Dell XPS freenas 9.02.01 boot loader issue :- no boot after install to usb

[alser]

Hi All,

I've been battling with this for some time now.

I suspect that the same issue still prevails as discussed in this thread:

https://bugs.freenas.org/issues/5961

I boot from the Cdrom and get and install freenas to a USB / HDD.

Upon the reboot it fails to find the boot loader on either the USB/HDD, and it wont load after the install. When I exit out to the shell and do a gpart show I get the following:

upon reviewing the bsd man page at :

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?gpart(8)

I see the entry relating to setting the active flag on the mbr, and when I run the command it says that the mbr is already created?

/sbin/gpart set -a active -i 1 da4
/sbin/gpart bootcode -b /boot/boot0 da4

yet it returns the following...

Any Ideas how to resolve this?

Thanks

alan

 

[cyberjock]

Yeah, please give the forum rules a read. With nothing to go on but some errors you aren't doing yourself any favors. We want specs, model numbers, etc etc etc.

 

[Ericloewe]

Desktop hardware, right?

Not much else is to be expected.

 

[gpsguy]

It's probably got 1Gb of RAM and works fine with Win XP! :-(


Sent from my phone

 

[alser]

Yes its a former desktop...

Its a dell XPS work station

Dell service tag

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/product-support/servicetag/5DF684J/maintain?s=BSD

dell xps630i
bios 1.0.13
2 gigs of memory ddr2 800 mhz
Core 2 cpu quad CPU Q9400 at 2.66 Ghz
2 x 3072 KB

The USB key is 4 gigs, Ive also tried a 4gig CF card, a 500Gb disk and I suspect if I try a 32 gig CF card it will fail too!

I have no issue in getting memory size up to 8 gig but I have tried freenas on a insperion desktop and it installs and works ok with 2 gig of ram and nearly the same processor, on the 4 gig key that it fails on here...

Surely this is a boot issue ...

Am I fooling myself here though? are you guys going to come back and say that I have to have 8 gig of ram before it will boot?

This will not detect the boot loader, so if I install additional ram its still not going to boot... right?

I have also tried the 32 bit version and and failed too.

Ive tried to create a boot disk and install the freenas image using rufis and the download image from freenas... and that filed too

Alan

P.S. Yes gpsguy, it works great with win XP and Win 7... but I'd like to use it as a bare bones NAS.

Thanks for your help here...

 

[cyberjock]

Well, you've got two problems....

1. Without 8GB of RAM it may or may not boot. Past experience with less RAM is not an indicator of future usage. We set the 8GB of RAM because we've seen sooooo many examples that were responsible that we don't care to work too hard if you can't meet our (relatively modest) 8GB of RAM. It's just not worth our effort because we know better from past experience. Take that advice or leave it.

2. With desktop hardware some won't boot FreeBSD. This is why you see zero desktop hardware recommended in our hardware requirements. Again, from past experience, we've learned it is not worth our time to spend the resources to identify the problem down. We know it more often than not doesn't work, we are all volunteers, so we pick our battles. Having desktop hardware is a battle that nobody fights anymore. We just advice to get proper hardware that we know works.