Despite the USB installer for both v12 and v13 offering UEFI and BIOS boot options it appears even when you choose BIOS the TrueNAS system disk is formatted as a GPT disk which means it is NOT bootable on non-UEFI systems. Is there no way to create a system that is bootable on older hardware that isn't UEFI compatible?
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BIOS/MBR only systems not supported on v12 or v13 of CORE?
- Thread starter Gideon-IT
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GPT can boot just fine without EFI support. There will be a fake "protective" MBR as part of the GPT setup.
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You are mistaken, if everything is working as intended at least: GPT supports a "protective MBR", which allows BIOS or UEFI systems in CSM mode to boot from GPT-formatted disks.
Edit: And ninaj'd by Patrick above...
Yep. In theory but not in this particular case. I think some older BIOS systems cannot handle this fake MBR code. The USB installer completes successfully each time but the hard drive will not boot. The BIOS doesn’t see a valid bootable disk and moves on to the next defined boot option, which is attempting to boot over the network. I was wondering if there was any way to create an actual MBR system, but I guess not. I was trying to set up a test machine but I only have a ten year old HP desktop to hand at home. I’ve got TrueNAS running fine in a VM on my server but I wanted to test a physical system.
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And it's not UEFI? That's rather late for non-UEFI systems.
In any case, you can try to chainload TrueNAS with GRUB or Das u-Boot or whatever bootloader works for you, loaded from a separate disk like a USB flash drive. It's janky, but since it's an experimental machine...
Thanks for your comments folks. I binned that PC - it clearly has issues with a crappy BIOS. I found a different one that definitely support UEFI and legacy bootup and it's working fine...well other than a dual-NIC issue I have posted about elsewhere.
