Cannot install TrueNAS

[GChuck]

I have two machines currently running FreeNAS-11.3-U5; one machine is a server class with Xeon E-2236, 64GB ECC RAM, 4x4TB IronWolf in Raidz2, while the second machine is an old Core2 Duo, 8GB RAM and the same 4x4TB IronWolf drives in a Raidz2 configuration. I want to upgrade at some point in time to TrueNAS but am very reluctant to do so.

The old Core2 duo machine is used as both a backup for the main machine while also allowing me to test new updates before installing on production Xeon.

But I CANNOT boot TrueNAS from a USB stick onto this old Intel DQ35JO motherboard.

I have downloaded the ISO and verified the checksum. According to installation instructions, I used Rufus 3.13 to create the boot media on a 16GB USB stick. Rufus did NOT give me the option of using DD mode to create the USB stick. It also did NOT give me the option of using MBR as a partition scheme, but only GPT. Anyway, I burnt the stick and tried to boot and my machine would not boot from the stick.

So next I tried an old version of Rufus 2.11 which did allow DD mode, but again, it would not boot on my computer. Next it was off to my Linux machine where I did a plain dd copy of TrueNAS to my stick and again, it would not boot. Just hangs everytime!

Finally I went through the BIOS on this old machine changing a few parameters (like trusted boot and booting in UEFI mode) all of which changed nothing. System would not boot.

The last iso image of FreeNAS that I know for sure will boot on this machine is FreeNAS-11.11-RELEASE.iso which I downloaded in January of 2018. I went back over all my downloaded versions of FreeNAS (11.2-U6, 11.2-U7, 11.3-RELEASE, 11.3-U1 and 11.3-U2) and as it turns out, none of these would boot either.

So I could just upgrade my existing system to True-NAS. But what if something catastrophic happened and I needed to install from scratch again before reloading my zfs data. I would have to reinstall from 11.1 and then do upgrades to get back to the current version. Not something I either relish doing even if all those updates are still available!

What changed in the creation of the ISO between 11.1 and 11.2? And why? And finally, how do I fix it so that I can create a bootable USB stick that is works.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Greg

P.S. Please don't tell me to upgrade this old box to a "server" class machine. Funds are very limited. After building my other server last year, my wife won't let me spend any more!

 

[Heffy]

Hi @GChuck

In rufus 3.13, if you have the option to change the Boot selection and FreeDOS is there, select that option. Rufus will then allow MBR selection and all other options.

You may have to "clean" the USB stick by using diskpart on a PC or whatever the Linux equivalent is. Search the net for "How to restore USB drive back to full capacity" for some idea how to do this.

Hope this helps

 

[GChuck]

Heffy, thanks for that response, but it still does not solve the problem!

When I change the Boot selection to FreeDOS, Rufus writes a FreeDOS image to the USB stick and not the TrueNAS image I want. True, it does write it in MBR mode, but I don't need to boot FreeDOS. I need to boot the TrueNAS image in MBR mode.

It is my true belief that there is something seriously wrong with the ISO files for both TrueNAS and FreeNAS. It should be a simple procedure to create a USB stick in either EFI or MBR mode, and with these ISO's it is not!

Greg

 

[Newfoundland.Republic]

@GChuck - Give Etcher a try. I had problems with Rufus and trying to write the USB thumb drive. Etcher works and that is what I use now.

If you haven't already, do a checksum on the downloaded image to make sure there is no corrumption on download.

 

[pschatz100]

I don't use Rufus. I have had good luck with Win32DiskImager on a PC to create the install media.

 

[GChuck]

Heffy, thanks for that response, but it still does not solve the problem!

When I change the Boot selection to FreeDOS, Rufus writes a FreeDOS image to the USB stick and not the TrueNAS image I want. True, it does write it in MBR mode, but I don't need to boot FreeDOS. I need to boot the TrueNAS image in MBR mode.

It is my true belief that there is something seriously wrong with the ISO files for both TrueNAS and FreeNAS. It should be a simple procedure to create a USB stick in either EFI or MBR mode, and with these ISO's it is not

 

[Newfoundland.Republic]

Try Etcher.. USB2 thumb drive in a USB2 port

 

[GChuck]

I finally got the True-NAS 12.0-U2.iso booted on my older Intel Core2 Duo system!

