Challenges creating a bootable Install USB

[zetabax]

I downloaded and installed Scale on my ESXi host several months ago and am ready to put it on bare metal.

So I create a bootable Install USB using Rufus and Etcher but no matter what I try, I can't get the server to boot to the installer and execute.

I've tried different USB, switched from BIOS to UEFI, confirmed other UEFI and BIOS USB sticks will boot from the same server, etc.

I feel so stupid but I'm out of ideas.

Please help!

 

[JohnDigital]

Not sure about your woes booting from USB. That could be any number of things. Sounds like youve tried all the basics. If you are really hard up, and otherwise out of ideas, do the install on a different machine and just move the boot device to the server in question.

 

[zetabax]

Thanks for the quick reply. Yup, tried that too. Same boot error message regardless of what I'm booting from, "Selected boot device failed".

I'm actually embarrassed asking this but I've been suffering in silence for the last week trying different things and am at a complete loss.

But how difficult is it to create a bootable USB with Etcher? Download the file, wipe the target USB stick while it's downloading, run etcher, select the file and target device and be patient. Similar process for Rufus.

The only thing I haven't tried is creating the bootable on a different PC. Reason I skipped this is because I've since made other bootable USBs from the same PC, just not TrueNAS Scale.

Scratch that, just tried imaging a brand new USB from a different machine with the same result.

 

[stavros-k]

Try a hard reset on the bare metal bios. oh also try a different usb port (preferably one of the back ports). I have a motherboard, which WILL NOT BOOT in arch distros with SVM enabled.

 

[winnielinnie]

What motherboard is this? Have you tried using MBR (instead of GPT) for the installation USB's partition table scheme? It won't affect the installation whatsoever, but the system might be able to boot from it, which is only needed once for the installation.

 

[zetabax]

They're both Dell motherboards - ones a PowerEdge R720xd and the other (just for testing the USB) is an XPS 13.

Thanks for the tips @winnielinnie and @StavrosMadK. Yes, I've tried MRB and GPT and yes i've tried all the USB ports. Would hate to have to hard reset the BIOS on the PE but if push comes to shove, i may have to.

For fun (because covid has taken the fun out of just about everything) I decided to dig through the basement and found an ancient spindle of writable DVDs. So I did the needful and to my utter surprise I was able to boot the installer from the disk (albeit was painfully slow)

Not ideal, but it will do the trick

 

[Evertb1]

writable DVDs. So I did the needful and to my utter surprise I was able to boot the installer from the disk (albeit was painfully slow)

That would have been my suggestion, That's an emergency measure I have taken myself in the past. The sole reason I still have some opticals lying around. Another thing I have done in the past is cleaning up an USB stick with diskpart before letting Rufus or Etcher (my preferred tools as well) loose on it. Don't ask why or how but sometimes it helped. It shouldn't, as Rufus or Etcher are supposed to do the clean up, but it did.

 

[JohnDigital]

Something hokey in that PE bios doesnt like anything but Windoze probably, idk. Were you able to get up and running with a CD? Strange days.

 

[brando56894]

I have an Asrock Rack workstation board for my Threadripper 2 and for some reason it doesn't like booting from the rear/external USB ports, but usually works fine with the one soldered to the motherboard internally, that one still baffles me.

 

[zetabax]

Something hokey in that PE bios doesnt like anything but Windoze probably, idk. Were you able to get up and running with a CD? Strange days.

Yup, DVD-R did trick. I don't think this was Windows related - previously on this device I'd been running TrueNAS Core and before that free ESXI.