[Solved] Attempt to Upgrade to Opnsense 26.7 hangs on reboot at "masks"

[BryanC1968]

I have made several attempts to install the Opnsense upgrade to 26.7, but every time it gets stuck or hangs on reboot at "masks    0x00ff0000, 0x0000ff00, 0xff000000"  I have to power off the system and reboot to the previous snapshot I made before attempting the upgrade to get things working again...  Can anyone offer some advice or help that may resolve this issue..?

System Info:  Dell Optiplex 7050 with Intel i5-6500, Integrated Intel HD Graphics 530, 16GB Memory, UEFI Boot

[Patrick M. Hausen]

AMD Ryzen system with integrated graphics? Try switching to serial console before upgrading. See:

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/wont-boot-masks-0x00ff0000-0x0000ff00-0x000000ff-0xff000000.79638/

The initial thread is quite old but there are some helpful recent comments at the end.

[meyergru]

There is an even bigger problem behind that with 26.7.:

I upgraded and after reboot, saw this on my stalled boot console:

You cannot view this attachment.

The "Witty Woodpecker" part is just because that is only updated after a sucessful reboot. But you can see the error message "console vidconsole is unavailable". This now keeps the system from properly booting - it did not do that ever before.

My console settings were "vt" = enabled, primary console = efi, secondary console = VGA console. I did this in case I ever had to boot the disk on a legacy system, while my current one is UEFI. With 26.7, this setting kept the system from even booting. What is worse is that you cannot even use boot environments - at least it did not work for me.

I had to switch the secondary console to serial or none in order to be up and running again. IDK if the vidconsole driver would work on its own. For safety reasons, I switched to EFI console on another UEFI system before doing the upgrade.

This is noteworthy for people who update from remote: Change the console setting before the update!

[BryanC1968]

I updated my original post to include my system specs:

Dell Optiplex 7050 with Intel i5-6500, Integrated Intel HD Graphics 530, 16GB Memory, UEFI Boot

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Well ... integrated graphics matches. Try the console settings as suggested by @meyergru.

Primary console: EFI
Secondary console: none

[BryanC1968]

Well ... integrated graphics matches. Try the console settings as suggested by @meyergru.

Primary console: EFI
Secondary console: none

How do I go about doing that..?

[Patrick M. Hausen]

System > Settings > Administration > Console

[BryanC1968]

System > Settings > Administration > Console

So...  My current settings are:
     Use the virtual terminal driver (vt) is Checked
     Primary Console is set to:   VGA Console
     Secondary Console is set to:   None

So change Primary Console to:  EFI Console, and then reboot and try do the upgrade again..?

[meyergru]

Yes.

[BryanC1968]

That did not work...  It still hangs at masks...

Any other suggestions..?

[BryanC1968]

I finally got the 26.7 upgrade to install.  I had to remove the "os-cpu-microcode-intel" plugin and reboot.  Then I tried the upgrade again and it worked...  I left the "Primary Console" setting I changed previously set to EFI so I am not sure if that even had anything to do with it or not.  I may try changing it back to VGA and see what happens...  But for now it seems like the "os-cpu-microcode-intel" plugin is what was causing the problem...

[BryanC1968]

Should I try re-installing the "os-cpu-microcode-intel" plugin now that the system has been upgraded or hold off to see if there may be an update to the plugin later on..?

[franco]

Allegedly this was fixed in late 15.1 RC cycle: https://github.com/opnsense/src/commit/56e59980b67

But since FreeBSD insisted this was a pressing bug for 15.1 and we already seen the same behaviour on 14.x for a long time I'm not even sure that fix is the full story.

So long story short:

> Should I try re-installing the "os-cpu-microcode-intel" plugin

Definitely maybe.


Cheers,
Franco

[BryanC1968]

OK... So I tried enabling the "os-cpu-microcode-intel" plugin again after upgrading to 26.7 and it caused the system to hang on boot again in the same spot "masks"...  So I would suggest that if you have this plugin installed that you remove it before attempting the upgrade and don't re-install it afterward...

[franco]

Thanks for trying! We will suggest removing the microcode package then for others running into similar issues.


Cheers,
Franco