Boot old sys from freenas usb

[npolowski]

Hi there - I have an old MSI mobo here which I am using as a freenas server (love it - had some challenges, but system is slick!). I am currently using an older version of freenas (v.7) which boots and runs off of a CD - ie. "Live CD version"

The mobo is an MSI KT3 Ultra-Series board, model: MS-6380E v.1

I want to boot freenas from a USB drive, but the old mobo won't do it unless it has a file system it recognizes - ie. FAT, FAT32, or NTFS.

I have installed freenas to the USB drive, set the boot sequence in the BIOS to boot from the usb, but what happens is that the systems freezes upon boot when it is recognizing devices attached to the system. If I put a fat (or fat32) formatted usb in the comp, it boots with no problem.

I read somewhere that other users had the same problem, but fixed it by updating their BIOS, and selecting "CD Drive Emulation" under the USB options in the BIOS. Since I have no such option in my BIOS (even after updating to the latest version - dated 2003 ... lol), I cannot get it to work.

Am I SOL due to the age of this mobo?

 

[npolowski]

I suppose this isn't Freenas specific - but it would help to boot from a USB rather than CD.

 

[ben]

npolowski, it's very much not recommended in most cases... but have you tried installing FreeNAS to a regular hard drive? It sucks to use up a drive bay and SATA port for the OS (and spinning disk is probably less reliable for FreeNAS than USB), but if it gets you running....

 

[npolowski]

Thanks for the idea ben - I actually am looking into plop - http://www.plop.at/ - right now as an alternate way to boot the sys, but need to figure out how to set it up ...

 

[ben]

I have no idea how well that will work, never heard of it before. Good luck though.

 

[cyberjock]

Plop is really just a boot menu(well, it's a bit more, but its not always compatible). I've used it before and it worked fine for me. I'd be a bit concerned if you are having to go to a configuration using plop just to boot FreeNAS from USB. My guess is that Plop won't likely fix the problem you are having, but it could very well add some complications and could be responsible for problems later that you can't explain.

Honestly, I don't know how the file system could matter at all with booting up. If your BIOS couldn't recognize anything except the 3 you mentioned that would make that computer garbage for any other non Windows system(Linux, FreeBSD, etc). It just doesn't make sense.

More than likely, the problem is your machine isn't compatible with FreeBSD. There are alot of companies out there that don't make stuff to spec and that breaks alot of OSes.

As old as that system is, I'm not sure if its a good fit for FreeNAS. You're almost certainly limited to 2GB of RAM, but may support 4GB. Buying RAM for that machine will be pretty expensive because it's not the current stuff. It will probably be VERY VERY slow, zero chance of getting ZFS to run well, don't even think about trying to run a jail.

You really could probably buy a used first-gen i3 system for $250 and that would be a far far better fit than what you have right now.

 

[npolowski]

Actually, I am hoping that plop will get me out of the POST freeze first, boot the machine, and then auto-boot freenas. Freenas is working brilliantly so far off of the LiveCD v.7 ...