Impossible to install onto hd?

[buggerlugs]

Hi
Ive been searching all over but dont see anyone having the same issue as me.

I downloaded FreeNAS-8.0-RELEASE-i386.Full_Install and copied it to a usb drive as mentioned in other forum posts.
It boots okay and i can access the GUI via my browser in windows - but...

There is no option to install freenas onto a hard drive. All the install guides ive seen have the install option on the menu but mine only has the following

1. configure network interfaces
2. configure link aggregation
3. create vlan interface
4. configure default route
5. configure static routes
6. configure dns
7. shell
8. reboot
9. shutdown

How am i supposed to install it onto the machines hard drive (the machine im trying to install on is an itx build with boot drive and 4 sata hotswap drives)

 

[ProtoSD]

FreeNAS 8.x is only intended to be run from a USB flash drive. If you have a *blank* hard disk installed and boot from the CD it should show up on the list (maybe only in version 8.01 beta) and let you install to the hard drive.... (at least in a VMware system)
BUT
If you read the FAQ in my signature below, just as if you had an 8GB flash drive for example, ALL the remaining space beyond 1G for 8.0 and 2G for version 8.01 beta 3&4 will not be available to use because of the way FreeNAS partitions the disk. If you want to recompile the kernel you can expand the image size, but I'm not sure if there's a limit, if for example you had a 200G disk and wanted to expand it to that size. Then almost any change you made would be lost on the next reboot, and any changes you did get to be persistent would be lost during an upgrade.

 

[CAJ]

So even if one specifies a 8gb logical drive within a 710gb raided array, FreeNas will override the partition?

This was the 1st time this version seemed to work on server. Have tried to boot from USB on this version but the result is lots of ######. The only version that seems to work w/USB is ver .7.2.7529-Amd64 (liveCD). May wait for the stable release of your next upgrade.



FreeNas 8.0.1-rc1-Amd64
IBM x346 2x2.8ghz DC, 8gb ram, 6-142gb u320 10k scsi, Serveraid 7k using Raid 5
Partition 1: 8gb bootable, Partition 2: Rest of disk

 

[ProtoSD]

CAJ, I can't say for certain, but I suspect your partition will get overwritten. FreeNAS doesn't just create ONE partition when you install it on a flash drive, there are 4 I think, so having a single 8gb logical partition won't solve the problem. Also FreeNAS is prebuilt for a 2GB drive, so the partitions don't get expanded if you use a larger disk.

 

[Larsen]

Hello,

i have the same problem, i think. I wanted to put my old eee 701 to use and booted FreeNAS-8.0.1-RC1-i386 from USB. Everything just fine. Now i want to install FreeNAS to the internal SSD drive to free up the USB port. Because external HDDs should go in there. But there is no option to do that. Is it possible to force it via the console?

Thanks a lot for any help.

 

[ProtoSD]

If you boot from the CD it should recognize your internal disk and let you install to it, but keep in mind everything after the 1st 2GB will be wasted and inaccessible. The next issues is that if you are planning to try and use ZFS on external USB drives I don't think it will work, and if it did it is a very bad idea for a lot of reasons. If you just want to use UFS formatted disks as individual drives and not do any mirroring or anything, that should probably work ok, but remember the bandwidth of USB is very small and with multiple disks it will be VERY slow.

 

[Larsen]

yeah, the eee has no CD drive, thats why i boot from USB. The internal SSD is just 4GB large and so its no big deal wasting the other half. I've already tried a setup with two external HDDs and ZFS without RAID. It worked. I could copy data with about 7 to 8 MB/s, which is fine by me and should even suffice for streaming video. Most likely i am the only one accessing the NAS anyway.

So i guess there is really no way for installing FreeNAS onto the internal SSD when booting it via USB first?

 

[ProtoSD]

Sorry, I didn't realize the eee had no CD drive, and I suppose you wouldn't be asking if you had an external USB-CD to use or borrow. I'm also sorry I tend to assume that when someone uses ZFS it's in a volume/pool. Anyway, I'm tossing around ideas and there's a utility called UNetbootin here http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/, that might help, OR, have 2 USB flash drives, one with a Linux rescue environment with 'dd' and the other with the FULL uncompressed FreeNAS image which you should be able to 'dd' to your internal drive and make sure it's set active after. See if one of those methods helps, or see if you can borrow a CD drive ;-)