How to create a bootable USB for my FreeNAS box

hiro5id

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Aug 21, 2016
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I have been booting from USB since the days of v8.x

I would like to make a new USB. But it seems the procedure has changed since then, and i'm a bit lost.
I used to just download the ISO, and create a USB bootable form that ISO and away I went.

Now it seems it's not that straight forward as there is an installation step. Is there documentation about how to create a FreeNAS bootable USB stick ? I looked around I am either too dumb to find the solution or it is hidden some place that i haven't seen yet.


Let me ask another way. Is there any reason I couldn't boot the FreeNas installer ISO using Virtualbox, and then attach a USB stick to the virtualbox onto which I would install FreeNAS? And then I can plug that into my server and boot from that ? (I understand of course that I would need to restore configuration after bootup) Would that work?
 

Chris Moore

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Let me ask another way. Is there any reason I couldn't boot the FreeNas installer ISO using Virtualbox, and then attach a USB stick to the virtualbox onto which I would install FreeNAS? And then I can plug that into my server and boot from that ? (I understand of course that I would need to restore configuration after bootup) Would that work?
I have done that, but not for several years. It should work.
 
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Why not just stick another USB stick in your server, @hiro5id, mirror your current boot device to the new USB stick then remove the original and break the mirror. That assumes you don't have a mirrored boot device now.

Better yet, insert new USB stick, mirror boot device, insert new USB stick, 'replace' original boot device in the mirror. Now you have two new USB sticks mirrored as your boot device and don't require any downtime, crazy virtualboxing or configuration restoration to create a new boot device.

Cheers,
Matt
 

hiro5id

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Aug 21, 2016
Messages
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Why not just stick another USB stick in your server, @hiro5id, mirror your current boot device to the new USB stick then remove the original and break the mirror. That assumes you don't have a mirrored boot device now.

Better yet, insert new USB stick, mirror boot device, insert new USB stick, 'replace' original boot device in the mirror. Now you have two new USB sticks mirrored as your boot device and don't require any downtime, crazy virtualboxing or configuration restoration to create a new boot device.

Cheers,
Matt

Ah, because the new stick is bigger. I assume mirroring will make it so that’s the partition on the bigger stick will match the size of the smaller one so I’ll lose space? Or maybe I’m just thinking of the old fashioned RAID. Perhaps that is no longer an issue with ZFS.

The bigger reason is because I wanted to use this situation as an opportunity to practice my disaster recovery. Ie: if my boot USB should ever fail, and I need to recover by rebuilding a new boot USB from scratch.
 
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hiro5id

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Aug 21, 2016
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Update: the “Boot the installer with virtualbox and install onto new USB then swap it with the old stick”. Worked!
 
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Chris Moore

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Update: the “Boot the installer with virtualbox and install onto new USB then swap it with the old stick”. Worked!
I had a good feeling that it would. I used that method several years ago to install on a system that did not have a CD drive and didn't want to boot from installation media made by using the ISO to create a bootable USB. I don't even have that system any more.

If you ever get a server system board that has IPMI remote management, you can boot directly from the ISO file mounted remotely over the network. I made a video to demo IPMI. You can watch it here if you want:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPv_ikws7A0
 
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