HELP 25.10.5 won't boot on X79 platform – EFI stub: Failed to load initrd (25.10.4 works fine)

TrueNAS General
,
1

I’m running into a boot issue after upgrading from 25.10.4 to 25.10.5. The previous Boot Environment (25.10.4) boots perfectly every time, but the newly created 25.10.5 BE always fails during boot.

===== TrueNAS Version =====
25.10.4

===== Kernel =====
Linux capsule-corp 6.12.91-production+truenas #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Tue Jun 2 19:45:50 UTC 2026 x86_64 GNU/Linux

===== CPU =====
Architecture: x86_64
CPU(s): 16
Vendor ID: GenuineIntel
Model name: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2689 0 @ 2.60GHz
Thread(s) per core: 2
Core(s) per socket: 8
Socket(s): 1
CPU max MHz: 3600.0000
CPU min MHz: 1200.0000

===== Memory =====
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 15Gi 4.6Gi 10Gi 7.0Mi 542Mi 11Gi
Swap: 0B 0B 0B

===== Motherboard =====
Manufacturer: INTEL
Product Name: X79 (INTEL Xeon E5/Corei7 DMI2 - C600/C200 Chipset)
Version: V2.2
Serial Number: [redacted]

===== BIOS =====
Vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
Version: 4.6.5
Release Date: 11/23/2023
UEFI: Supported

===== Boot Environments =====
25.04.2.6
25.10.3.1
25.10.4 (working)
25.10.5 (fails to boot)

===== Boot Pool =====
pool: boot-pool
state: DEGRADED

READ: 0
WRITE: 0
CKSUM: 0

errors: No known data errors

(After running “zpool clear boot-pool”, the pool returned to ONLINE, but the issue persisted.)

===== Pools =====
Space-Pod ONLINE
boot-pool ONLINE

===== EFI Boot =====
BootCurrent: 0001
BootOrder: 0001,0002

Boot0001:
TrueNAS-0
HD(2,GPT,0x1800,0x100000)/File(\EFI\DEBIAN\GRUBX64.EFI)

Boot0002:
UEFI OS
HD(2,GPT,0x1800,0x100000)/File(\EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI)

===== Kernel Command Line =====
BOOT_IMAGE=/ROOT/25.10.4@/boot/vmlinuz-6.12.91-production+truenas
root=ZFS=boot-pool/ROOT/25.10.4
ro
libata.allow_tpm=1
amd_iommu=on
iommu=pt
kvm_amd.npt=1
kvm_amd.avic=1
intel_iommu=on
zfsforce=1
nvme_core.multipath=N

Initial symptoms

After the first upgrade to 25.10.5 I was getting:

Kernel panic - not syncing:
VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)

Booting the previous Boot Environment (25.10.4) worked normally.

What I found

The boot-pool was reported as:

DEGRADED
too many errors

However:

READ: 0
WRITE: 0
CKSUM: 0
No known data errors

Running

zpool clear boot-pool

returned the boot-pool to:

ONLINE
No known data errors

Second attempt

I deleted the 25.10.5 Boot Environment, downloaded the update again and performed a completely fresh upgrade.

This time the error changed.

Instead of the kernel panic, I now get:

EFI stub: ERROR: Failed to load initrd: 0x8000000000000001

Application failed, r = 1

Failed to boot both default and fallback entries

The previous Boot Environment (25.10.4) still boots perfectly.

The new Boot Environment appears to be completely intact.

I manually mounted it:

mount -t zfs boot-pool/ROOT/25.10.5 /mnt/be

The new kernel and initrd are present:

vmlinuz-6.12.95-production+truenas
initrd.img-6.12.95-production+truenas

The initrd exists, is readable, passes lsinitramfs, has a valid CPIO archive, SHA256 can be calculated successfully.
The old and new initrd sizes are almost identical:

6.12.91 initrd:
84,732,198 bytes

6.12.95 initrd:
84,716,171 bytes

Likewise, both initramfs images can be fully listed with lsinitramfs without any errors.

GRUB

The generated GRUB entry looks correct:

root=ZFS=boot-pool/ROOT/25.10.5

Kernel and initrd paths also appear correct.

Now, 25.10.4 boots normally every time, 25.10.5 consistently fails before Linux starts, boot-pool is online, no checksum errors, reinstalling the update yields to the same results (manual or auto update)
I’m wondering whether this could be a regression in the 6.12.95 kernel EFI stub or some compatibility issue with older X79 UEFI firmware.

Has anyone else seen this with 25.10.5?

If there’s any additional information or logs that would help, let me know

Cheers