Error 5, Unretryable error on attempted install

[bureau13]

This is my first foray into TrueNAS. I'm attempting to install from DVD to an old PC that I've upgraded with 6x3TB WD Red Plus, and I'm attempting a mirrored install onto two 16G USB sticks. However, I don't seem to be getting far enough for any of that to matter.

I boot up from the DVD-ROM, and I get the TrueNAS boot menu. I select to boot the installer (or it auto-selects that) and it runs, putting out a bunch of output. Some of it seems like errors but maybe they're normal: Can't find zfs, a whole bunch of "need to extend HID" or something like that, then eventually it just prints out Error 5, Unretryable error, some other info about SCSI, etc, then it pauses, and prints the Error 5 stuff again, and again, and again ad nauseum. I'm never getting to the point where I select where I want to install, or anything. I see a lot of threads on this Error 5, but they all seem to have something to do with the hard drives or boot devices and I'm not even there yet. Any ideas?

 

[Samuel Tai]

Junk the USB sticks. They're the cause of most install problems, because it's too common for sticks not to have full capacity. The Chinese are notorious for hacking sticks so a 512k looks like a 16G.

Early USB chipsets weren't really great for booting either.

Please describe your hardware, per the forum rules.

 

[bureau13]

Junk the USB sticks. They're the cause of most install problems, because it's too common for sticks not to have full capacity. The Chinese are notorious for hacking sticks so a 512k looks like a 16G.

Early USB chipsets weren't really great for booting either.

Please describe your hardware, per the forum rules.

I don't think these are bad USB sticks. One of the same batch worked just fine as a Windows 10 recovery drive (I know those don't take 16G but still). Besides, I never even got to the point where I could tell it to install anything anywhere. Nothing should have been writing to the USB drives at that point.

The hardware is an Intel i7-960/Asus P6X58 Pro w/ 12G DDR3 RAM. I have 2 SanDisk 16B USB drives and 6 Western Digital Red Plus 3TB fresh drives. Also the USB ports are 3.0 so it's not THAT old.

 

[bureau13]

For what it's worth, I pulled the two USB sticks and tried to boot the installer. This time I got a ton of errors about "looking for CAM" or something, before it eventually ended up back with the Error 5 messages.

Do you think maybe there's an issue with the DVD-ROM image? It doesn't seem very likely that I'd get a corrupted image during burn but given that I haven't even selected anything to write to...

 

[Samuel Tai]

Did you verify the SHA256 checksum of your ISO download? In PowerShell, run Get-FileHash <path to ISO>, and compare that to the .iso.sha256 file. If they don't match, you have a corrupt download.

 

[bureau13]

They match, no real surprise I guess.

Is there any more available detail about what that Error 5 really means? I've seen people report it in a lot of different scenarios, but it usually seems to involve the boot drive. Given that in my case I'm just booting from the DVD-ROM and haven't selected anything to write to, it just seems weird.

 

[bureau13]

Well, I have "solved" my problem. I rebooted (again!), noticed I was getting the Error 5s again, went away to do something else, and when I came back it showed me the install menu. I guess I just needed to let it get all the errors out of its system?? Seems odd. Also seems odd that no one mentioned this as part of the usual thing that happens, so I really don't know what is going on, but bottom line, I have now installed TrueNAS 13 onto my PC, booted it up and it is going through it's initialization process, or whatever it's called. Fingers crossed....