Bios setting advice: This system does not suppot virtualization

[leigou]

Hi. I'm in the process of setting up TrueNAS scale for a charity I work at (their old no longer used server). All seems fine so far but I'm getting the message: This system does not suppot virtualization though I think that virtualization is supported by the processor and motherboard. From reading other post I figure this is not a TrueNAS issue, but was hoping someone in the community might be able to tell me what I'm missing. I enabled Virtualization Technology and VT-D in the BIOS (see pics), tried looking in the manual but still unsure what I'm doing wrong. Thanks for any help.

Specifications. . .
TrueNAS-SCALE-23.10.1.3
Processor: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1220 v3 @ 3.10GHz
Motherboard: Intel S1200RP_SE [Version: G62252-407]
Legacy (I think) BIOS: Aptio Setup Utility - 2012 American Megatrends Version 2.14.1219

 

[Ericloewe]

Could be that the firmware is not actually enabling it, despite what the setup menu says. Those Intel boards did have a reputation for being a bit odd. Definitely try updating the system firmware, because the CPU should support the needed features, unless something went very wrong.

 

[leigou]

Could be that the firmware is not actually enabling it, despite what the setup menu says. Those Intel boards did have a reputation for being a bit odd. Definitely try updating the system firmware, because the CPU should support the needed features, unless something went very wrong.

Thanks for reply. I've never update firmware on a motherboard before but will try and give it a go.

 

[joeschmuck]

This is a pretty old motherboard and am I reading the RAM capacity wrong, only 8GB? That should be enough however you also want to do some virtualization?

 

[leigou]

This is a pretty old motherboard and am I reading the RAM capacity wrong, only 8GB? That should be enough however you also want to do some virtualization?

There is 16GB total (ECC). Not sure why it shows 8GB on that BIOS page - in TrueNAS it sees 16GB. Might be worth checking the RAM.

However, whenever I try following the guide notes "To verify that an Intel processor has the required features, use Shell to run grep VT-x /var/run/dmesg.boot If the EPT and UG features are shown, this processor can be used with bhyve - I don't get any info.

 

[leigou]

Could be that the firmware is not actually enabling it, despite what the setup menu says. Those Intel boards did have a reputation for being a bit odd. Definitely try updating the system firmware, because the CPU should support the needed features, unless something went very wrong.

Have updated the firmware but alas... it still doesn't work.

 

[Ericloewe]

There is 16GB total (ECC). Not sure why it shows 8GB on that BIOS page - in TrueNAS it sees 16GB. Might be worth checking the RAM.

However, whenever I try following the guide notes "To verify that an Intel processor has the required features, use Shell to run grep VT-x /var/run/dmesg.boot If the EPT and UG features are shown, this processor can be used with bhyve - I don't get any info.

Sounds like the firmware is doing stupid things...

 

[joeschmuck]

Just a stupid question but are you running TrueNAS on bare metal or on something like ESXi ? I cannot run SCALE VM's on ESXi on my machine. Of course in my situation I prefer to run ESXi and VM's on that, which does include TrueNAS, which might be an option for you. ESXi is free but you want to pass through the entire hard drive controller and if you do not have that then that is not a good option for you. You can pass through individual drives but that can end in disaster and it's a real pain. I have done it, no fun when drive issues occur.

There is 16GB total (ECC). Not sure why it shows 8GB on that BIOS page - in TrueNAS it sees 16GB. Might be worth checking the RAM.

That is good.

Have you tried TrueNAS CORE to see if that works. I know it does not solve the use with SCALE but if you somehow find out CORE works, then you could say that SCALE does not work and CORE does and report it as a bug. That would be the best outcome for you at this point.

 

[leigou]

Just a stupid question but are you running TrueNAS on bare metal or on something like ESXi ? I cannot run SCALE VM's on ESXi on my machine. Of course in my situation I prefer to run ESXi and VM's on that, which does include TrueNAS, which might be an option for you. ESXi is free but you want to pass through the entire hard drive controller and if you do not have that then that is not a good option for you. You can pass through individual drives but that can end in disaster and it's a real pain. I have done it, no fun when drive issues occur.


That is good.

Have you tried TrueNAS CORE to see if that works. I know it does not solve the use with SCALE but if you somehow find out CORE works, then you could say that SCALE does not work and CORE does and report it as a bug. That would be the best outcome for you at this point.