To create the bootable USB stick I have tried Rufus 3.13 and Rufus 3.12 and Rufus 2.11. I have tried Balena Etcher 1.5.116 and I have tried Win32DiskImager 1.0.0. In addition, I have used the dd commands on a Linux system to try and create a bootable USB stick.

In all instances the "bootable" USB stick would not boot or load True-NAS.

As a last resort, I added a old DVD player into my test system, then used the iso file to create a bootable DVD. This WORKED!!

Not knowing a lot about the format or structure of an iso file, I can only say, that every time I created a bootable USB, it appears that USB stick was created using a format for UEFI instead of MBR and nothing I could do would alter this. You would think that using dd, you get exactly what is contained within the iso file and therefore it should allow booting via either UEFI or MBR but that was not the case in my testing of this function. Always seemed to use UEFI.

Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[Newfoundland.Republic]

I wonder if the BIOS on that old Intel DQ35JO is so old that it doesn't know how to "properly" support USB boot. Did you try a modern version of Windows or Linux to see if that works? I looked to see if there were any BIOS updates but it is so old that Intel only has this notice:

Intel announced the discontinuance of the Intel® Desktop Board product family in January 2013 to focus on innovative form factors beyond motherboards, such as the Intel® NUC products. All Intel Desktop Boards stopped shipping entirely by July 2015.



Device drivers for Intel Desktop Board are no longer available on Intel Download Center after September 13, 2019. BIOS updates are no longer available after November 22, 2019.

 

[Heffy]

FWIW, I believe @Newfoundland.Republic hit the nail on the head. The BIOS of the Intel motherboard probably can't detect a 16 Gb flashdrive.
And if the drive is USB 3, that possibly compounds matters.

Glad to hear your figured out a work around.

 

[GChuck]

I finally got the True-NAS 12.0-U2.iso booted on my older Intel Core2 Duo system!

To create the bootable USB stick I have tried Rufus 3.13 and Rufus 3.12 and Rufus 2.11. I have tried Balena Etcher 1.5.116 and I have tried Win32DiskImager 1.0.0. In addition, I have used the dd commands on a Linux system to try and create a bootable USB stick.

In all instances the "bootable" USB stick would not boot or load True-NAS.

As a last resort, I added a old DVD player into my test system, then used the iso file to create a bootable DVD. This WORKED!!

Not knowing a lot about the format or structure of an iso file, I can only say, that every time I created a bootable USB, it appears that USB stick was created using a format for UEFI instead of MBR and nothing I could do would alter this. You would think that using dd, you get exactly what is contained within the iso file and therefore it should allow booting via either UEFI or MBR but that was not the case in my testing of this function. Always seemed to use UEFI.

Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[GChuck]

I have used a combination of 2GB USB2, 16GB USB3 and 32GB USB3 sticks in this machine to boot various versions of Window Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 10 Home and Pro on this machine. I have also booted Windows Server 2012, 2016 and 2019 using mostly 16GB USB3 sticks. Linux Mint and Fedora have been booted as well using the same combination of sticks. All without problem and mostly all of the sticks created using some version of Rufus.

In addition, I just downloaded FreeBSD 11.4 and 12.2 in amd64-memstick.img and amd64-dvd1.iso formats. Burnt each image to 16GB USB 3.1 stick and tried booting. The memstick.img formats would boot without problem but the dvd1.iso formats would not boot. So it appears that in FreeBSD, they make different boot media for DVDs and USB sticks.

But as far as I can see, the machine will boot from USB using 2GB, 16GB and 32GB devices, both USB2 and USB3.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks.

Greg ...

 

[ThyPredator]

Hi Greg, I am having this same problem trying to install TrueNASCore12. I have tried all the things you have but my BIOS just hangs during post when I have the TrueNAS stick plugged in. I'm using a 10yr old machine with a GIGABYTE GA-P55-UD4P board on the lastest Firmware. Obviously a BIOS boot board and no support for UEFI which I think this new TrueNAS ISO is only suited for.
The USB sticks I have tried all work on my "later" desktop PC which supports UEFI.
Cheers
Tim

 

[GChuck]

I more or less gave up trying to get my old MBR BIOS machine from booting TrueNAS via a USB stick. I tried every USB writing program I could find. I tried using a Windows, a MacOS and a Linux machine to write USB stick and that also made no difference.

