Cannot boot via SSD: gptboot: No /boot/loader on 0:ad(0p2)

posix · Feb 21, 2021, 7:40 PM

Hello Everyone,

I have a sg-5100 appliance with TS256GMTS430S M.2 SSD installed as the primary boot device. The device was running 2.4.5-1.

Some strange behavior began to happen the first behavior was that I could not update any of the packages. On the dashboard it showed that pfblocker-ng update was available. I would run the package manager to update and it freeze on "Please wait while the update system initializes".

After some research and digging around I found the troubleshooting a broken pkg Database:
http://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/troubleshooting/pkg-broken-database.html

I followed that and all the packages updated. Everything was "fine" I thought as traffic was flowing no issues. The next strange thing I noticed was that I went to reload pfblocker-ng IP list nothing happened. The update status output was blank. I stoped the two pfblocker-ng service as well as unbound and tried to restart them however none would restart. Logs from gui did not show anything. So lastly I just reloaded and that is when I noticed it would not boot. so looking at the console I saw this:

gptboot: No /boot/loader on 0:ad(0p2)                                           
gptboot: No /boot/kernel/kernel on 0:ad(0p2)                                    
                                                                                
FreeBSD/x86 boot                                                                
Default: 0:ad(0p2)/boot/kernel/kernel                                           
boot:

the strange thing is that if bootup to the MMC disk I can see the SSD and the partitions:

geom disk list
Geom name: ada0
Providers:
1. Name: ada0
   Mediasize: 256060514304 (238G)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Mode: r0w0e0
   dscr: TS256GMTS430S
   lunid: 57c3548194bde727
   <omitted Line>
   rotationrate: 0
   fwsectors: 63
   fwheads: 16
   
gpart show
=>       40  500118112  ada0  GPT  (238G)
         40       1024     1  freebsd-boot  (512K)
       1064  490732544     2  freebsd-ufs  (234G)
  490733608    8388608     3  freebsd-swap  (4.0G)
  499122216     995936        - free -  (486M)

My obsevations:
ada0p1 should boot the system if not mistaken?
The disk responds to queries so Hardware is not bad but rather this might be some corruption?

The ask:
Assistance in troubleshooting further to possibly recovering the system or confirming hardware is faulty.

posix · Feb 23, 2021, 5:42 PM

This turned out to be hardware issue. Had to replace the SSD card.

I worked with the freebsd forum.

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/cannot-boot-via-ssd-gptboot-no-boot-loader-on-0-ad-0p2.78994/