[OpenIndiana-discuss] System will not boot, boot-archive fails

[jason matthews]

try the following:
delete the zpool cache, /etc/zfs/zpool.cache
reboot the system, it should boot since it wont try to mount the backups 
zpool
change the bootarchive time out to two minutes
manually import the backups.
clear the remaining services in maintenance mode

that should get it going.

you probably have a failing disk. reboot to see if  the system can 
complete the boot procedure. if bootadm times out again, use iostat 
-nMxC to look for a disk that 100% busy or has outrageous svc times etc, 
or errors. you might even try looking for a disk with a solid activity 
light.  if you find such a disk pull it.

are you using "green" drives? green drives tend to spend down between 6 
and 30 seconds which a problematic on zpool with a large number of disks.

j.

On 9/21/15 10:09 AM, Alexander wrote:
> truss can help to see where boot-archive stumbles
>
> -- 
> Alex
>
>
> On 21 Sep 2015 at 20:02:44, Watson, Dan (dan.watson at bcferries.com) wrote:
>
> I have had this issue. My (bad) solution was to comment out bootadm from both boot-archive service scripts and run them manually as needed. It seems to be an indicator of too much latency. SVC only waits 20s by default and bootadm update can take up to 100s with sub-par disks.
>
> I find when the disks are "good enough" the first run will time out, but after you log in to maintenance mode and clear the service is finishes instantly because it completed when SVC timed it out waiting for it.
>
> Dan
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Patterson [mailto:richard at helpquick.co.uk]
> Sent: September 21, 2015 12:49 AM
> To: Discussion list for OpenIndiana
> Subject: Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] System will not boot, boot-archive fails
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Thanks Nikola,
>
> On 21/09/2015 07:37, Nikola M wrote:
>> There is a bug in the GRUB that is shipped as a part of illumos,
>> that breaks with STAGE2 if menu.lst is too big (e.g. you have many
>> Boot environments , undetermined how much, maybe over 25 BEs?).
>>   
> I don't think I've encountered this issue, as I only have 4 BEs listed
> in grub.
>
>>>   
>>> OpenIndiana Build oi_151a9 64-bit (illumos 52e13e00ba)
>>>   
>>> 32GB Ram, Quad-core AMD CPU
>>>   
>>> rpool is on a single 250GB SATA drive.
>>   
>> it is not healthy to be left with no room on disk, it kills ZFS
>> performance, etc. You can clear some space from rpool to some
>> external drive, for starters.
>>   
> The rpool has plenty of space left, 56.1G in use, 173G free, so
> doesn't look like that's the problem.
>
> I also did a scrub on rpool, which shows no errors.
>
> As a test, I removed the other 8 drives (took the controller out
> completely), and the system boots fine... seems to be something to do
> with the large "backups" zpool, as the system will not boot with it
> attached.
>
> To make things worse, I can only work on the server at the console,
> which is in a remote office from where I work normally, so I'm unable
> to try things until I get to that office on an evening.
>
> Many thanks
>
> Richard
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