Kernel panic after upgrade to 24.11

Mike-moon

Hi,

this week I tried to upgrade from 24.03 to 24.11 but the system did not come up. After attaching a monitor I saw that it stucks in a kernel panic so I restarted the system in the old boot environment. The code below is from 24.03, but in principle the same I could see just before the kernel panic. For me, it's unclear whether it hung e.g. because of missing drivers for the WiFi module or during the next step in the boot sequence.
However, is there a simple way to blacklist the module before the upgrade (just to try and because it is unnecessary anyway) or do you think that the issue is related to something different?
Can I access boot logs from the system that is not starting?

Many thanks,
Michael

Trying to mount root from zfs:pfSense/ROOT/default_active_20241126215836_20241126224316 []...
device_attach: iwm0 attach returned 6
iwm0: could not read firmware iwm9000fw (error 0)
iwm9000fw: could not load firmware image, error 6
iwm0: <Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless AC 9560> mem 0x4001114000-0x4001117fff irq 16 at device 20.3 on pci0
device_attach: iwm0 attach returned 6
iwm0: could not read firmware iwm9000fw (error 0)
iwm9000fw: could not load firmware image, error 6
iwm0: <Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless AC 9560> mem 0x4001114000-0x4001117fff irq 16 at device 20.3 on pci0
pcm3: <Intel Kaby Lake (HDMI/DP 8ch)> at nid 3 on hdaa1

stephenw10

Do you have the actual panic string and backtrace from the panic?

There shouldn't really be a driver issue between 24.03 and 24.11 in that regard.

But you can probably disable it by adding the following to /boot/loader.conf.local:
hint.iwm.0.disabled="1"

Steve

Mike-moon

@stephenw10
Hi Steve,
after blacklisting the WiFi module, the upgrade went through - I did nothing else. I am now on 24.11, YEAH! Thank you very much!
Regards,
Michael

rac1503

@Mike-moon

I am having this very same issue! How were you able to do this with the failure? I cant seem to get around it to a place where I can do anything. I can stop it before it loads the pfSense, but not to where I can get in and prevent it from loading the wifi driver which is failing.

Anything you can share on just how you did this fix would be very helpful!!!

Thanks,

Rich

Gertjan

@rac1503 said in Kernel panic after upgrade to 24.11:

I can get in and prevent it from loading

As said above, you need a screen and keyboard, so you can see and interact with the system while it boots.
When it fails, you are dropped to the command line. Now its your turn.
At that moment, you have to do the finger, keyboard, text editor thing :

@stephenw10 said in Kernel panic after upgrade to 24.11:

But you can probably disable it by adding the following to /boot/loader.conf.local:
hint.iwm.0.disabled="1"

which means you have to edit or create the file /boot/loader.conf.local and add hint.iwm.0.disabled="1" to it. This instruction will inhibited the kernel of using (loading) the failing iwm driver.

Btw : you probably have to mount the partition first.

If possible, you could also disable the Wifi hardware in the BIOS. The kernel won't find and fail anymore.

stephenw10

Yup just removing or disabling the WiFi would be better.

You can set that hint at the loader prompt before pfSense boots too using:

set hint.iwm.0.disabled="1"
boot

rac1503

@stephenw10

That was the way I was able to fix it! Thank you so much!

I could not disable it in the bios, for some reason they only allow disabling the onboard Lan port on this cheaper MSI board and not the onboard Wi-Fi which would have been the easiest fix.

Since I could not get past anything to get to place where I could edit a file in an editor, the screen did allow me a prompt to run a SET command and then boot. So I ran that SET command to essentially disable it this one time. It does not let you know it worked or anything, but when it booted up the next time it skipped that Wi-Fi firmware update that failed and everything else worked fine and my pfSense was upgraded.

I was then able to get into the full command line and run vi and I was able to add the line to my loader.conf.local file as instructed and that works to keep it off.

Thanks for the help!

Mike-moon

@rac1503
Sorry for late reply, but thanks to the last iOS update I see emails only just after rebooting the phone. (One may think that email is an anachronistic way of communication compared to modern messengers but it is annoying if it does not work.) However, fine, that you have solved your problem!
Regards, Michael