Create initial install USB

[HCAdmin]

Hi, I downloaded the core version ISO from TrueNAS and tried both Rufus and BalenaEtcher to create a bootable USB from it. Which didn't work. So I tried two other USB devices and also tried downloading another version from Github. I got the same result. I watched the video on the site and followed the exact instructions. I even copied both ISOs to one of my Hyper-V servers at work and neither booted. I tried to boot both off a laptop too so I know they are definitely not working as bootable USBs. Pretty sure it's not relevant here, but the device I am trying to install on is a HP Gen8 Microserver with 16GB of RAM and a 64bit Celeron CPU,

I don't understand what I am doing wrong. I am absolutely NOT a Linux guy so everything I am doing is on Windows devices. If I am going to need Linux or Unix knowledge to install and maintain this maybe I need to loo for something else.

Rob.
P.S. Years ago I sucessfully installed FreeNAS on an old server so I know I am capable if I can find simple step by step instructions.

 

[HCAdmin]

I'm dissapointed I haven't had a single response. I've tried TrueNAS-13.0-U3.1.iso, TrueNAS-13.1-MASTER-202209020813-b1dbf1a1f.iso and FreeNAS-11.1-RELEASE.iso. None of them create a bootable USB. I've tried with both Rufus ver 3.21 and BalenaEtcher 1.14. Both create a usb with a 3mb partition. Rufus also creates a 595mb raw partition. I know it's not the computer because I can create a bootable windows USB from ISO using the same programs. I even tried it on an old IBM SystemsX 2650M2 I have here, (which I had also considered making a NAS, just in case Webroot Antivirus on my desktop was affecting it, (the IBM system is a fresh install of Server 2019 with no AV currently). There seem to be a lot of people here so it must be possible to achieve this. Can anyone point to what I am doing wrong?

 

[Samuel Tai]

If I am going to need Linux or Unix knowledge to install and maintain this maybe I need to look for something else.

Not to discourage you, but Linux/Unix knowledge is pretty much a prerequisite for installing and operating a Linux/Unix-based OS successfully in the long term. TrueNAS Core is derived from FreeBSD Unix. TrueNAS Scale is derived from Debian Linux.

In all likelihood, your problems are due to all your target systems having Secure Boot enabled, or not burning the ISO in DD mode.

 

[HCAdmin]

Not to discourage you, but Linux/Unix knowledge is pretty much a prerequisite for installing and operating a Linux/Unix-based OS successfully in the long term. TrueNAS Core is derived from FreeBSD Unix. TrueNAS Scale is derived from Debian Linux.

In all likelihood, your problems are due to all your target systems having Secure Boot enabled, or not burning the ISO in DD mode.

Thanks. I was hoping that once the initial install was done I could do the managements by web gui. That's what I did with the old version of FreeNAS that I installed a few years back. I'm only looking at using it as a backup target so hopefully should be fairly easy.

I definitely made the USB in DD mode. I'll look into whether the system is in secure boot mode. Pretty sure I already checked that but I will double check now. I do find it strange that the partitions show up as raw though.

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

If you use Advanced Search, the terms Rufus and Ventoy, and my profile name, I've gone into detail on why some USB drives don't boot with some HP BIOS and how to get around it. It may or may not be your problem, which presents oddly and differently each time I've run into it.

With the method I've detailed I've created several more USB emergency drives that continue to work without issue and other systems (the problem isn't HP specific, but HP with their custom BIOS is generally problematic--in fact any custom HP BIOS in any devide generally causes problems with non-vendor specific drivers and software). If you're really interested on the fine details I have a large writeup on Github under Rufus regarding Rufus looking as if it is "corrupting" or "destroying" USB flash drives which it actually is not (same username).in HP

There are several settings in HP BIOS that need to be changed in order to boot from USB drive, which I'm sure you're aware of. Also, UEFI mode is not generally supported in older HP systems so the USB drive has to be set up as a Legacy boot device.

Also, the on-board RAID will eventually cause problems if not disabled. You'll need an LSI HBA card.

If you don't mind some friendly advice that will probably save you a lot of time, start out by using the Search feature and read a bumch of the results. One of the things I learned by observation is on forums, if you ask a question an nobody responds it's because members have already answered the question in great detail many, many times in many threads and are simply burned out.

 

[HCAdmin]

If you use Advanced Search, the terms Rufus and Ventoy, and my profile name, I've gone into detail on why some USB drives don't boot with some HP BIOS and how to get around it. It may or may not be your problem, which presents oddly and differently each time I've run into it.

With the method I've detailed I've created several more USB emergency drives that continue to work without issue and other systems (the problem isn't HP specific, but HP with their custom BIOS is generally problematic--in fact any custom HP BIOS in any devide generally causes problems with non-vendor specific drivers and software). If you're really interested on the fine details I have a large writeup on Github under Rufus regarding Rufus looking as if it is "corrupting" or "destroying" USB flash drives which it actually is not (same username).in HP

There are several settings in HP BIOS that need to be changed in order to boot from USB drive, which I'm sure you're aware of. Also, UEFI mode is not generally supported in older HP systems so the USB drive has to be set up as a Legacy boot device.

