Updates kick USB out of boot order

[indivision]

I posted this issue as a bug report ( https://bugs.freenas.org/issues/6690 ). But, I believe it was closed as a user configuration issue. That may be the case. But, after some testing, I'm not sure. Or, at least, I'm pretty sure that something could be done within FreeNAS to fix it for the machines that it affects.

I'm using an Asus C60M1-I.

When I apply updates within FreeNAS, it changes something on the USB that causes the motherboard to see it as a new drive on reset. As a new drive, it defaults to putting it at the bottom of the boot order and tries to boot from one of the hard drives and thus fails.

If I select restart from within FreeNAS, it does reset the machine and recognize the USB again. It boots normally after the reset. So, some change in the updates does cause the USB to be identified differently. I have tried every configuration option I can think of in the BIOS without getting it to work properly.

Has anyone else run into this problem? Any work arounds? Anyone using this same motherboard and have a solution?

Any help would be appreciated. The prospect of having to plug in a monitor and keyboard every time I apply an update in FreeNAS to fiddle with BIOS settings would kind of take the wind out of my excitement for 9.3.

 

[Apollo]

Are you by any chance loosing BIOS configuration, ie having a bad backup battery that would cause the BIOS to reset to default?
As a reboot I wouldn't expect it to happen as power is still present to the board.

Looks like you may not have a battery after all.
Could be caused by UEFI bios being configured by Freenas, though I wouldn't expect that either.
Are you booting in UEFI mode or legacy BIOS mode?
Set it as legacy BIOS instead.

 

[nanda]

This happened to me also with the 22 nov update. Think it should be pulled.

 

[joeschmuck]

This happened to me also with the 22 nov update. Think it should be pulled.

You think what should be pulled exactly?

 

[nanda]

The beta update from today.

 

[joeschmuck]

The beta update from today.

The issue is with your motherboard based on what you have mentioned and from the symptoms. Just out of curiosity have you looked for a newer BIOS version? I'm not saying that would fix it but it is worth a shot. I have never used UEFI and if there is an option to change it to use a Legacy BIOS emulation, try it. Have you ever had this issue before on other versions of FreeNAS using this MB or has it only happened using the 9.3 BETA version? Not sure if you know that the upgrade process and the bootloader are completely different than previous versions of FreeNAS.

If this is a real problem, others will report it as well. You should have also put a link to your bug report in your first posting so others could review it.

 

[rogerh]

Wasn't there another thread about AMD boards not recognising ZFS-formatted USB flash drives?

 

[Ericloewe]

Wasn't there another thread about AMD boards not recognising ZFS-formatted USB flash drives?

Not that I recall - and it wouldn't make sense. The BIOS just loads whatever the MBR says to load, which is Grub. Grub then handles the rest.

Motherboards not booting Grub would be a new one.

 

[nanda]

I use this system: http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=C2750D4I

I was using the beta for a week or so, and noticed an upgrade today which I applied. Later when I checked back on the server it had changed the boot order in Bios. When I fixed that, the boot proceeded for some time but there were many errors, and no ip. I finally resolved the issue by selecting the previous beta version in the boot menu.

Have never had this issue before.

I only responded to this thread btw.

 

[joeschmuck]

Wasn't there another thread about AMD boards not recognising ZFS-formatted USB flash drives?

I haven't heard such a thing but then again I'm not surfing the forums but a few times a week, and then only for a few hours at most.

And sorry for the confusion on my part thinking you were to OP. I won't know if this will be an issue on my home server until the release comes out because I will not be testing it out on that machine until that day comes. But I did purchase (on deep sale) a 120GB SSD that I actually plan to install as my boot device so that would address that issue if I had it.

 

[sef]

I was using the beta for a week or so, and noticed an upgrade today which I applied.

Implying that you are using the new update mechanism, correct? (That is, Updates > Apply Pending Updates)

Later when I checked back on the server it had changed the boot order in Bios. When I fixed that, the boot proceeded for some time but there were many errors, and no ip.

We had seen that problem before, but it was fixed a couple of weeks ago -- and only happened when you selected an older boot environment from the boot menu (as opposed to selecting one from the web UI). The opposite is very strange.

Doing a new-style update does not do anything with the boot loader -- it doesn't re-install grub, and FreeNAS is incapable of doing anything with the BIOS boot order.

 

[indivision]

Are you by any chance loosing BIOS configuration, ie having a bad backup battery that would cause the BIOS to reset to default?
As a reboot I wouldn't expect it to happen as power is still present to the board.

Looks like you may not have a battery after all.
Could be caused by UEFI bios being configured by Freenas, though I wouldn't expect that either.
Are you booting in UEFI mode or legacy BIOS mode?
Set it as legacy BIOS instead.

Thank you. I haven't looked into it from that angle yet. I do think there are some boot mode settings for UEFI to try... will test and report here.

On the other hand, I applied the update that was available today and it installed and rebooted fine. To me, the inconsistent nature of this depending on individual updates is evidence that the updates are causing some kind of change that the motherboard looks at during boot.

