How to install FreeNAS 9.3 on USB

[AltecBX]

I've tried several times to install FreeNAS 9.3 beta on a 32GB USB stick. I burned the ISO to a DVD and stuck it into a test server machine. It booted from the DVD drive and detected the hard drives as well as the USB stick. I then selected the USB stick as the drive to install the OS too. It then proceeded and said complete. remove the disc from the drive and reboot. Everything is fine to this point.

Once I reboot it doesn't get past post. No matter how many times I reboot nor wherever USB port I put the USB stick too. Once I remove the stick, the machine boots fine. I then put the USB stick on my windows machine and it detects the USB stick as a 512kb drive when is obviously a 32GB drive. Even when I format the drive it says 512kb capacity. So I then DISKPART the USB stick and get it back to 32GB and proceed the same procedure in installing FreeNAS again and I get the same problem.

What I'm I doing wrong?

 

[solarisguy]

Did your system boot from USB with previous versions of FreeNAS?

If you have two USB ports available, flash one USB with the 9.3-BETA ISO and install to the second one. This way you would verify that your system properly boots 9.3-BETA from USB.

 

[AltecBX]

Yes it boots fine. But after I install FreeNAS on the USB stick it will stall on post. It will not get past the memory test. Doesn't matter what USB port I plug it into.

 

[enemy85]

Am i reading wrong or Are you trying to boot freenas on a pc where there is already a hd with windows installed?

 

[AltecBX]

Am i reading wrong or Are you trying to boot freenas on a pc where there is already a hd with windows installed?

My windows machine is another machine.

 

[enemy85]

Ah ok, sorry then. Maybe you should just wait for the first boot hw diagnosis to complete. The first time could take longer

 

[AltecBX]

It has been over 1 hr. I could understand it taking a long time after it recognizes the thumb drive and start to boot into FreeNAS but that's not the case.
I have booted from USB with ESXI 5.5 with no problem. I believe is the way FreeNAS installation formats this drive.

 

[dlavigne]

What's the hardware on this system? Also, does trying a different USB stick have the same issue?

 

[AltecBX]

I don't have another USB stick bigger than 2GB.

 

[Zeropage]

I have the exact same problem.
A Dell Vostro 410. I have two USB thumb drives, one has the FreeNAS 9.3 installer and boots fine, the other one is blank.
The installation is successful on the blank USB thumb drive, but after rebooting it is stuck at the Dell Logo POST screen in BIOS.
I've tried another USB card reader with a compact flash card and the installation was much faster and finished fine. But also fails to get past POST.
Internally I have 6 HDDs with a FreeBSD 10.1 RAIDZ2 zroot pool, which I'd like to import into FreeNAS.

All USB attached thumb drives and compact flash devices were 8GB in size.

Any news on this?

 

[rlpcdr]

Attempting a test install to a Dell Vostro 200. Would like to get it operational before I move to some better hardware. Wondering if it's an issue with the older bios. I only have 4 gb ram and one internal hard drive for this test. Have Only one flash drive that is 32 gb.

On the most recent install attempt I got this:

active set on da0
the following errors must be manually repaired:
/dev/da0p2 is part of the active pool 'freenas-boot'
The FreeNAS installation on da0 has failed. Press any key to continue

I've already pulled the flash drive and reformatted with no joy. Even if I'm able to get past post stall and then insert the flash drive drive for the install -- it still errors out.

On another attempt I inserted the flash drive After it got to the install screen. Hit 1 and then selected the flash drive. It starts the install and then ends with:
Segmentation fault.
The FreeNAS installation on da0 has failed. Press any key to continue

Any clues or will it just not work on this older hardware??

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

/dev/da0p2 is part of the active pool 'freenas-boot'

Are you perhaps trying to install from and to the same drive? With 9.3 you need two devices, one to boot from and one to install to.

 

[rlpcdr]

I booted from a CD and tried to install on the USB.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Is the BIOS USB emulation set to hard disk (rather than automatic)?

 

[sef]

If there is an upgrade for your BIOS, you may have more luck; some BIOSes don't appear to like the type of the boot partition in the new world order.

 

[rlpcdr]

I figured that might be the case -- bios issue that is. Moved on and got it running with NAS4Free. Thanks for the help.