FreeNAS won't boot on ASUS M4A88T-M/USB3

[Geoff]

ASUS M4A88T-M/USB3 Mainboard Bios Ver 0704 (Latest)
AMD Phenom II X6 1055T CPU (6 core) @ 2.8Ghz
6 GB DDR3-1333 (3 x 2gb) in unganged mode.

AMD Firmware SATA RAID Option ROM Version 3.0.1540.39
6 x SATA HDD (2x1tb config as JBOD) for LD1 (4 x 2tb config as JBOD) for LD2
Intend to config as RAID 1 and RAID 5 (or maybe 6) respectively.
Firmware RAID only supports RAID 0,1 and 10.
CD is PATA and boots other things without a problem.
Various other USB boot drives work fine. Diagnostics on MB/RAM clean.

Same system seems to work fine with CentOS6.x X64 (Aside from usual Linux PITA with >2Gb volume sizes)

FreeNAS 8.3.1 X64 downloaded from FreeNAS site yesterday.

Tried USB and CD images on respective platforms without success.

USB says 'No boot' from F1 or F2 typing 'boot' produces 'no boot' message.
CD boot screen says :
Looking for boot loader - not found
Looking for boot loader - found
/
followed by immediate reset and then loops endlessly. Sometimes you don't even get the messages, it just resets.

FWIW your distant cousin NAS4Free does virtually the same thing and also seems to be BSD based so... suspect BSD issue. (Some suggestion from one ticket that it's a 'BSD driver problem' some people seem to have fixed it by crippling various mainboard features which is clearly unacceptable.

Question... some reason you are using BSD instead of a linux core for this? BSD seems to take a bit longer than forever to solve issues like this, and I'm wondering if it will ever be reliable on that platform, at least in any reasonable time frame.

Any advice appreciated. Not interested in buying another mainboard to 'fix' the problem. Needs to be this board in this config - don't want to throw a full Linux or Windows system on it if I can avoid it, but it's not looking promising for NAS right now which is a crying shame, because it looks to be exactly what we need.

Geoff
Australian Loadmaster Trailers
Georgetown
South Australia

 

[survive]

Hi Geoff,

Try a usb2 port.

-Will

 

[Geoff]

Doesn't have any, but tried different ports, same effect
And it does the same on CD.

 

[survive]

Hi Geoff,

Use the black ports on the rear panel, I confirmed with the manual that there are indeed USB2 ports there. Might want to disable USB3 in the BIOS while you are at it.

-Will

 

[Geoff]

The problem is solved, not how I wanted to solve it, but it's solved. I disabled the firmware RAID and set it back to AHCI and it booted off the USB instantly, and I am in the Web GUI config now. BSD flat out won't boot with the RAID firmware enabled, but is apparently fine with AHCI mode and 6 independent drives. So I'm assuming I can build software RAID1 and RAID6 arrays.

 

[survive]

Hi Geoff,

The solution might not be how you wanted to solve the problem, but putting the SATA controller into AHCI mode is actually exactly what you should do.

Before you do anything else I stronly advise you to review this:

http://forums.freenas.org/threads/slideshow-explaining-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

so you have a better understanding of what options you have for configuring your disks in FreeNAS.

If you are interested read this:

http://www.servethehome.com/difference-hardware-raid-hbas-software-raid/

for more information about hardware vs. software vs. "fake" RAID implementations. Note your board would be doing Fake-RAID, which usually only works under Windows because there's only enough RAID logic in the chipset to get the system booted (up to the point the system can load the driver that does all the heavy lifting).

-Will

 

[Geoff]

Ok, understand the HW v SW RAID idea, I used software RAID 1 (though it wasn't called that then) on Netware for a long time, then HW RAID of one kind or another (All SCSI at the time, when a big hard disk was 72Gb ;^). Didn't think the FW RAID implementation was so broken, but apparently it is. I've created a mirror pair (effectively RAID 1) of the 2 x 1Tb drives and a Z2 (RAID 6?) which gives me 3.5Gb of storage from the 4x2TB drives, which as I understand it, is double parity and can tolerate the loss of 2 drives before data is compromised, it consumes a lot of storage overhead, but I've known multiple drives to fail in quite short time spans (minutes in one case!) so I'll take that option. It's preferable to the RAID 10 the FW RAID offered anyway, at the expense of a little performance perhaps, but it's not going to be that busy a box (backups of essential data, MYOB files, engineering drawings etc. etc.

