No boot - Openvox IPC110C01

[chemlud]

Hi!

I did my first try with OPNsense yesterday, downloaded 16.1.8 CDROM for i386, burned the CD and installed to an Intel SSD 535 on an old Dell Precision. Took the SSD and pluged it into an Openvox IPC110, tried to boot. The SSD was not recognized, after some tries it was recognized in the BIOS (but not at boot up, but after a reboot), finally the boot started, but the kernel hung up (see attached).

I re-installed the SSD from CD, no improvement. Just to be save, I downloaded the nano image, copied to as CF-card, runs like a charm on the same Openvox board. However, as the board has an issue with the CMOS battery, for every start you have to enter the BIOS to do a change to the "Remote Access Configuration" (for CF-card, not for SSD use...), therefore, CF-card is not an option for this board.

With an "old" SSD (Samsung 850 EVO) with pfsense 2.2.6 the board boots  just fine. On an identical board also pfsense 2.3 works without any problems. Moreover, on the Dell Precision the Intel SSD with opnsense boots just fine.

Any ideas what might prevent the boot on this borad from Intel SSD with opnsense 2.1.8 i386?

Kind regards

chemlud

[franco]

Hi chemlud,

I think the boot sector setup for OPNsense installs differs. It's on a larger list of things to do for the bsdinstaller tool, but not having the hardware to test makes it extremely difficult to not introduce problems for other installations / hardware combinations. Or I am just missing the necessary finesse there.

Anyway, you can flash the Nano image on the SSD as a try and that should work. We could then build a custom image to flash to it (special nano with only one disk and adapted to the size of the SSD).

We keep all the build sets on our update server so the actual build can be done on a running OPNsense installation or FreeBSD without a problem, producing a customised image.. a bit like the old embedded style image options of older pfSense times.


Cheers,
Franco

[chemlud]

Hi Franco!

Thanks for your reply! I think my first mistake was the image (CD), as I need the serial image. Downloaded the i386 serial image and transferred it via Win32diskimager to a USB stick.

Now I'm trying to boot from the USB-stick to install to the SSD...

Stay tuned... ;-)

[chemlud]

...next problem: The Intel SSD 535 120 GB (SSDSC2BW120H6) apparently is not reliably recognized by the Openvox board.

Have tried now a second, brand new SSD, but it's not recognized... Don't want to open another one. Hmmm, the boot from USB works fine now, but have nothing to install to.

Will try again later. :-)

Update: Entering the BIOS and the SSD is recognized! Install succeded with some errors, resolving on "Retry"... Now the SSD boots SUCCEEESSS!

More later... :-D

[chemlud]

Hi again!

Did a reboot from SSD, apparently somehow the TRIM option has been activated now, but it's the same problem as with i386 pfSense, trim is not working.

Have to disable TRIM before I can proceed.

Enough for today, more tomorrow...

regards

chemlud

[franco]

I didn't know this wasn't working on i386. Is this a general or occasional thing? If the former, we can fix the auto-TRIM, it's currently enforced on boot.

[chemlud]

Hi again!

See this:

https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=97554.msg597087#msg597087

I had problems with 3 different SSD, Kingston 30 GB, Samsung EVO 850 120 GB and Intel SSD 535 120 GB on i386 hardware with pfsense 2.2.6  (3 different Openvox 110, other i386 hardware I don't have...). All three types of SSD working fine on x64 hardware with pfsense.

So my conclusion was that there is a problem with i386 and TRIM and BSD in general. Nobody ever commented on this issue at pfsense forum, am I the only one using i386  and SSDs and TRIM with BSD, not really? Is there a remote chance this is only related to the Openvox hardware?

Do I have a chance to turn of TRIM with some boot parameters? Otherwise I would use the "established" way (my old PC-BSD PC) to get rid of TRIM (will that work or is TRIM enabled automatically on every boot?)

[chemlud]

...can confirm (again) that the Intel SSD 535 works fine with TRIM enabled and pfsense 2.3.1 x64 full installed...

As I did not enable TRIM on the i386 opnSense install, it is pointless to disable it manually, as it will be re-enabled on boot, or did I get this wrong?

[franco]

Hi there,

I really don't know about TRIM on i386, this is the first I heard about it. Disabling it can be done by modifying /usr/local/etc/rc from the install media after install (CTRL+C when it's about to reboot) so it does not automatically attempt to upgrade to TRIM, although that'll be stripped with the next firmware upgrade if we don't change something there.

https://github.com/opnsense/core/blob/master/src/etc/rc#L25-L40

I can offer disk images for your SSD size for amd64/i386 GPT and TRIM disabled for testing based on 16.1.14 if you want. bsdinstaller fixes will take longer.


Cheers,
Franco

[chemlud]

Hi again!

Thanks for your support, really appreciated!

I think I will try a nano image on USB-stick, this should not be affected by the CMOS battery issue (and will hopefully boot without problems, as CF-card does not...). There the TRIM should be no issue...

Will make it work so I can test opnsense more intensively soon :-)

[franco]

Ok, looking forward to that. Just let me know if I can help.

[franco]

I've added a small knob for /etc/fstab to disable TRIM if requested:

https://github.com/opnsense/core/commit/68d539af

Not sure if this will be in 16.1.15 or 16.1.16 yet, probably the latter.

[chemlud]

Hi again!

Thanks, funny option "for the brave"...

So I have to add  "notrim" to the /etc/fstab entry and then it will be disabled?

Very busy next weeks, but will try! And have a look for a cheap 64bit board or at least for an old 2.5" SATA HHD somewhere in the trash to try with the openvox ;-)

[franco]

Hi chemlud,

Yes, your fstab entry looks like this then (comment at the end of the line):

Code: [Select]

/dev/ada0p1 / ufs rw,async,noatime 1 1 # notrim

Cheers,
Franco