issue with APU4 after power cycle

benkillin

I power cycled my APU4 and for some reason it is stuck in a reboot loop. Below is the serial console output for 1 full boot cycle, and then it repeats over and over, exactly the same output: This same device has had problems before, I posted a thread about it several months ago: https://forum.netgate.com/topic/145647/netgate-apu4-bricked-after-initiating-update-in-web-console I suspect the mSATA drive is failing. I just ordered a replacement mSATA drive from newegg and for now the device is powered off. Ideally I would like to be able to plug in a USB drive and save all the configuration I would need to make it so when I reinstall pfsense on the new mSATA drive when it arrives, I don't have to manually reconfigure everything as it was time consuming to get it configured exactly how I wanted.

Apparently the full boot cycle output is too long for including directly in the post, here it is in a pastebin: https://privatebin.net/?f33b31958ce86a51#5qGXoLQfpcAr1YpYaK4Zdy1ZZQw4fLy7RszeyRafx58H

viragomann

Obviously a file system failure:

Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/ufsid/5d508ff0632e783a [rw]...
da0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 scbus6 target 0 lun 0
da0: <Multiple Card  Reader 1.00> Removable Direct Access SPC-2 SCSI device
da0: Serial Number 058F63666485
da0: 40.000MB/s transfers
da0: Attempt to query device size failed: NOT READY, Medium not present
da0: quirks=0x2<NO_6_BYTE>
WARNING: / was not properly dismounted
WARNING: /: mount pending error: blocks 32 files 3

I'd recommend to do a new install using ZFS and restore the config.

Otherwise you may try to repair your file system. To do so, boot into the single user mode and enter at prompt:

sbin/fsck -y -t usfs

benkillin

The last time I installed I didn't have the option to restore a config - is there a directory I can manually copy to a USB if I am able to get into single user mode and mount a USB drive?

I did see the filesystem error - however after it did its thing it said the filesystem was marked clean.

viragomann

The config is stored in only one file: /conf/config.xml

As far as I know the installer has the ability to detect the configuration file on the disc when reinstalling.

If you want to copy it to an USB drive and use it for restoring look here, how to do: https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/backup/automatically-restore-during-install.html

stephenw10

Yeah this indicates a filesystem error: panic: ffs_valloc: dup alloc

You should be able to recover that using a manual fsck. The system always runs an fsck and usually is able to recover but sometimes requires several passes. The problem is it reports clean when it is not. Your mSATA drive is probably fine.

If you do lose power regularly I suggest moving /var and /tmp to RAM drives in Sys > Adv > Misc to minimise the risk.

Steve

benkillin

Thank you - I wanted to give an update - I have resolved my issue.

I was able to boot into single user mode and back up the config to a usb stick, and then I was able to manually fsck the drive to try to repair it. fsck said it worked and marked the filesystem clean, however after rebooting it kernel paniced with the same ffs_valloc error as before. So what I did is I replaced the msata drive and installed pfsense on that from a usb drive and since I had backed it up using the instructions provided in the link above, I was able to recover the same config easily.

So, thank you.