SOLVED System does not load FreeNas from USB drive

[Benxas]

Hold on, I tried ejecting the CD to replace it and it suddenly skipped the error and got the console.

I might be there!!!

---

Yes, I've got to the console and can access the webGUI.
It seems it just didn't want to boot directly from the USB drive but it's now installed and booting from the USB drive after using the CD installer.

---

Damn it I broke it again. It won't boot again, same problem as my initial issue. Maybe it's an issue with hardware raid being on (I turned it off at one point). Well at least I know if can work. I just need to work out what the hardware options are that will allow it to boot stably.

I will post back when I work out the right settings in case anyone else with a microsever has my problems.

 

[liukuohao]

Hi Benxas,

I just want to tell you that you are not alone with this problem.

I read page 39 of the FreeNAS 8.3.1 user guide many times on
how to boot FreeNAS using a USB stick. I burnt the 64bit image
using Win32 Disk Imager into a KingMAX USB2.0 4G thumb drive.
I Booted up the PC using this thumb drive. But could not proceed
anywhere. I can only see "Operating System not found" on
the POST screen.

If I use the CD installer to boot, no problem. Yes, I know, luckily,
I have an existing old IDE CD-Writer and my motherboard support
IDE ports.

I can use the CD installer to install the image into the USB thumb
drive, no problem, but I could not get it to finish loading the drivers
and got stuck somewhere. However, if I use the previous version
of FreeNAS v8.0 CD installer, I could get the PC loading all drivers
and finally allow me to gain access into the Web GUI on the different
PC at the same network.

For your information, the PC has been tested to work with an outdated
FreeNAS v0.7 32bit (Now it was changed to NAS4Free)
booting and running on the same KingMAX USB2.0 4G thumb drive.
However, when creating the bootable USB thumb drive,
I did not use Win32 Disk Imager . Instead I used a CD installer.

So, now I still troubleshooting on what is the reason of failing
to boot up from the USB thumb drive when it has an image
on it.

 

[cyberjock]

So it sounds like more of a hardware incompatibility with the newest versions of FreeNAS than you not being able to properly install FreeNAS. Any BIOS updates for your motherboard? Maybe try disabling some of the unused hardware on your motherboard or setting BIOS settings to default.

 

[liukuohao]

Hi Cyberjock,

First of all, am I hijacking someone's thread here?
If yes, let me know so that I can start a new post
on my own in the forum.

Actually, my motherboard is a Super Micro PDSME motherboard:
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/pd/e7230/pdsme.cfm

I have double check on the website for its LATEST bios update:
http://www.supermicro.com/support/resources/results.aspx
My existing PDSME motherboard is in fact using the LATEST
bios revision: v1.1a

Personally, I would think it is not a hardware compatibility issue,
because as I mentioned earlier that I did managed to run
FreeNAS v0.7 32bit on the system without any problem
and FreeNAS v0.7 is based on FreeBSD v7 (if I am not mistaken)
So logically, if FreeNAS v0.7 can load properly with the drivers,
without any doubt FreeNAS v8 (which is based on FreeBSD v8)
should be able to support the my motherboard hardware.

 

[liukuohao]

I am suspecting there is something to do with the boot sector on the
USB thumb drive. Since I see this POST message = Operating System not found
every time, I boot off from the USB thumb drive.

My question is does the USB thumb drive need to be MS-DOS formatted
BEFORE writing the FreeNAS image into it??

I found a tutorial written from a forum member: Leadacid, maybe this help me to solve my problem:
http://forums.freenas.org/threads/how-to-write-the-embedded-freenas-8-image-under-windows.251/

 

[cyberjock]

The USB thumb drive doesn't have to be formatted for anything.

I think your assumption that what worked in FreeNAS .7 will work with FreeNAS 8 is flawed. I have 2 systems that will not under any circumstances work with FreeBSD 9, but FreeBSD 8 will run flawlessly. I don't see any reason to think that a comparison between FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 7 is any less valid. There will always be "that weird situation".

I never used the FreeNAS .7, but if you are familar with properly burning ISOs and can't get the CD to boot properly and are sure that the CD-ROM is selected as the boot device then the issue is probably hardware. It really is a situation where you either know what your doing or you don't.

As such, I still stand behind my comment earlier that 99% of the problems people have is because of user error, hardware incompatibility or not using a good quality USB drive that is at least 4GB. The real question is, which one are you falling under? If you are sure you are using a good quality USB drive, then that kind of narrows it down(there have been plenty of people that swore up and down that they had a "high quality" USB stick, but as soon as they got Kingston, Corsair, etc the problems went away). Either you are confused and not properly burning the ISO or writing the image file to your USB stick, or you have a hardware incompatibility.

Some of the stuff I've read about FreeBSD 10 will make some hardware not run it despite FreeBSD 9 working just fine.

The simplest way to explain the installation of FreeNAS is this:

1. If you use the image file to make your USB stick, then you are doing a sector for sector write to the USB stick.
2. If you use the CD-ROM, the CD-ROM will write that image file just like you'd have done in step 1, except its doing all the work.

