Unable to boot TrueNAS Core

TrueNAS General
1

Hi,

For a few days now, for no apparent reason, and excluding system updates, my TrueNas Core NAS has been unable to boot.

The boot does not complete and at the end the system tries to reboot and enters an infinite loop.
I’ve attached the screenshots I was able to take during the start-up.

It doesn’t really speak to me, even though there seem to be errors, but perhaps it will evoke something for some of you.

The aim is not necessarily to restart my NAS as it is, but rather to find a way of recovering my data.

Thank you for your for your help !

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3

Here are the screenshots of the start-up that failed … :

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2
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4

Continued and finished…
The last screenshot precedes another system reboot.

Thanks for your help

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5

Looks a lot like a failed or failing boot device.

1 Like
6

Thanks dan for your help :+1:

Since I have two boot disks, perhaps I could try booting with just one of them?
And how can I repair the faulty disk?

7

You definitely could try removing one and booting from the other. If that fails, swap them and try again. If it boots successfully on one, run a scrub on that one, and consider the other one failed. Replacing it with a new device would be recommended at that point.

8

Do you have them setup in a ZFS mirror? If yes, maybe just try giving the second one boot priority?

9

OK, thank you dan for that confirmation.
I’m going to try this procedure later this week.

10

Thank you gedavids for your help

Yes the boot is mirrored.
But I’m not sure how to interrupt the boot loop and access the priority setting.

So I’m going to try a boot on just one of the system disks.

11

This will be via a setting in the BIOS. Boot to the BIOS and look in the boot section for the opportunity to select one or the other of the two existing mirrored drives.

Otherwise, remove one of the mirrored drives - if a boot is successful, you selected the right one of the two - if it isn’t, swap to the other drive.

2 Likes
12

:point_up: what @Redcoat said.

1 Like
13

Yes, of course, I should have thought of it myself.
Thanks Redcoat.

I’m currently out of town but I’ll keep the community informed of my progress…

1 Like
14

Hi everyone,

I’ve just got back from putting your good advice into practice and I have to admit that I thought my problem would be solved.
Unfortunately it didn’t work.

I reversed the boot order of the two mirrored disks, I deactivated one of the two boot disks, then the second, but nothing helped.

Before the problem appeared my dashboard was telling me that the volume was in a ‘degraded’ state on both data disks. Several clean-ups didn’t help.
Could this be the cause?

I have to admit that I’m starting to worry about recovering my data…

15

As long as it the boot drives (which model by the way?), your data should be safe on the data pool.
Get a new cheap drive, and install TrueNAS anew (make sure to select the right drive for installation!). Then load the configuaration file which you have hopefully saved—and if you have no saved configuration file, recreate users and share settings.

16

OK, thanks etorix, I’ll reinstall TrueNAS on a new disk or USB key, trying to remember how I did it the first time…

I’ll also try to get my hands on my configuration file that I’ve saved I don’t know where.

For your information, my boot drives are two 2.5-inch HDDs, 1 Samsung 160GB and 1 ST (?) 120GB.

17

I vaguely suspected you were using a pair of USB thumbdrives for boot, as these are known to wear out.
It’s strange that two different HDDs would fail at the same time but obviously sh!t happens.

18

Hi etorix,

I had ruled out the USB key option for the system in order to have a more reliable NAS…
But my 2.5’ disks are quite old and that may be where the problem lies.

What would you advise me to do: reinstall TrueNAS on these disks or on a USB stick until I can at least recover my data and sort things out?

I’ve found a backup of my configuration file.
When should I use it?
Is it via the TrueNAS web interface when you first start up?

Thanks again for your help

19

Yes. Just discard the old boot drives, install a new one, install TrueNAS anew (make sure to select the right drive!), log in and load the saved configuration.

20

Thank you, etorix, for taking the time to look at my problem.

Unfortunately I’m not making much progress:

  • I’ve disconnected the 2 system HDDs
  • I’ve replaced them temporarily with 2 USB sticks while I carry out the first tests (I don’t have another HDD available at the moment)
  • I created twice (the first time giving nothing) a bootable USB key to install TrueNAS, first with Rufus under Windows (emulated on a Mac), then a second time with Balena Etcher under macOS
  • but in both cases the TrueNAS installation stops after the welcome screen and the default choice 1.

No looping restart this time, but a blank screen where nothing happens.

I think I’ve got another hardware problem somewhere, outside the memory (unless the 2 memory sticks are both faulty…).

I’ll keep looking but I must admit I’m a bit lost…

21

Hi all,
Hi etorix,

I’ve just taken a small step forward.

The TrueNAS site offers 2 versions of TrueNAS Core.
Initially, for reasons of stability, I chose v13.0-U6.7, which I was unable to install on my system.
So I tried my luck with v13.3-U1.1, which accepts installation.

I first updated my installation without formatting my 2.5’ HDDs, which preserves my configuration file.
But despite an apparently completed installation I’m back in an infinite reboot loop.

I then tried an installation on 2 mirrored USB keys.
The installation was completed without an untimely reboot, but a message told me to check the network configuration and no interface seemed to be detected.

I think the problem may lie with my Realtek 2.5 Gb network card built into the motherboard, which is poorly recognised by TrueNAS and has already caused me a few problems.

Thank you for your analysis, which will help me decide whether or not to install a dedicated network card, and if so, which one, at a lower cost.

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