pfSense/ROOT/default failed to mount with error 5

deanfourie

@stephenw10 Thanks output is,

kern.cam.boot_delay: 10000

stephenw10

Hmm, not that then.

So it only does this if you hard reset the device? And it does it every time?

deanfourie

@stephenw10 Yes, correct.

I have hard reset 3 times, mostly mistakes on my part, and everytime now I have had to reinstall pfSense from scratch as I CANNOT for the life of me get past the mountroot screen.

Seems like if I shut it down gracefully, all is good.

stephenw10

Hmm, I've never seen ZFS fail like that without something else in play It's normally very resilient to that.

deanfourie

@stephenw10 This just happened again today.

Forced me to throw a Mikrotik in temporarily.

I really need to fix this but not sure where to start.

What could be causing this? Any idea on how to troubleshoot?

stephenw10

What pfSense version are you using? 23.09.1/2.7.2 included ZFS fixes.

deanfourie

@stephenw10 I was using latest version of pfSense +.

Fully up to date.

deanfourie

@stephenw10 Ok, i've had a play with this today and its back in production.

I changed from legacy boot to UEFI, not sure if this will help.

I powered it up and pulled the power several times trying to force the failure, didn't fail to boot once. I do have a feeling its only once there is some data written to the drive, such as firewall logs, trafiic and host data etc. Any way we will see.

Is there any logs while i is running that I can get that may shed more light on this issue?

Thanks!

stephenw10

Nothing other than the system log. Any sort of filesystem issue should log an error.

GlennNZ

Hi,

I suffered pretty much the same issue,and given this is first google hit thought would update solution for me here in case it helps others.

Exactly the same as here:
https://forum.netgate.com/topic/184135/mounting-failed-with-error-5/7

Pfsense Plus power cut (backup exhausted) bad shutdown.
Then failed to start.
Root mount waiting for: CAM (lots)
Then:
Mounting from zfs:Pfsense/ROOT/Default failed with error 5
Error 5, as per screen shots here.

Any zpool command gave error
“Invalid file system specification“

I pulled PC, pulled drive, booted from USB Pfsense stick.
Pulled hair.
Could not seem to get to bottom of.
Was going to reinstall Pfense (not plus) from USB stick - no drive to be found other than USB (?). Was going to replace drive altogether.

Then discovered one post, in a forum, somewhere, which I will link to if ever can find again, talking about BIOS drive settings changed in power cut.

Solution:
Somehow power surge/power cut had changed BIOS to RAID for drives from AHCI. (interestingly did so for another PC I discovered later - Pfsense was first job - this was Windows PC and failed to Boot altogether)
Oddly here though - Pfsense partially booted - as above so for drive was readable for parts…. (Hence hadn’t considered drive issue)

Solution:
Check BIOS Settings
Hard Drives - Selection - AHCI. (not RAID)

Hopefully this helps someone else in the future.