Also, the on-board RAID will eventually cause problems if not disabled. You'll need an LSI HBA card.

If you don't mind some friendly advice that will probably save you a lot of time, start out by using the Search feature and read a bumch of the results. One of the things I learned by observation is on forums, if you ask a question an nobody responds it's because members have already answered the question in great detail many, many times in many threads and are simply burned out.

Hi Hedgehog,

Thank you for the comprehensive reply.

I did actually search. A lot. I'm usually good at Google search so I was surprised I found so little. Many of the answers were old, and most gave no information that helped my specific case.. I'll read your write up to see if it helps.

You are correct. This device does not have UEFI so the comment about Secure Boot is irrelevant for this one. I did create bootable USBs for Acronis True Image and Acronis ABR 11.7, (both of which I have licences for). Based on what I saw as they booted, they are both *nix based, and both booted fine. I then created and booted from a Windows 10 USB and loaded that on to test hardware, (all appears fine). So I am fairly sre the USB drives and booting from said drives is not the issue here.

I am leaning back toward it being the ISO or the program used to copy to USB. I guess it is possible that the ISOs are getting corrupted when downloading. None of those ISO's will boot on a Hyper-v VM either, so it's not surprise to me that I can't make a bootable USB from them.

I've been questioning my sanity because 4 different USB IOS programs and three different ISO downloads and I still can't make a device that works perfectly on windows boot this installer.

Also, forgot to say, I already put an LSI RAID card in the machine and the 4 drives are in RAID6.

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

@HCAdmin : What size is your USB stick?

See the following:

HP Gen8 Microserver Boot Issues

Hi Did you ever find a solution to this boot issue? I really want to use Scale on my Microserver as currently using OpenMediaVault which although easy to use, I feel that Scale would be better. I haven't yet tried the 22.02.1 release, was it fixed in that release does anyone know? Thanks for...

www.truenas.com

 

[HCAdmin]

@HCAdmin : What size is your USB stick?

See the following:

HP Gen8 Microserver Boot Issues

Hi Did you ever find a solution to this boot issue? I really want to use Scale on my Microserver as currently using OpenMediaVault which although easy to use, I feel that Scale would be better. I haven't yet tried the 22.02.1 release, was it fixed in that release does anyone know? Thanks for...

www.truenas.com

I tried multiple 4GB, 8GB and 32GB. None worked. One now is totally unusable, (can't create a partition on it anymore). By the way, I searched "WI_hedgehog" rufus ventoy and so far haven't found the article you mentioned. I'll keep looking, as well as reading the one linked.

Rob.

 

[HCAdmin]

OK. So I gave up creating an install USB. It really shouldn't be that hard, (and I don't blame TrueNAS specifically). So I went out and bought some blank DVDs. Interestingly enough, even though the ISO would not boot as a Hyper-V Boot ISO, it did copy OK to a DVD using Ashampoo. Because I have an SSD in the optical slot, connected to the RAID card as SSD cache, the server doesn't have a DVD. However, because I am an IT guy, (Windows Server and some Windows desktop only though), I do have various parts sitting on boxes here. And external power supplies. So I hooked an external power supply to a DVD drive and sat it on top, and connected the SATA cable to the internal SATA port, and selected "boot from CD" Hey presto, I have the ability to install TrueNAS onto the SDcard in the internal card reader. I know that's not recommended. Until I prove this will do the job for me, I am not buying anymore hardware for it.

Anyway, I guess my point is, for anyone having problems making a bootable USB, DVDs still work.

P.S. I checked all those USB devices again and they definitely only have raw partitions after using Rufus, BalenaEtcher and Universal USB Installer. There is defnitely something funky in the way those ISOs get copied to a USB, cos the DVD process worked exactly as I expected.

Rob.

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

Rob: To confirm (because you already know this) if you only have raw partitions that's probably an issue as UEFI only boots to a fatty partition, so even in Legacy mode your partitions should be of the FAT filesystem variety (not raw). For that reason I like Ventoy as I can set up the USB stick the way I want, so with three FAT-32 partitions can immediately mount and verify all data on the stick.

 

[HCAdmin]

Thank you to both of you for your help. I now have TrueNAS 13.1 installed and running. I have been spoiled by having QNAP and Synolgy NAS devices which are so much more logical to configure. However, I have successfully set up LAGG and a shared SMB folder for testing.

Rob.

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

I have Synology at work, they're nice kit. However, TrueNAS and a 3-2-1 backup are, in my opinion, faster, less expensive in the long run, and easier to manage if one has created great documentation to go with the system--as in blindingly fast on the backup and restore. Snapshots (which are in Testing here) so far have been awesome. Thank you iXsystems!

