SG2440 cold boot
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Minor item…
I have an SG-2440 that was ordered with the eMMC - added an Samsung EVO 850 mSATA SSD to the device, and reinstalled pfSense 2.3.3 on it, leaving pfSense and the partitions on the eMMC alone. (misguided thought here might be that the eMMC would be a safe fallback in case of power loss)
All good - on the first start - console cable attached, no issues noted with booting from the SSD, and things seemed to be fine.
Just as a precaution - did a quick fsck from the console, and no issues found..
Last two times with CoreBoot 1.0.0.12 on a cold start - the 2440 was waiting for a boot command on the console... not a problem if I'm onsite, but a challenge if I'm remote, which these days I'm spending much more time on the road...
The last cold start item mentioned above was with pfSense 2.4, previously with 2.3.4...
Corrective changes taken since last time...
- Updated Coreboot to 1.0.0.17
- Removed pfSense from eMMC via gpart removal of the pfsense partitions (which should render eMMC not a candidate for bootstraping the system)
Any other steps recommended?
The 2440 is on a UPS (APC consumer - BackUPS NS1080, supporting my QNAP NAS directly connected via USB to it).
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Minor item…
I have an SG-2440 that was ordered with the eMMC - added an Samsung EVO 850 mSATA SSD to the device, and reinstalled pfSense 2.3.3 on it, leaving pfSense and the partitions on the eMMC alone. (misguided thought here might be that the eMMC would be a safe fallback in case of power loss)
All good - on the first start - console cable attached, no issues noted with booting from the SSD, and things seemed to be fine.
Just as a precaution - did a quick fsck from the console, and no issues found..
Last two times with CoreBoot 1.0.0.12 on a cold start - the 2440 was waiting for a boot command on the console... not a problem if I'm onsite, but a challenge if I'm remote, which these days I'm spending much more time on the road...
The last cold start item mentioned above was with pfSense 2.4, previously with 2.3.4...
Corrective changes taken since last time...
- Updated Coreboot to 1.0.0.17
- Removed pfSense from eMMC via gpart removal of the pfsense partitions (which should render eMMC not a candidate for bootstraping the system)
Any other steps recommended?
The 2440 is on a UPS (APC consumer - BackUPS NS1080, supporting my QNAP NAS directly connected via USB to it).
on which stage it\s waiting?
BIOS
loader ?i am assuming on loader,
edid loader.conf and set:
autoboot_delay="1"it should solve problem
also during boot you can trigger boot order edit menu by pressing F1 during POST to point your SSD as primary boot device.
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My guess is that it's hanging in UEFI/SeaBIOS - SSD should take priority over eMMC on the 2440 based on docs.
Can't reboot the device right now as it is in production and remote to check… hot restart seems fine, it's the cold boot that worries me.
loader.conf below...
cat /boot/loader.conf /boot/loader.conf.local
autoboot_delay="3"
boot_serial="YES"
console="comconsole"
comconsole_speed="115200"
comconsole_port="0x2F8"
hint.uart.0.flags="0x00"
hint.uart.1.flags="0x10"
hw.usb.no_pf="1"
kern.cam.boot_delay=10000
kern.ipc.nmbclusters="1000000"
legal.intel_ipw.license_ack=1
legal.intel_iwi.license_ack=1 -
Remote hands today on the site… got Ben on the phone, and he's 2000km away from where I'm at.
Had him shutdown the box, and remove power on the 2440.
Powered the unit back up, and the device was stuck in the boot menu in SeaBIOS...
F1 to boot pfSense - told him to hit F1, and this brings up XFCE Help Menu (he's running Xbuntu on the remote laptop) - F1 is mapped to Help there on his terminal.
So the device is stuck, so hard power the thing again, and told him to hit F12 for the boot menu...
His laptop doesn't have F12 - stops at F10 - so that's a bust...
Somehow the device is now in PXE boot, so it's getting really ugly...
Had him jump into the linux console, bypassing the XFCE terminal app, and we're still stuck in PXE boot now (F5) - I think he might have hit that... once there, it's going to keep trying to PXE boot.
Told him to grab another USB keyboard from one of the local desktops - found one, rebooted his linux laptop, and got to the F12 from there.
Keeping him on console vs. XFCE desktop, got back to the F1 to boot pfSense from there.
This is really spooky to be honest - the 2440 has been fairly robust, but for this cold-boot issue that I keep running into.
Box is back up for now - losing some confidence, as I might not have a technical person on the other end - lucky that we were able to find a console cable (mini-USB to USB-Type A with data lines, not just power) - had him put that cable into a zip-lock bag and zip-tie it to the rack just in case.
Going thru a few other threads here on the support forums - folks need to know there is not a traditional BIOS, e.g. Phoenix/Award/etc here to select a boot disk - SeaBIOS is a bit different on the 2440.
Gaah... F1 and F12 were the bane of my existence today all told.
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SG-2440 will boot in this order:
USB ports (memsticks)
mSATA
USB eMMCThe internal SATA ports are in there too but I omitted them since this is a 2440 and they're most-likely not in play.
If you are having cold boot issues it is likely due to something with the mSATA you installed.
I have done this hundreds of times with the various ADI devices (2440, 4860, 8860) and it has never done anything unexpected using USB memory sticks, eMMC, or the Intel SSDMCEAC030B3 mSATAs I have. They always do exactly what is expected.
You might need to have your remote people take a complete bootup capture and paste it here for anyone to be able to offer further assistance.
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quick update - had to go thru this again…
Device was stuck in boot order first - select a boot device - and the range of devices available - since this device has an mSATA card...
Had remote hands select SATA as the priority (details now escape me, as this is a production box, needed to get it back up)
Once that was selected (and saved), box rebooted, and then hung at choose boot device - that being (F1 pfSense, F5 something else) - had remote hands hit <return>there, and box booted fine.
Seems like a BIOS issue...</return>
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Another quick update - the SG-2440 was removed from service about 6 months ago - office consolidation.
Pulled the box home - powered it up on late last week, and it worked thru the boot sequence and started up correctly.... did the pfSense upgrade to 2.4.4, and all seems to be good.
So that's a really cold boot so to speak...
Anyways - with coreboot ADI_RCCVE-01.00.00.17-nodebug and 2.4.4, seems to be working.
Still some concern about the C2000 series issue - the coreboot update should have fixed things, but still see a number of reports of no-boot issues on this board family here on the forums - not clear as all queries have been directed back to netgate customer support, and no further action on those posts...