I've taken that info and I will read it over the weekend. System is up and working perfectly as we speak, I've already moved some temporary backups to the NAS device. Whole config from the webgui on my Windoze laptop. Too easy.

Thanks for y0ur help mate,

Geoff

 

[Geoff]

Ok, now I have a slightly odd problem, which I suspect is a BIOS v BSD (whatever File System) thing.

When we shutdown the system and tried to reboot it, it would not boot. Removable Devices (USB et al) were 1st on the boot list already, so I removed all other bootable devices from the boot list and left only 'Removable Devices' in it. No change to behaviour.

It inits the USB ok and the BIOS knows that the USB drive is there (Shows 1 storage device) you see it access it during POST, (drive lights flash) but it will not try and boot from it at all in fact it never accesses it again, even momentarily, whatever it 'sees' in that initial POST check apparently convinces it that it can't boot from that drive so it simply doesn't try.

However, if I bring up the Boot Device Select (F8) and select the USB device, it boots fine and all is well. It just won't boot from it automatically on restart or reset. Works fine otherwise, and it's accessible over the network etc just fine.

The system is on a UPS, but obviously this is something of an issue if it needs to restarted after any kind of shutdown, it will need manual intervention, it's headless for a start. Interestingly it wouldn't try and boot from a NAS4Free USB stick either, it doesn't seem to recognise that the USB device is actually bootable, or has a valid file system maybe (Windows can't access the USB drive at all - it asks if you want it formatted - is the BIOS actually refusing to attempt an autoboot off a device unless it can tell it's bootable before it tries. I'm not sure how to get around that if that's the case. I suppose we can live with it for now, but it's not acceptable in the long term.

Anyone have any ideas please?

Regards

Geoff

 

[gpsguy]

Go into the BIOS and see if you can change the order of the boot devices so it boots from USB


Sent from my phone

 

[Geoff]

First thing I did. In fact I made it the ONLY boot device. It goes straight to the 'Insert boot disk or select valid boot device then press any key to reboot' In short, it doesn't think the USB device is bootable, presumably because it doesn't recognise that it has a valid file system. (GPT apparently). The only way to make it boot from it is to force it by selecting it from the F8 Boot menu, it boots then, so obviously it IS bootable, but it seems the system is trying to 'help' by not trying to autoboot off devices it believes aren't bootable, like USB drives... but in this case it's not 'smart' enough to tell that it IS bootable.

Geoff

 

[gpsguy]

As I suspected, it appears that you need to change something else in the BIOS. Look on page 2-16 of Asus M4A88T-M manual. Under USB Mass Storage Device Configuration, change the emulation type to "Hard Disk".

First thing I did. In fact I made it the ONLY boot device. It goes straight to the 'Insert boot disk or select valid boot device then press any key to reboot'

 

[cyberjock]

The file system has nothing to do with the bootable nature of a USB device(or any other device for that matter). It has everything to do with what partitions are marked active, the boot sectors and the boot loader.

It sounds like gpsguy may have your solution.

 

[Geoff]

As I suspected, it appears that you need to change something else in the BIOS. Look on page 2-16 of Asus M4A88T-M manual. Under USB Mass Storage Device Configuration, change the emulation type to "Hard Disk".

I haven't been there for a week, but I will be there tomorrow and check this, however I am 90% certain it was set to Auto and I changed it to Hard Disk. I will revisit this tomorrow and confirm on here. The system otherwise works fine. Writing to the NAS over the lan is slower than I would like to see (about 9.3mbps from a Ubuntu 12.4 live disk I booted from CD that I was using to copy some files from a dead Vista (yech) partition on another desktop box.) but it seems quite reliable so I guess I can live with it, it's about the same as a USB thumb drive speed.

Thank you Gentlemen for your help with this.


Regards

Geoff

 

[panz]

My 2c tip: disable USB legacy support in the BIOS (this solved a similar problem in a setup of mine).