TrueNAS SCALE 24.10 unable to boot - stuck on loading initial ramdisk

I’ve been running Truenas SCALE for about a year, currently running 23.10.2 without issue. Attempted to upgrade to 24.04 a few months back and I ran into this problem, and attempted again yesterday afternoon with the release of 24.10. Booting into 24.04 and 24.10 stops at “loading initial ramdisk.” I am able to boot into 23.10.2 without issue.

Just attempted a TrueNAS-23.10.2 → TrueNAS-24.04.2.3 upgrade and ran into the issue. Everything seems to work in the web portal, but upon boot it stops at loading initial ramdisk.

My Hardware:

  • ASRock z170 oc formula (v7.60 bios, most recent)
  • Intel i7-6700k
  • Crucial Pro RAM 64GB DDR4
  • Micron 2300 NVMe 512GB (boot drive, firmware updated)
  • 18TB WD Red Pro HDD (7, currently)

Things I’ve tried:

  • Changing Bios settings (23.10.2 still works)
  • Fresh install to a SATA SSD (no joy)
  • Removing PCIE cards (didn’t help)
  • Banging my head on the wall (now my head hurts)
  • Comparing GRUB entries for anything weird (found none)
  • No GPU installed, just running onboard, and bios configured accordingly
  • I currently have an HDMI monitor plugged in for debugging
  • Running memtest (previously) has not shown errors
  • Confirmed the ISO hash before installation

Other threads I’ve reviewed:

I’ve searched the forums, I’ve searched the internet in general, and so far I’ve found others with similar problems - but I haven’t found any solutions. Any support or guidance will be greatly appreciated.

Not enough information.

Post a few of the other similar cases.

Worst option: Reinstall TN, use your config backup.

I have updated the original post with some of the other references that I’ve found and reviewed.

Specific to your reinstall recommendation - I cannot reinstall TN and use my config backup as TN won’t boot (24.x) to the point where I can use my backup. I do have backups, but TN won’t boot (24.x) to the point where I can actually use it. It just hangs. TN 23.10 boots fine.

Further testing:

  • installed the most recent Debian (12.7.0) with linux kernel 6.1.x and it boots.
  • installed TN 24.04 switching between the efi and legacy options - neither boots.

I’ve tinkered around with grub flags (noquiet, nosplash, and a few others) and seen nothing additional to help me track down the culprit.

Hoping someone has some additional guidance to debugging and getting TN functional. Thanks in advance.

Tried with TN 24.10.2 this morning. Doesn’t boot, stuck at loading initial ramdisk.

I’m just over here living my best life on 23.10.

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II have the same mainboard and the same CPU and have exactly the same problem with the update from 23.10.2 to 24.04.2.5.
I will probably stay on 23.10.2 until it is deprecated.
Then probably only a new installation remains and the big hope the config takes effect…

Thanks for responding. Super helpful to know that someone else is experiencing the same problem. Lets me feel like there just isn’t a solution.

My plan was just to abandon the hardware in the future as well. Different motherboard, CPU, and RAM with the same drives should work without much issue.

As a note, I tried multiple fresh installations on this hardware, never found success.

Thanks for your answer, then I will probably save myself the reinstallation, Truenas Scale has unfortunately always made trouble with the updates and cost a lot of time.
I will probably buy a ready-made solution and back up all the data from Truenas first.
Regards

Ive thought about installing CORE for my use case. I don’t necessarily need the new features that SCALE offers. I have separate hosts that provide that functionality.

I just ran into the same issue. I had the same issue when trying to install Debian 13. I was lead to believe it is an issue due to the processor being old. I had to add dis_ucode_ldr to the linux line in grub.

I tried a bunch of grub flags and couldn’t get anything to work. I believe I tried that one, but could be wrong, or maybe I screwed it up somehow.

@OS12TR - to confirm, you are able to boot with that grub flag? (thanks for the response, definitely worth giving it a shot)

@Peter_M can you give it a shot as well?

hello everyone ,
in the meantime I have tried various installations on even older hardware…this is a:
p8p67 deluxe asus
2600k i7
16gb ram
currently the bootpool consists of 1tb hdd.
I could not install 24.10 because it was interrupted by kernel panic.
However, I was able to install 24.04.2.5 and then upgrade to 24.10.1 via webgui update
@maaadAPE I think the problem here is not the hardware but much more truenas scale itself… I never made any modifications on cli…
i will also do a new installation on my current truenas with the already mentioned z190 mainboard again in the days to come and possibly try other boot media.

Add dis_ucode_ldr at the end of the linux line in the grub config. Press f10 to boot.
Open the linux shell after booting.
type midclt call system.advanced.update ‘{“kernel_extra_options”: “dis_ucode_ldr”}’ to make the change permanent in grub and persist after reboots and shutdowns.

I have not tried this with other motherboards. I can not confirm if this works with Peter_M’s setup. Hopefully it does.

I added some pictures I took with my phone to demonstrate, but I can’t seem to add them to this post.

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Since I can’t post images. I typed the portion of the grub config when you press e during the grub menu while booting.

setparams ‘TrueNAS Scale GNU/Linux 24.10.1’

linux /ROOT/24.10.1@/boot/vmlinuz… nvme_core.multipath=N dis_ucode_ldr
echo ‘Loading intial ramdisk …’

The … means there are more commands and other texts that I did not type.

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Many, many thanks!
I updated to 24.04.2.5 and then followed the steps and was able to boot accordingly.
There were no other errors during the update, and the docker containers are still working.
I still have to test the persistent function, but that’s enough for today :slight_smile:
Thank you very much !

In case someone comes by with the same symptoms but they were changing BIOS settings, be sure you haven’t disabled your only LAN controller. Didn’t take me long because I knew I changed that option.