Troubleshooting headless system

denkuy · Sep 10, 2016

Hello,

I have a headless system that properly boots from a Debian x86 install. I prepared a FreeBSD 10.3 install using VMware.

When booting from the hardware i can see (front panel LEDs) that the drive is recognized and that the BIOS handed the boot to the USB drive. The system is not reachable on the network (fixed ip not pingable). After a force power off i reconnected the drive back to the VM and checked /var/log/dmesg.today. It doesn't show any entries for the boot on the hardware, so I assume that the problem is before that. I already changed from GPT to MBR (that was one problem).

Is there any way to troubleshoot the boot sequence without a display attached?

Regards
Dennis

wblock@ · Sep 10, 2016

If it has a serial port, attach a serial cable and enable a serial console (see boot(8)).

If it has IPMI, use that.

Is this a UEFI system?

denkuy · Sep 10, 2016

The hardware is a "HP StorageWorks Data Vault X510". The only ports are USB, eSATA, power and RJ45/ethernet. I'm quite sure that it does not support IPMI.

I assume that it is no UEFI system due to the age of the device.

How about a USB-RS242 adapter?

wblock@ · Sep 10, 2016

Seems doubtful that the boot loader would support a USB to serial adapter, and if that is where it is stalling, it doesn't matter if the kernel supports it.

There might be a serial port header on the motherboard inside. It could be part of a high-density connector, if that board is similar to these: http://www.mediasmartserver.net/for...id=005c37bb7c61ac44901ca8ac10954380&start=120.

Phishfry · Sep 10, 2016

This thread has an VGA adapter used for Linux. How did you get Linux on yours? They shipped with Windows Storage Server.

Phishfry · Sep 10, 2016

This is just my way I would try without buying hardware. You could just pull the OS drive out and use in another box and install FreeBSD to that drive and configure and then reinstall in the NAS with your users setup already for ssh admin.
One caviet is the networking, you need to configure the ethernet. So need to add this to rc.conf before moving the drive to the NAS after setup.
ifconfig_re0="DHCP"
As your NAS uses a RT8111 chip. Also remove your temp setup boxes ethernet ifconfig line before swapping to NAS.

denkuy · Sep 11, 2016

I installed OpenMediaVault on a USB key using VMware and it booted right away from the HP machine. So basically the same as FreeBSD now.
How could I miss this thread? I found the vga connector on my board and ordered an adapter now.
Thank your for your help!

PacketMan · Oct 4, 2016

This sounds very similar to what I went through a couple years ago with a HP MediaSmart server.

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/47319/

denkuy · Oct 6, 2016

I built an adapter but unfortunately i short-circuited the board and now it is broken -_-

On the bright side: I tried booting from a different piece of hardware and it brought me to the mountroot> _ prompt. It was probably the same issue that i had with the headless system.

Thank you for your help everyone!