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    Replaced MOBO and now can't get install to complete

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Problems Installing or Upgrading pfSense Software
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    • W
      Wylbur @stephenw10
      last edited by

      @stephenw10

      I've been using these with various computers since I have so many DVDs around (music, doc, Knoppix/Suse LIVE, etc.).

      But I will find one of my thumb drives I can clear, and get it set up to do an install.

      L8r.

      W 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • W
        Wylbur @Wylbur
        last edited by

        @Wylbur
        Ok, built a usb thumb drive for install.

        The install identified the USB drive and I could see the system was loading and things were going by on the screen rapidly and then....

        It got pretty much the same failure as from a USB DVD install:

        Mounting from zfs:pfSense/ROOT/default failed with error 6; retrying for 3 more seconds......

        :
        :
        Abort manual input...
        mountroot>


        And we had such a good thing going.

        Any more suggestions?

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        • stephenw10S
          stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
          last edited by

          Exactly which image did you use?

          Did it complete the install and then fail to boot the result?

          The odd thing there is that it's trying to mount ZFS and the installer itself is UFS.

          What does it show for available devices there when you enter ?

          Does it show the USB device (probably da0) detected in the boot logs before that point?

          It's possible it's simply booting too fast and there is a delay from the USB devices initialising. In that case you can add a boot delay, see:
          https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/troubleshooting/installation.html#booting-from-usb

          Steve

          W 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • W
            Wylbur @stephenw10
            last edited by

            @stephenw10 said in Replaced MOBO and now can't get install to complete:

            Did it complete the install and then fail to boot the result?

            The odd thing there is that it's trying to mount ZFS and the installer itself is UFS.

            What does it show for available devices there when you enter ?

            Does it show the USB device (probably da0) detected in the boot logs before that point?

            It's possible it's simply booting too fast and there is a delay from the USB devices initialising. In that case you can add a boot delay, see:
            https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/troubleshooting/installation.html#booting-from-usb
            First - As best I can tell, it was still on init stuff. I didn't see a boot message where it was booting from what it laid down.

            There are 2 hard drives on this system that I reformatted (mentioned that before). I do not have any SSD in this system.


            Either power on or hit <reset> and we start.....

            Ok, <F11> to select boot -- USB: SanDisk

            Then stuff goes streaming by, and finally I get this:
            ada1: 476940MB (976773168 512 byte sectors)
            ada1: quirks=0x1<4K>
            da0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 scbus6 target 0 lun 0
            da0: <SanDisk Cruzer Glide 1.00> Removeable Direct Access SPC-4 SCSI device
            da0:Serial Number 4C531001371208106022
            da0: quirks=0x2<NO_6_BYTE>
            Mounting from zfs:pfSense/ROOT/default failed with error 6; retrying for 3 more seconds
            :
            :
            :
            finally
            mountroot >

            I gave it the command as the manual listed. But it was mentioned needing to escape. I don't know what the escape key/character is. I tried a few things, but no joy (and I looked for escape char, etc., and didn't see one defined). So it couldn't take and make use of the delay info I gave it. -- it "took it" it just didn't know what to do with or about it.

            So it had to fetch a boot loader from somewhere to get started and it was reading the SanDisk (thumb drive).

            I put that thumb drive on a Suse Leap 15.5 system to query it and I get this:
            sdd1 14.59 GiB Ext4 Partition 2918 30603263
            start end

            Maybe someone should do some testing of DVD read and install, because that is how I got pfSense to initially load on this machine (before the Mobo went wierd).

            Wylbur.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • stephenw10S
              stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
              last edited by

              You probably need to clean the target drives. One or both still has ZFS data on it and it's trying to mount that. Especially if it was previusly a mirror across both drives.
              See: https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/troubleshooting/multiple-disks.html#clear-the-disk

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              • W
                Wylbur @stephenw10
                last edited by

                @stephenw10

                As I said, I had reformatted them before I started this. So, what should I reformat them with? EXT(?) or XFS, or what? I will be using the partitioner from either Suse Leap 15.6 or Knoppix 9.1.

                I would imagine then, that the first thing the installer will do is check the file system, and if it doesn't recognize it, it will do its own formatting. And perhaps this is the problem --could it be using the wrong file system?

                Wylbur

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                • stephenw10S
                  stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                  last edited by

                  You don't need to format them the installer does that. By default it uses ZFS.

                  The problem is that most disk formatting tools only remove the data structures and do not actually write zeros to the disk. ZFS will search the disk for existing ZFS pool metadata and tries to use it.

                  Hence you need to clean the disk to remove that.

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                  • W
                    Wylbur @stephenw10
                    last edited by

                    @stephenw10

                    Cleared the disk drives (2) and then some how the thumb drive had been erased (it was not plugged into the system while it was clearing the drives -- Rod Sirling has to be in my LAN somewhere). So had to drop back to the DVD reader and the install ran to completion. BTW 2TB drives take a very long time (doing the clean in parallel) and I had them set up for only 2 passes not the 10 (default).

                    So this whole exercise appears to have been caused by the disk drives being corrupted in some fashion.

                    Bottom line is, it seems to be working for now. Next stop -- upgrade to 2.7.2

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • stephenw10S
                      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                      last edited by

                      Nice. Yeah if you actually have to write zeros to the entire drive that can take....a while!

                      That shouldn't be required as removing the zfs data and the partition tables is sufficient if they are accessible. Writing zeros does that of course.

                      Anyway glad you're up and running.

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                      • W
                        Wylbur @stephenw10
                        last edited by

                        @stephenw10
                        I'm trying to find all the items I've had open and put in a final post, such as this one:

                        After intalling Service_Watchdog and it now running, we no longer see issues in our logs. The principle one being the WAN interface failing. This is not the fix for what appears to have been a MOBO and later a power supply problem. But it is interesting that this fixed the problems on the backup pfsense server and the primary server with the ISP on the WAN. And the backup server is NOT running with a dual port Intel ethernet adapter.

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                        • stephenw10S
                          stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                          last edited by

                          What services did you enable it for? Do you see it logging restarting them?

                          W 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • W
                            Wylbur @stephenw10
                            last edited by

                            @stephenw10

                            I have it set up for LAN. And I've seen the error message that I used to get, but the system keeps running after that now. I didn't use WAN because after reading what it says I thought that might be a bad idea.

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