If I tell Rufus to create a UEFI USB stick, it will boot in both my UEFI based desktop and my UEFI server box.

If I tell Rufus to create a MBR USB stick, it will NOT boot in my UEFI based desktop, even after I modify the BIOS to use MBR mode but it will boot in my UEFI based server after modifying the BIOS to boot in MBR mode. Strange!

My only success was to install a DVD R/W in my old MBR machine and create the boot media on DVD.

If you can find any other way of making this work, please let me know.

Greg

 

[TiberiusNAS]

I more or less gave up trying to get my old MBR BIOS machine from booting TrueNAS via a USB stick. I tried every USB writing program I could find. I tried using a Windows, a MacOS and a Linux machine to write USB stick and that also made no difference.

If I tell Rufus to create a UEFI USB stick, it will boot in both my UEFI based desktop and my UEFI server box.

If I tell Rufus to create a MBR USB stick, it will NOT boot in my UEFI based desktop, even after I modify the BIOS to use MBR mode but it will boot in my UEFI based server after modifying the BIOS to boot in MBR mode. Strange!

My only success was to install a DVD R/W in my old MBR machine and create the boot media on DVD.

If you can find any other way of making this work, please let me know.

Greg

I have gotten it to work using TrueNAS Scale on an old BIOS motherboard. From what I've learned, TrueNAS Scale and TrueNAS Core may have different fixes.

What failed:

Trying to install TrueNAS Scale via Rufus onto a 128 GB USB 3.0 flash drive, then inserting the flash drive into a USB 2.0 port on a Gigabyte ga ep45 ud3p motherboard with BIOS (no UEFI) causes the BIOS to freeze and the keyboard to not work.

How to fix:

Load TrueNAS Scale onto a 4 GB USB 2.0 flash drive. Load TrueNAS Scale onto the flash drive with Rufus. Use the following Rufus settings:

Partition Scheme: MBR
Target System: BIOS or UEFI
Advanced drive properties (unhide) ->
Add fixes for old BIOSes: Checked (Yes)

Click Start

A popup appears asking to Write in ISO mode or Write in DD mode. You want to write in DD mode.
Write in DD Image mode: Checked (Yes)

---

From what I've read reading other posts, TrueNAS Core (FreeBSD) and TrueNAS Scale (Linux) might use different partition schemes. I've heard that TrueNAS Core needs to use GPT on the USB flash drive whereas TrueNAS Scale can use GPT or MBR on the USB flash drive. I cannot confirm this difference though. I've also learned that ISO mode is NOT good for writing TrueNAS and may mess up the installation media. DD mode is the proper way to write the media to the flash drive.

1. Write in MBR

2. Add fixes for old BIOS

3. Write in DD mode

4. Use a USB 2.0 device

This thread appears at the top of Google searches, so hopefully this helps people in the future.

 

[anyuser]

For systems that have BIOS limitations that prevent booting from USB, I have successfully used Plop Boot Manager many times. Website at plop.at .

 

[sretalla]

What changed in the creation of the ISO between 11.1 and 11.2? And why?

Since I don't see it mentioned anywhere in this thread, I'll answer that the change was made between the GRUB and FreeBSD bootloaders.

Using the FreeBSD bootloader is less compatible with older (ancient) BIOSes.

It may have something to do with GPT not being a thing according to some older BIOS... lots of factors there to consider.

Nothing more to add as it seems everyone got to the required end-result.

Maybe useful to note that SCALE uses GRUB, so may work in cases where CORE does not.

 

[Cartesio]

Having had this issue right now replacing the boot disk of an old NAS, I can suggest to use Ventoy (https://www.ventoy.net), it will create a bootable USB disk and then will allow you to boot any ISO copied on the USB disk itself. It has the added benefit you don't have to reformat the disk each time, just copy the ISO to it.