After fresh installation it boots into BIOS

[JoezzyLO]

Hello

First of all, sorry if this thread have already been opened. Beside that i have to mention i am new in FreeNAS stuff

I have installed FreeNAS on my machine. Now my problem is, after installation is finished, the system requests to remove installation USB and restart the machine. But after restarting the machine it boots into BIOS or it gives PXE error.
If i try boot menu, there is no drive with boot files.

First i suspected PC. But i have tested it with several version Windows, but it works normal, boots every time.

Usefull aditional info:
I have installed FreeNAS 11 - latest

My machine is:
Asus S56CM, i5-3317U, 2x8GB DDR3, 128GB mSATA SSD, 2x 1TB WD Blue, Geforce GT635m

I have installed FreeNAS to mSATA drive. Is it possible that FreeNAS won't boot from mSATA?


Best regards, Luka

 

[BigDave]

My machine is:
Asus S56CM, i5-3317U, 2x8GB DDR3, 128GB mSATA SSD, 2x 1TB WD Blue, Geforce GT635m

The FreeNAS operating system was not designed to run off a laptop computer, so what you are doing
is not recommended. Having said that, You will have to enter you bios and tell your machine to boot
from the drive that you installed FreeNAS on. If your machine can not boot from that device, I guess
you must get a plan "B".

I have installed FreeNAS to mSATA drive. Is it possible that FreeNAS won't boot from mSATA?

The machine can either boot from that device, or it can"t. FreeNAS has nothing to do with this...

 

[joeschmuck]

I have installed FreeNAS to mSATA drive. Is it possible that FreeNAS won't boot from mSATA?

Did you use UEFI or the other option? Have you entered the BIOS to see what is selected for the boot device and if it's Legacy or UEFI?

As @BigDave said, this is not a FreeNAS issue, it's the computer you are using. FreeNAS was not designed for use on a laptop and that is for several reasons however each laptop may have a unique boot setup. mSATA can definately add a level of incompatability.

My advice, if you want to run FreeNAS on a laptop, install Windows again and then use VMWare Worksation Player (free) and create a VM of FreeNAS, then you can play with it.

 

[JoezzyLO]

Hi

Thank you for replies.

I don't understand the difference between laptop and desktop - boot-like. As meanwhile i have tested Ubuntu, Suse, W10P, Wserver16 and they all boot normal except FreeNAS, as it would not create boot partition.
Is there possible i haven't installed it properly? I have downloaded it. Created bootable USB with rufus and installed it.
I have tryed to install it as UEFI and as BIOS (several times). But both ways returns the same issue - boot in BIOS.

Maybe mSATA is really unsupported or incompatabile. As mSATA is usually used for cache drives not Boot drives.

Setting in bios are OK. As i receive the same issue if i set UEFI ir efi/legacy.
As even if settings were not OK, boot partition/drive would still be shown in boot menu. But in my case, it doesn't show it.

For now i have set it by Joes advice, in W10p + VMware and it works. - Thank you Joe

I know it is not primarly meant for laptop, but i see no reason not to use it from it. It will be used for my personal cloud (single user), mainly for file server. Beside that, it has torned LCD, so it is not worth much to sell, so i think it will be ok for this.

As i said, thank you for your feedbacks and for help

Best regards,
Luka

 

[joeschmuck]

I understand why you are using the laptop so here are some more words of advice. If you desire to troubleshoot this further, here are my suggestions...

1) Try to boot it from USB Flash Drive, meaning install FreeNAS to a USB Flash Drive and then tell your BIOS to boot from the USB device.
2) Try to install FreeBSD 11 which is what FreeNAS is based on. If it fails to boot then you know the problem is the base OS. If it does boot then maybe FreeNAS does not have all the code ported over. If in the latter situation you could submit a trouble ticket however to be honest with you, if you say it's for a laptop I doubt it will get any real attention.

Personally though I think I'd stick with your current setup because it gives you the option to run other windoze applications on your system such as Plex Media Server (well supported for Windoze), or any other server type job, there are so many out there.

 

[wblock]

Maybe mSATA is really unsupported or incompatabile. As mSATA is usually used for cache drives not Boot drives.

No. I personally use mSATA boot devices on several FreeBSD systems. It's just a SATA connector with a different form factor.

I would lean more to suspecting issues with the ASUS BIOS/UEFI implementation. Updating to the latest BIOS might help.