Tangent: A few members have mentioned to me CORE is far more stable than SCALE. Thank you, it probably is. I've used FreeBSD since it first came out and disliked it from the start. It is, however, stable (until something odd happens and it's not), secure, and a rock-solid P.I.T.A. I'm guessing I'm not alone given the lack of packages ported to it from its inception. Is Linux underlying SCALE as stable? No, no it's not, but it's far, far better than that Redmond solution that consumes your budget and then some. Linux works, works well, is straight-forward, and there's none of the cringey Berkley crap in it. There have been some things in Linux that aren't great, but you unplug them and plug in something sensible and it's all good (eg. cron vs. systemd). Bottom line is Linux is stable and reliable, maybe not as much as FreeBSD, but if FreeBSD was all that and a sack of gold SCALE wouldn't be built on Linux.

 

[HCAdmin]

I have Synology at work, they're nice kit. However, TrueNAS and a 3-2-1 backup are, in my opinion, faster, less expensive in the long run, and easier to manage if one has created great documentation to go with the system--as in blindingly fast on the backup and restore. Snapshots (which are in Testing here) so far have been awesome. Thank you iXsystems!

Tangent: A few members have mentioned to me CORE is far more stable than SCALE. Thank you, it probably is. I've used FreeBSD since it first came out and disliked it from the start. It is, however, stable (until something odd happens and it's not), secure, and a rock-solid P.I.T.A. I'm guessing I'm not alone given the lack of packages ported to it from its inception. Is Linux underlying SCALE as stable? No, no it's not, but it's far, far better than that Redmond solution that consumes your budget and then some. Linux works, works well, is straight-forward, and there's none of the cringey Berkley crap in it. There have been some things in Linux that aren't great, but you unplug them and plug in something sensible and it's all good (eg. cron vs. systemd). Bottom line is Linux is stable and reliable, maybe not as much as FreeBSD, but if FreeBSD was all that and a sack of gold SCALE wouldn't be built on Linux.

Yup. I have 3 x Synology and 2 x QNAP NAS devices, as backup targets for 8 different servers here. I decommissioned the old HP Microserver Gen8 because all the VMs are now on one of the clusters. So I figured best use for it was another DR Backup Target in our secondary location. I haven't looked at the built in backup utilities yet because I have licences for Acronis. Well, that and the fact that it asked me for a jail name when I had a quick look and I thought "what the HELL do I want a jail inside a NAS for?"

 

[HCAdmin]

Just circling back to finalise this. After all the effort I went through to get it working, I'm giving up on this idea. Today I got a constant beeping and when I looked up the error "mfio timeout error" I found a lot of recommendations AGAINST using a hardware RAID card, (I have an M5015 with the caching enabled and an SSD Cache set up), which is just too alien to the way I have done servers all my working life.

I think it's going to be cheaper and easier to just by a Windows licence and set up an SMB share on this server as a quasi NAS.

Thanks for all who helped me with the experiment. I've learned a fair bit.

Rob.

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

Just circling back to finalise this. After all the effort I went through to get it working, I'm giving up on this idea. Today I got a constant beeping and when I looked up the error "mfio timeout error" I found a lot of recommendations AGAINST using a hardware RAID card, (I have an M5015 with the caching enabled and an SSD Cache set up), which is just too alien to the way I have done servers all my working life.

I think it's going to be cheaper and easier to just by a Windows licence and set up an SMB share on this server as a quasi NAS.

Thanks for all who helped me with the experiment. I've learned a fair bit.

Rob.

Speaking as someone coming from a Windows Server work environment, Linux server lab environment:

It's cheaper, easier, and more reliable to follow the recommendations of experienced members.

TrueNAS goes well beyond hardware RAID, for less money, on older hardware, and is faster and far more reliable than a Microsoft solution in my experience. It's far more simple to set up and maintain. BUT, it has to be implemented the way it was designed to be implemented, which, and I say this respectfully, you don't understand yet.

Seriously, how can a system running on simpler hardware be more reliable and faster than a system running dedicated RAID in hardware??? Understanding this requires opening your mind to accepting the next level of storage, migrating from Business Server grade to Datacenter.

Members here are far beyond what you and I are accustomed to, they are the best-of-the-best. They understand the Rumsfeld Matrix, which you haven't yet considered. This is the path from muddling around, keeping things running, increasing expense and overhead, to solid, working solutions and reduced overhead and expense.

 

[maciej]

For anyone landing on this thread, I managed to install the system from an usb drive:

• used rufus with dd mode (from windows)
• on my nas system I entered BIOS and manually selected the booting drive
  • the usb came with 2 options:
    • [UEFI] <usb drive name>
    • <usb drive name>
  • I choose the non-UEFI one
• successfully booted and installed truenas