Bare metal install with a new SSD. Yeah, good idea! I'll probably also install Windows Server 2022 and see if Hyper-V works first to see if virtualization was even working in Windows (old machine). Then I'll check TrueNAS Core. Only reason for virtualization was for flexibility e.g. a Windows machine to easily map and sync OneDrive Sharepoints to a dataset - in case I have issues setting up rclone and permissions due to 2-step verification or my limited skill set (VM would be easy GUI workaround). Regardless - worst case scenario is we will at least have a storage box for backup that's better than JBODs and hopefully a few app containers that don't require hardware enabled virtualisation.

 

[Tony-1971]

Hello,
If you are using TrueNas Scale the file dmesg.boot does not exists:

Code:

root@tn-xeond[~]# ls -la /var/run/dmesg.boot
ls: cannot access '/var/run/dmesg.boot': No such file or directory

You can check with lscpu command:

Code:

root@tn-xeond[~]# lscpu
Architecture:            x86_64
  CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit
  Address sizes:         46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
  Byte Order:            Little Endian
...
Virtualization features:
  Virtualization:        VT-x
...

I can't find in your BIOS printscreen where are 8GB of RAM (there are 8MB of L3 cache).
Best Regards,
Antonio

 

[leigou]

Hello,
If you are using TrueNas Scale the file dmesg.boot does not exists:

Code:

root@tn-xeond[~]# ls -la /var/run/dmesg.boot
ls: cannot access '/var/run/dmesg.boot': No such file or directory

You can check with lscpu command:

Code:

root@tn-xeond[~]# lscpu
Architecture:            x86_64
  CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit
  Address sizes:         46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
  Byte Order:            Little Endian
...
Virtualization features:
  Virtualization:        VT-x
...

I can't find in your BIOS printscreen where are 8GB of RAM (there are 8MB of L3 cache).
Best Regards,
Antonio

Thanks. You are right - that screen was the L3 cache not memory. memory modules show just fine. I tried installing Windows Server 2022 and Hyper-V couldn't load for same reason (same goes for TureNAS Core) so it must be motherboard or BIOS config issue(?)

I updated BIOs to S1200RP.86B.03.02.002 (2015) using startup.nsh file but couldn't update using the later Intel® Server Board S1200RP UEFI Development Kit as it fails in the EFI SHELL -> asks me to use the UEFI SHELL when I try to load the FvUpdate_S1200RP.efi file (but I cannot seem to load/access UEFI).

This was the output from the commands you posted.

```
admin@truenas[~]$ ls -la /var/run/dmesg.boot
ls: cannot access '/var/run/dmesg.boot': No such file or directory
admin@truenas[~]$ lscpu
Architecture: x86_64
CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit
Address sizes: 39 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
Byte Order: Little Endian
CPU(s): 4
On-line CPU(s) list: 0-3
Vendor ID: GenuineIntel
Model name: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1220 v3 @ 3.10GHz
CPU family: 6
Model: 60
Thread(s) per core: 1
Core(s) per socket: 4
Socket(s): 1
Stepping: 3
CPU(s) scaling MHz: 25%
CPU max MHz: 3500.0000
CPU min MHz: 800.0000
BogoMIPS: 6185.77
Flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopolo
gy nonstop_tsc cpuid aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl smx est tm2 ssse3 sdbg fma cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand lahf_lm abm
cpuid_fault epb invpcid_single pti ssbd ibrs ibpb stibp fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 erms invpcid xsaveopt dtherm ida arat pln pts md_clear flush_l1d
Caches (sum of all):
L1d: 128 KiB (4 instances)
L1i: 128 KiB (4 instances)
L2: 1 MiB (4 instances)
L3: 8 MiB (1 instance)
NUMA:
NUMA node(s): 1
NUMA node0 CPU(s): 0-3
Vulnerabilities:
Gather data sampling: Not affected
Itlb multihit: KVM: Mitigation: VMX unsupported
L1tf: Mitigation; PTE Inversion
Mds: Mitigation; Clear CPU buffers; SMT disabled
Meltdown: Mitigation; PTI
Mmio stale data: Unknown: No mitigations
Retbleed: Not affected
Spec rstack overflow: Not affected
Spec store bypass: Mitigation; Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl
Spectre v1: Mitigation; usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
Spectre v2: Mitigation; Retpolines, IBPB conditional, IBRS_FW, STIBP disabled, RSB filling, PBRSB-eIBRS Not affected
Srbds: Mitigation; Microcode
Tsx async abort: Not affected
```