 

[Benxas]

So I've discovered that freenas will not boot from the usb drive if I have hardware raid 1 set up from the motherboard. Once I changed the drives from RAID to AHCI, it booted absolutely no problem first time straight to the console.
I'm not sure if this will work for you liukuohao as I don't know your hardware setup.

This won't be too much of a problem for me because having read the documentation around storage and pools, it looks like there are ways of adding disks to zfs formatted pools and it's possible to auto import them if for some reason the O/S gets destroyed without losing any data. @cyberjock, is that a fair (albeit very basic) analysis?

 

[cyberjock]

This won't be too much of a problem for me because having read the documentation around storage and pools, it looks like there are ways of adding disks to zfs formatted pools and it's possible to auto import them if for some reason the O/S gets destroyed without losing any data. @cyberjock, is that a fair (albeit very basic) analysis?

Yep. You shouldn't be using ZFS on a hardware RAID either.. so that works out to make sure you didn't.

If you check out section 1.4.4 of the manual it says:

FreeNAS® supports hot pluggable drives. Make sure that AHCI is enabled in the BIOS. Note that hot plugging is not the same as hot swapping.

 

[Benxas]

True, but it also says in the hardware recommendations that

instead of mixing ZFS RAID with hardware RAID, it is recommended that you place your hardware RAID controller in JBOD mode and let ZFS handle the RAID.

and since I wasn't planning to use ZFS I figured hardware RAID would be alright. Also, since my hardware doesn't support hot plugging or hot swapping I assumed that enabling AHCI was only important for that situation.

As you said though, it stopped me from using Raid when I have eventually used ZFS. Either way, if anyone has a similar problem, they may find this thread and therefore may save themselves the grief.

Many thanks for your suggestions cyberjock. I shall mark this thread as answered (and go and start reading some on Jails and the minidlna plug-in).

I hope liukuohao finds his solution too.

 

[Benxas]

OK, now I'm being a serious noob. How the freak do I change the status to solved?

 

[cyberjock]

I marked the thread as SOLVED. I'm not sure how you do it, but I can just edit the thread and change it.. /shrug

I didn't realize you were trying to use UFS. It's pretty rare for people to want UFS. Usually the ones that want UFS are sufficiently experienced that your error would have been caught before you got frustrated with it.

As for AHCI, I believe you have to use AHCI if you want some features like NCQ. So it's a good thing to keep on whenever you can.

Even if you had gotten FreeNAS to work with the hardware RAID, you may have problems with putting a jail on it. There's a thread somewhere with someone that has issues with the jail on UFS. I believe the developers said that ZFS was all that was tested but saw no reason for UFS to not work.

So you may have ended up using ZFS anyway.

 

[liukuohao]

Hi folks,

You can close this post and mark as SOLVED.
From my side, I have discovered 2 things that
prevented me installing FreeNAS successfully on my
Super Micro PDSME motherboard PC.

1st I have a very flaky USB 1 port.
- sometimes when I plug in the a USB thumb drive,
the BIOS refuses to detect the presence of a thumb drive
been inserted. It does not matter what brand of USB
thumb drive, be it, Kingston or another KingMax.
It won't read the content of the thumb drive. And
hence the BIOS POST screen will show the following message:

"Operating System Not Found"

- and sometimes, if the BIOS does detect the USB thumb
drive, FreeNAS just does not finish loading, it will just
get stuck some where.

2nd I have a very flaky KingMAX USB 4 GB thumb drive.
- I took another identical thumb drive that I had the former FreeNAS v0.7
image on it, I erased the data and reimaged it with FreeNAS v8.3.1
and it will load everything till the FreeNAS set up console on USB 2 port.

Overall, 1 lesson that I have learned so far is always check
whether the BIOS has detected the presence of the USB thumb
drive been inserted. If not, which I assumed it did, FreeNAS
cannot run. Silly me!;)

Anyway, thank you Cyberjock for replying and valuable guidance!:D

 

[liukuohao]

So I've discovered that freenas will not boot from the usb drive if I have hardware raid 1 set up from the motherboard. Once I changed the drives from RAID to AHCI, it booted absolutely no problem first time straight to the console.
I'm not sure if this will work for you liukuohao as I don't know your hardware setup.

This won't be too much of a problem for me because having read the documentation around storage and pools, it looks like there are ways of adding disks to zfs formatted pools and it's possible to auto import them if for some reason the O/S gets destroyed without losing any data. @cyberjock, is that a fair (albeit very basic) analysis?

In general from the days of FreeNAS v0.6 till FreeNAS v0.7, I have learned that software raid cards or
those fake(as oppose to hardware raid)/cheap raid cards are not supported by FreeNAS.
If it does supported, it can only support as JBOD nothing else.

Dedicated (expensive) like 3ware SATA raid card is supported. But it is pointless to use
hardware raid, when you can have RAIDZ (provided that you have at least 8GB of RAM to use ZFS)
So when you mentioned that your setup is using hardware raid, what kind of chipset it is using?
Is it a dedicated hardware raid card which is slot into a PCI or PCI-E slot?