FreeNAS on QNAP TS-1679U-RP

[mrpijey]

Has anyone tried this on the TS-1679U-RP or TS-EC1679U-RP series? The specs are as follows:

CPU: Intel i3-2120 (Xeon E3-1225 for EC model) (looks socketed)
Memory: 8GB DDR3 ECC, supports up to 32GB
Network: Onboard 4x Intel Gigabit (no management)
Expansion: 2x PCI-express x8, 2x eSata, USB3, 2x internal SATA (needs power cable adapters).
Storage: 16x SAS/SATA connected through a custom motherboard backplane, onboard USB storage for the QNAP software

It looks and acts like a regular PC with a TrendMicro BIOS bootup, but there are some differences. It has very few settings compared to a regular BIOS, it's locked to UEFI 2.0 (no change to Legacy). The QNAP software however is complete trash for my needs so I wanted to get FreeNAS up and running on it.

The problem however is when FreeNAS boots up, it completely locks up within the first preboot and stops at an ACPI0 warning about the "A M I BIOS". I will provide screenshots tomorrow when I get access to the machine again. But has anyone experienced this kind of issue before? FreeNAS is working wonderfully with both my SuperMicro server as well as an ASUS ROG-motherboard on a custom SAS backplane case, but never expected it to lockup this tight on this QNAP system. The only way to get out of the lockup is a hard reset.

I tried a few other systems on it. Nas4Free refused to load as the ISO doesn't support UEFI at all. ClearOS booted and installed but couldn't get past the pointless dummy setup guide (nagged about an external network which it had). I have yet to try OpenFiler as well, but all I need is a basic iSCSI Target that shares the disks raw. FreeNAS works with this perfectly against a Windows initiator so I want to use it on the QNAP as well.

I will provide screenshots tomorrow and see if I can boot FreeNAS with verbose mode as well.

 

[Chris Moore]

TS-EC1679U-RP

I am pretty sure that is the same model I am using. I removed the USB module that came with the QNAP version of Linux installed on it and connected a couple of slim USB sticks to the rear USB 2.0 ports and booted from an external USB CD drive. I couldn't get the system to boot properly from the USB 3.0 ports but it worked fine from the 2.0 ports and mine doesn't have UEFI, if I recall correctly.
I was able to upgrade the CPU (it is socketed) and memory.

 

[mrpijey]

Then I wonder then what kind of model you really have. I didn't have any options whatsoever in BIOS to disable UEFI, no Secure Boot or anything. So you must have a different model or a different BIOS version. But I will try the USB 2.0 ports (I guess it's the black ones) and see if it boots any better. And I will try to remove the USB module, perhaps it's causing something odd with FreeNAS since it doesn't seem to act like a regular USB stick (ClearOS for example refused to allow me to delete the contents on it).

I will write down the BIOS version and model and also snap some screenies along with the verbose mode trial tomorrow.

This is the model I have exactly:

https://www.qnap.com/en/product/ts-1679u-rp

 

[mrpijey]

Well, success! Thanks to Chris suggestion I managed to get it to work! I noticed that as soon as I put in a USB CD-ROM I had the option to boot from the FreeNAS disc in BIOS mode and it worked fine! I did try to boot from the USB stick in BIOS mode and it worked fine too, but not in UEFI mode so there's something off there.

I tried to install FreeNAS onto the onboard 500MB SSD but QNAP must have installed the slowest solid state drive they could find, because the installation ran for two hours and was not finished when I left work. I left it running to see if it will work at all... or else I'll just install it onto a USB3 stick. FreeNAS did detect my harddrives during install so it talks to the controller as well. So far so good!

Tomorrow I will continue to set it up and see that everything works and do some benchmarks. But thanks for the help, and hopefully this thread helps others too. In my case it seems FreeNAS isn't compatible with the mobo implementation of UEFI (2.0)... I wish there were some motherboard BIOS upgrades but QNAP doesn't have any whatsoever and it seems to be a custom motherboard so...

Thanks again!

 

[Chris Moore]

Tomorrow I will continue to set it up and see that everything works and do some benchmarks. But thanks for the help, and hopefully this thread helps others too. In my case it seems FreeNAS isn't compatible with the mobo implementation of UEFI (2.0)... I wish there were some motherboard BIOS upgrades but QNAP doesn't have any whatsoever and it seems to be a custom motherboard so...

The system is certainly not as compatible as I would like. I did have problems using the USB 3.0 interface, which is why I suggested avoiding it and only using USB 2.0. The two that I converted have been working reasonably well and the VGA output on the system board worked for me with the installer and I connected it to my KVM for remote management.

 

[mrpijey]

Yeah, that's my plan too, I got an ATEN 16port KVM and VGA console which I intend to use with it. I will do some testing with the USB3 ports but I won't need them really, only thing I need to get working (with hotswap preferrably) are the two eSATA ports. The mobo has two internal SATA ports as well but I need to do some probing to figure out the pins on the four SATA power pins on the mobo to see which one is 5V and 12V (hopefully they are in the same layout as regular molex connectors). Then I can wire up an internal SSD and get a clean setup without slow USB sticks. But in the end I will install a Mellanox ConnectX-3 10G network adapter, share all drives using iSCSI to the main Windows server and share the drives that way, don't need any other functionality.

 

[netfrog]

The system is certainly not as compatible as I would like. I did have problems using the USB 3.0 interface, which is why I suggested avoiding it and only using USB 2.0. The two that I converted have been working reasonably well and the VGA output on the system board worked for me with the installer and I connected it to my KVM for remote management.

I think the TS-1679U-RP and TS-EC1679U-RP has the same mainboard(TS-1679U-V13),only the system bios(mine bios ver is:qv05a) is different.
The TS-EC1679U-RP suppport e3 v2 and ecc ram,but the TS-1679U-RP support only i3 and non-ecc ram.
Could you kindly dump the TS-EC1679U-RP bios for me,i wanna to flash it to TS-1679U-RP

 

[Chris Moore]

I think the TS-1679U-RP and TS-EC1679U-RP has the same mainboard(TS-1679U-V13),only the system bios(mine bios ver is:qv05a) is different.
The TS-EC1679U-RP suppport e3 v2 and ecc ram,but the TS-1679U-RP support only i3 and non-ecc ram.
Could you kindly dump the TS-EC1679U-RP bios for me,i wanna to flash it to TS-1679U-RP

I would if I could, but I don't have a way to do that. Also, there is some possibility that the boards are different and it would brick your system.