Asrock Rack White Box Crash
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Hey folks, Built a new machine out of some spare parts as a backup to my Netgate 8200 Max. Specs are:
Asrock Rack X570D4U-2L2T
AMD Ryzen 9 5900x 12 core CPU
2 x 16Gb Kingston ECC DDR4 3200
Intel x550-T2 (WAN)
Intel E810XXVDA2 (LAN)
Corsair HX1000i PSUTotally excessive all around, but I like excess compute capacity and not concerned with power draw. In the case this is built out in and with the system fans used, overall nearly silent in my office. Installed pfsense CE then upgraded to Plus with 2 year TAC lite.
System was running swimmingly on pfsense plus 23.05.1 for almost 2 months, and decided to do a reboot priot to performing upgrade to 23.09. Upon reboot, I get the following screen that is clearly a crash of some kind, probably an incompatibility with the ASIC or some other component on the Asrock board.
Has anyone seen this error before? Thoughts on what might be causing this 'hang up'? Haven't reached out to TAC yet for support or thoughts, wanted to start on the forums first since this is my backup/play router machine. Thanks for any insight!
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Had you rebooted previously in 23.05.1? This before you upgraded to 23.09?
It looks like you're connected to the serial console but you're seeing the EFI console output somehow.
How are you actually connected to that? Have you tried forcing a different console type?
https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/troubleshooting/boot-issues.html#booting-with-an-alternate-consoleSteve
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@stephenw10 Thanks for the feedback.
I would've had to have rebooted previoulsy doing the upgrades to Plus, etc, from CE, But I don't know if I rebooted again once 23.05.1 was up. And Yes (to your 2nd question), this manual reboot via console was going to be a 'friendly reboot' prior to then upgrading to 23.09. FYI..this install was done via CE serial image on USB, installed via serial console.
I am connected to the Asrock via serial console using a DB9 serial Null cable (using the required data rates, etc). The board has a VGA out using built in BMC.
So at the Pfsense load screen (connected via serial), I paused the boot cycle (space bar) and noticed option 5 shows:
- Cons: Dual (Serial Primary)
If that's kept set, the EFI boot error (whatever you want to call it) comes up and booting is halted. When I change that by selected 5 , hit enter it changes to:
- Cons: Serial
Pfsense loads as expected. But if I reboot the system, pfense is defaulting to 'Cons: Dual (Serial primary)' and I get the EFI error. Can I force that to always load Cons: Serial? Is that the problem?
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@stephenw10 Per the link you sent, is this what I need to configure?
Once at the loader prompt, type the following to boot with the serial console active:
set console=comconsole
boot -vSimilarly, if a serial memstick image is used that prefers the serial console, the video console can be used instead as follows:
set console=vidconsole
boot -
You can set those loader values permanently in /boot/loader.conf.local (create that file).
Check /boot/loader.conf to see what it set currently.
You can set the primary console in Sys > Adv > Admin Access
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I am classified as dangerous with making changes to /boot/loader.conf as I have never done so. Can I access that while at the main pfsense screen (post bootup) from the console via serial? Am I selecting the 8) Shell and accessing it from there?
If not, I can connect the server to my main switch tonight and login and configure via standard primary browser console login per your recommendations in Sys>Adv>Admin.
Thank you Stephen
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Yes you can access it at the console directly Or using Diag > Edit File in the GUI.
However you shouldn't make changes in the main loader.conf, just view that file. Add any changes to loader.conf.local so they don't get overwritten.
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@stephenw10 Will try and edit tonight. Many thanks for your input Steve.
Out of curiousity, what part of my build is causing the confusion for pfsense? I have other servers with onboard BMC and onboard VGA, as well as serial com connections where I've never experienced this boot issue. Wondering if there's a change within the BIOS I can make to disable/prevent the pfsense bootup confusion with this build?
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Does it actually fail to boot or does it just not show anything at the console?
What's confusing it is the EFI console for some reason. If you installed legacy it would probably boot fine.
It could be come conflict between the serial console and console redirect to the port. Hard to imagine what might have changed there though that wasn't at an upgrade.
