that the USB stick is still the primary boot device. This could change just because you attached a hard drive to the system.
13) When the system reboots, does it boot normally? If you can get to a GUI in a normal amount of time then things are going well.
WARNING: When asked to upgrade your pool, ignore it. If you upgrade the pool you will never be able to try an older version of FreeNAS if you have issues.
14) If you are confident, Auto-Import your pool. Hopefully all will be available.

If you cannot get the system to boot or just run properly then try FreeNAS 9.1x version.

If none of this works then maybe you could try NAS4Free.

 

[Lwb1977]

Appreciate the suggestions Joe. It appears like I was able to get rid of the errors and get a clean boot. What finally did it was unplugging my internal SATA dvdrom. Once I did that, freenas boots in about 1.5 minutes with no errors. Strange.

I do plan on saving for a different mobo/ram combination and replacing all my Seagate drives with WD Red drives. Again, thanks for the suggestions :)

 

[joeschmuck]

Glad you have that figured out. On your new system, I would recommend that you run MemTest86 on it for at least 3 solid days or longer to ensure you don't have an issue there since you are not running ECC RAM. That won't protect you from a bit flip but it will give you peace of mind that your RAM is good.

 

[Lwb1977]

Yeah, that sounds good. I'll do that next weekend while I'm out of town. Perfect opportunity :) Thanks again!

 

[Thai Raconteur]

The OPs problem sounds like mine. I ran Freenas 8 with zero problems for 3 years with the hardware below except it would not delete files and so the 2TB disk just filled up.

Silly me I thought 9.10 sounds good, let me backup all the data and do a fresh install on a new 16 gig Kingston USB.

I am using the following hardware:
Asus B85M-E
Intel Pentium G3220 CPU
8 gig ddr3 ram

Then I made a big mistake. Thought let me make sure the cmos battery is good so I will put in a new one!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Went back in to the UEFI Bios and changed all the cmos setting to usual normal.

Plugged it all back in, downloaded 9.10 checked it, wrote it with rufus to my old 8 gig boot sandisk.
Went in and changed all the settings to boot from the install usb and wrote to 16 gig Kingston USB.

Wrote fine and then rebooted changed to boot priority to be the new 16 gig and it kept kicking me back to the UEFI bios screen!!! No boot device!

Plugged in the new 16 gig Kingston USB boot disk with 9.10 install to an old legacy computer and it booted up just fine to the menu.

Its been 2 weeks now and I am going to try and update the bios again tomorrow to see if this helps.

At a loss as to what to do!