If I can't get it resolved with the USB, I'm thinking that I will just buy a small SSD drive and switch to that. Not the most elegant solution. But, at least it would come with getting a new toy and I presume better performance/boot times.

 

[joeschmuck]

@indivision Not sure where you live but in the US is Black November/Sunday where there are a lot of electronics on sale. Do not fixate on capacity but rather price. All I wanted was a 32GB SSD for under $50. I located from NewEgg.com a 120GB SSD for $49.99 delivered. I should have purchased two of these as I know I'll have a need for another one soon for another computer. I'm keeping my eye out again.

 

[indivision]

@indivision Not sure where you live but in the US is Black November/Sunday where there are a lot of electronics on sale. Do not fixate on capacity but rather price. All I wanted was a 32GB SSD for under $50. I located from NewEgg.com a 120GB SSD for $49.99 delivered. I should have purchased two of these as I know I'll have a need for another one soon for another computer. I'm keeping my eye out again.

I am in the US. I think I'm going to go for that. Are there any other qualities for an SSD that are good/needed for FreeNAS? Isn't there some way to set up some kind of cache on SSD that helps performance? Seems like I've read people going over that elsewhere here. Is that something FreeNAS sets up automatically if it detects an SSD?

 

[joeschmuck]

I purchased this one. Keep in mind that FreeNAS runs in RAM and there is not a lot, although some, disk activity. You need nothing fast or special. If this were a corporate build then I'd recommend a drive that has a significant reputation. For my home system, if my SSD were to die, it would be just like any USB flash drive dying. What I gain using the SSD is being future proof, I place it on SATA port 0 and it's the first boot device, lots of storage space if/when we can ever use it. Also I could use the SSD for some other use if I find a better deal on a smaller storage device, like if I run across a 32GB SSD for $30.00, I'm grabbing it. Also, read some user reviews of the product before just purchasing it when you see it. More people write reviews to complain than say positive things, keep that in mind as well.

Also, just to clarify something, booting up the FreeNAS system using a SSD isn't much faster than using the USB Flash drive. I could explain more on why that is but if anyone is expecting lighting fast boot times just because they shifted over to a SSD, they will not be happy with the results. As I said, FreeNAS runs in RAM. I do not know if FreeNAS supports TRIM but that is not a factor for a boot device. It would be a factor if you were using SSD's as your Vdev.

 

[indivision]

I purchased this one. Keep in mind that FreeNAS runs in RAM and there is not a lot, although some, disk activity. You need nothing fast or special. If this were a corporate build then I'd recommend a drive that has a significant reputation. For my home system, if my SSD were to die, it would be just like any USB flash drive dying. What I gain using the SSD is being future proof, I place it on SATA port 0 and it's the first boot device, lots of storage space if/when we can ever use it. Also I could use the SSD for some other use if I find a better deal on a smaller storage device, like if I run across a 32GB SSD for $30.00, I'm grabbing it. Also, read some user reviews of the product before just purchasing it when you see it. More people write reviews to complain than say positive things, keep that in mind as well.

Also, just to clarify something, booting up the FreeNAS system using a SSD isn't much faster than using the USB Flash drive. I could explain more on why that is but if anyone is expecting lighting fast boot times just because they shifted over to a SSD, they will not be happy with the results. As I said, FreeNAS runs in RAM. I do not know if FreeNAS supports TRIM but that is not a factor for a boot device. It would be a factor if you were using SSD's as your Vdev.

Thank you for the breakdown. I've had several SSDs on other machines and have been happy with Intel. But, they cost a little more... Doesn't sound like that is necessary for FreeNAS.

It seems like the boot time should be at least a little better because it will be through SATA rather than USB 2.0.

I'm pretty sure that what I read about before was vdev. I don't even know what that is other than that it has something to do with performance. Is that not something I can set up maybe on a partition of the boot SSD?

 

[indivision]

Backing up now. Not vdev. Maybe I misunderstood something previously.

I thought I read that people were using regular HDDs for storage with FreeNAS but supplementing it somehow with an SSD drive and that sped things up for ZFS. Again, I may have just completely misunderstood those conversations...?

 

[indivision]

I found the answer here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzHapVfrocfwbXYxcGgycEIzNG8/edit

ZIL drive. Can I have a partition on a boot SSD that handles ZIL to improve performance?

 

[joeschmuck]

The boot device is only the boot device for now. Vdevs are your data storage devices. Do not dive into ZIL and L2ARC, odds are they will not help you but cause you frustration while it slows your system down and make you spend more money. There are a lot of threads on this forum discussing many idiots thinking they could get more performance just by adding these items and unless you have a ton of RAM, high speed SATA interface cards, etc... it's a waste of money. Take my advice and don't waste your time. I speak from experience and lots of benchmark testing.

For this forum thread, lets leave it at purchasing a SSD for a boot device to get past those BIOS boot device issues. Just make sure that the SSD is connected to the SATA 0 port (the first one in the boot sequence).

 

[indivision]

Point well taken. That pdf basically says the same thing. ZIL and L2ARC would be overkill and just a new liability.