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    Terribly slow boot times and frequent boot freezes

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • R
      rmeskill @Gertjan
      last edited by

      @Gertjan well this just raises a bunch of questions for me:

      1. Is ZFS bad? I didn't explicitly choose it, it just seems it was installed that way
      2. is running NVMe bad? My Topton box is fairly small and doesn't have internal room for anything other than a NVMe drive, I think? I might be able to put a SSD in instead if that should be better?
      3. is 317TB a lot? I don't know what's writing so much if so...
      4. do we think there's a chance this drive is failing or got corrupted? I can look into UPS but it clearly went down without a UPS so something could have broken there somehow...
      GertjanG 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • GertjanG
        Gertjan @rmeskill
        last edited by

        @rmeskill said in Terribly slow boot times and frequent boot freezes:

        Is ZFS bad? I didn't explicitly choose it, it just seems it was installed that way

        Noop, on the contrary. Is handles way better our 'new' disks that are not spinning plates, but 'sophisticated silicon gates' (SSD, nvme etc etc).
        Still, and it's still me rambling : don't think hardware or software will protect you against power failure.
        Power failures == bad.

        If this :

        da0: Attempt to query device size failed: NOT READY, Medium not present

        wasn't caused by the power failure, you have another issue. Most probably : drive not ok.
        Get a new drive, and I'm pretty sure your issue

        Terribly slow boot times and frequent boot freezes

        will be gone.

        No "help me" PM's please. Use the forum, the community will thank you.
        Edit : and where are the logs ??

        R 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • R
          rmeskill @Gertjan
          last edited by

          @Gertjan said in Terribly slow boot times and frequent boot freezes:

          If this :

          da0: Attempt to query device size failed: NOT READY, Medium not present

          wasn't caused by the power failure

          This error isn't explicitly from the power failure-it's coming up every boot now. But yeah, I don't know if it's from a failure with the drive or another hardware interface failure. I do, however, have 2x NVMe slots and, when I moved the drive it still had the same error coming up, so that should rule out the physical NVMe slot. I've opened a case with Kingston to see if they'll honor a RMA

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          • stephenw10S
            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
            last edited by

            That error from da0 is probably unrelated. It's not the NVMe drive. I'd guess that device has an SD card slot or something similar. It has no card in it so reports that media error.

            R 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • R
              rmeskill @stephenw10
              last edited by

              @stephenw10 if so, then any ideas why my boots are taking 20-30 minutes? And if there might be some way to test/confirm an issue with the NVMe drive?

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

                Where in the boot is it stalling?

                Try pressing ctl+t when it's stalled. That should show you what process it's waiting for.

                You could also try booting verbose. Interrupt the boot at the loader menu to reach the loader prompt (OK>) and enter: boot -v
                That may give you additional details about what it's doing before the delay.

                R 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • R
                  rmeskill @stephenw10
                  last edited by rmeskill

                  @stephenw10

                  Either really early doors here:

                  b2ba77c6-f177-4e55-9938-c097397b0dab-E4D0756E-4F8E-4538-8FA9-0D4AE3519DE7_1_105_c.jpeg

                  or here:

                  91f6f66f-7502-485e-a2b4-ed0edb5c4506-image.png

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                  • stephenw10S
                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                    last edited by

                    Hmm, so in both those situation is does eventually boot?

                    We've seen some other device hit those but AFAIK they never boot from there.

                    Try booting verbose to get more output from the 2nd scenario.

                    R 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • R
                      rmeskill @stephenw10
                      last edited by

                      @stephenw10 that's actually a good question, but I think no. Sometimes it freezes there and sometimes it boots. But I just had another power cut and ended up with this screen, it looks pretty damning for the NVMe:

                      2abdb9ad-46d7-401b-a6a4-a18a7dfad024-image.png

                      Anyone have any suggestions for a good value/quality NVMe replacement?

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

                        Urgh, yeah that's not good. It's difficult to break ZFS just by removing the power. So, yes, could be a bad drive.

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