Installation Media USB - Details

[musicman1979]

Ref: Installing SCALE | (truenas.com)

The instructions don't give much:
"Enter command dd status=progress if=path/to/.iso of=path/to/USB in the CLI."

Mentions UEFI

USB Flash Drive
How should it be formatted? What about etcher or something else?

Internal SATA Storage Drives
What can the installer handle for partitions? What would be the best partitioning scheme for success?

I'm unable to do the Ubuntu Scale Install. I've run dd and used etcher for the USB flash drive installer. I can boot to the USB flash drive and select TrueNAS installer. I see "Welcome to Grub" and then nothing.

I got further a few weeks ago (don't remember how the drive was formatted) but trueNAS seemed to be unable to handle partitions and LVM from previous partitions. After a few weeks I'm back at it. I've wiped all the partitions [on all 6 drives] and installed Ubuntu Desktop to be sure everything is working and I don't have hardware issues.

 

[Ericloewe]

How should it be formatted?

It shouldn't. Rather, dd will copy an image of the filesystems, including partition tables, into the flash drive.

What can the installer handle for partitions? What would be the best partitioning scheme for success?

There are no options aside from an optional swap partition of your boot media are large enough. Installs always take up the whole disk and use ZFS.

trueNAS seemed to be unable to handle partitions and LVM from previous partitions.

Certainly in the sense that all TrueNAS storage must be ZFS. You can probably import the data without too much trouble, but you cannot meaningfully use arbitrary setups with TrueNAS (not that you'd want to be using LVM anyway, unless there's no alternative).

 

[musicman1979]

Thank you for directly answering my questions.

I'm just trying to start fresh, but can't get TrueNAS Scale to install. Is there a verbose output or logging for the install? I've tried USB 2.0 and 3.2.1 drives. Can't think of anything else. I get to the grub screen, selected from 2 options TrueNas Install, and then it goes black. It's an older system board. Is there limited hardware support? Is there a way to test to see if the hardware is compatible?

 

[musicman1979]

Specs

• System Board MSI - X58A-GD45 (MS-7522)
• CPU Intel Core i7 CPU 950 @ 3.07 GHz x 8
• RAM 24 GB DDR4
• Storage Drives Hitachi 2TB 7200 RPM - MN6OA5C0 / HDS723020BLA642
  • 6 drives spinning, plus 1 cold spare, and 1 dead spare that doesn't work
  • boot drive first of the HDD's
  • RAID Z2 (when i get there)
  • IDE Controllers (2) Intel:
    • 82801JI (ICH10 Family) 2 port SATA IDE Controller #2
    • 82801JI (ICH10 Family) 4 port SATA IDE Controller #1
• Network card PCIe WiFi4 802.11n Qualcomm Atheros AR93xx

Updating signature.

 

[musicman1979]

I needed to use a different USB port (which worked for proxmox and ubuntu). I tried installing TrueNAS Core and that led me to the problem because it gives better output. I saw logging about USB. When I tried again with Scale in a different port it worked.

 

[Ericloewe]

Were you trying with a USB 3.0 port?

 

[musicman1979]

The port that worked with the other installers and not with TrueNAS installer was not USB 3.0.

Someone figured out there is an issue with the latest stable version installer and legacy hardware that doesn't support UEFI. I had the same issue with the "not a block device" error. The fix was to use version 22.12.0; the other two didn't work: 24.04-RC.1 and 23.10.2.

Ref: https://www.reddit.com/r/truenas/co...=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

 

[Stux]

The port that worked with the other installers and not with TrueNAS installer was not USB 3.0.

Someone figured out there is an issue with the latest stable version installer and legacy hardware that doesn't support UEFI. I had the same issue with the "not a block device" error. The fix was to use version 22.12.0; the other two didn't work: 24.04-RC.1 and 23.10.2.

Ref: https://www.reddit.com/r/truenas/co...=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Hmmm, this could be why I couldn't get the current TrueNAS scale installer USB to boot on an ancient system of mine, but I was able to upgrade in place, after verifying that a mirrored current USB based install did work.

I thought it was perhaps requiring UEFI... altho the latest Dragonfish RC.1 certainly has no issue booting this system once its upgraded.