After power outage netgate 4100 won't boot

mcline

Had a power outage when I was in between UPS's and it seems to have borked my 4100. I consoled in and ran the following command
[24.11-RELEASE][root@pfSense.home.arpa]/var/log: fsck -fy /
fsck: cannot open `pfSense/ROOT/default': No such file or directory

Does not seem good. My question is what can I do to get the device working again? I see on the 4200 docs that its possible to bypass the onboard storage with an M2 drive (https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/solutions/netgate-4200/m-2-nvme-installation.html) but I don't see any such section on the 4100 docs (https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/solutions/netgate-4100/index.html). I am assuming that the onboard storage is done since I also saw some of these messages

CONTINUE? yes

Attempted recovery for standard superblock: failed
Attempted extraction of recovery data from standard superblock: failed
Attempt to find boot zone recovery data.
Finding an alternate superblock failed.
Check for only non-critical errors in standard superblock
Failed, superblock has critical errors

Am I just screwed and my $700 FW is done because of a power outage or is there a way to replace the onboard storage and re-image it?

Thanks in advance.

stephenw10

@mcline said in After power outage netgate 4100 won't boot:

[24.11-RELEASE][root@pfSense.home.arpa]/var/log: fsck -fy /
fsck: cannot open `pfSense/ROOT/default': No such file or directory

That looks like it has actually booted completely.

Is it running ZFS or UFS? fsck will only work in UFS installs.

Did you try just reinstalling from USB?

You can fit an NVMe drive to the 4100. It's more difficult than the 4200 but can be done if you have experience with similar devices. The limitation is that the drive must be B+M keyed which is unusual. There are a few threads here with users discussing currently available drives. The 4100, 6100 and 8200 all use the same drives.

mcline

@stephenw10 Not sure which FS its using as it's whatever it came with. I will see if the ZFS utils work I was just googling when I cam up with the fsck command.

mcline

Also sorry about being indirect about the not booting completely. The box gets stuck in a state where the diamond led is flashing on and off and never fully starts services. DHCP was not working and I was unable to hit the web GUI.

mcline

seems like its running ZFS
[24.11-RELEASE][root@pfSense.home.arpa]/root: zpool list
NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CKPOINT EXPANDSZ FRAG CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT
pfSense 106G 7.61G 98.4G - - 11% 7% 1.00x ONLINE

Still not sure why it wont fully boot and bring up the webgui.

stephenw10

Ok so what exactly are you seeing when you connect at the console? Is it just waiting at a prompt after booting? Some error shown?

Is everything except the gui working?

Gertjan

@mcline said in After power outage netgate 4100 won't boot:

I was just googling when I cam up with the fsck command.

Youtube Netgate Official channel filecheck

For a file system check, the system needs to be unmounted = 'not actively used'.
When the system boots, the first menu, which times out pretty fast, offers you the option to do this check.

@mcline said in After power outage netgate 4100 won't boot:

Am I just screwed and my $700 FW is done because of a power outage or is there a way to replace the onboard storage and re-image it?

The 'good' news :
Disks die all the time.... whatever technology you use.
I have a 4100 also, and changing the disk isn't 'easy' but it is possible. The only sad thing is that it will be a ones in a live time experience, as you will probably stop using the build in nvme and shift to what is actually the MAX (SSD) version. Afterwards, statically, it won't be the drive anymore if something fails in our 4100..