TrueNAS Core 12.0-U1.1 install does not progress past 20 percent and spontaneously reboots

[alpha754293]

Hardware:
Supermicro X7DBE motherboard
Dual Intel Xeon E5310 (4-cores, 1.6 GHz stock, no HTT)
2x LSI MegaRAID SAS 6 Gbps RAID HBA
2x Samsung EVO 850 1 TB SATA 6 Gbps SSD connected to the SATA ports on the motherboard
6x HGST 3 TB SATA 3 Gbps 7200 rpm HDDs
Supermicro SC826TQ chassis. I don't remember the PSU wattage, but it is the variant that also has 7 LP slots.

I'm trying to do a fresh install of TrueNAS Core 12.0-U1.1 on my older server.

The system currently runs with the OS installed on a HGST 1 TB SATA 3 Gbps 7200 rpm HDD and I wanted to move the installation over to a pair of Samsung EVO 850 SSDs in a mirrored configuration.

I burned the ISO image of TrueNAS Core 12.0-U1.1 using an external slim DVD burner (DVD+RW) (which is how I got the system installed last time).

Now, it will boot up, start the installation process and get to the point where the screen says:

"Installing base-os (1 of 3)"

And then at around the 20 percent mark, the system will spontaneously reboot and the install will fail.

I tried to repeat the installation process with two HGST 1 TB 7200 rpm HDDs, and the same thing happened.

The SATA controller is set to "Compatible" mode.

I tried flashing the ISO onto a USB flash drive with both Rufus and Balena Etcher and the system is old enough that it strugged to boot off said USB flash drive.

Any ideas as to what might be causing the system to fail and spontaneously reboot when I am trying to perform the installation?

At one point, I also tried pulling all of the drives that I was going to use for data drives and plugging the two HGST 1 TB HDDs into the drive slots and then connected the SATA cables from the motherbaord to those ports on the backplane to see if I can try and get the install going and still to no avail/same problem.

Any suggestions and/or ideas?

Your help is greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

 

[revengineer]

First thing I would do is to get the current version 12.0-U8. If you do get it to run, I would take a careful look at your LSI controller because RAID HBA mode is not the same a pure HBA.

 

[alpha754293]

First thing I would do is to get the current version 12.0-U8. If you do get it to run, I would take a careful look at your LSI controller because RAID HBA mode is not the same a pure HBA.

Thank you.

The strange/crazy thing is that I was able to get it to install on a HGST 1 TB SATA 6 Gbps 7200 HDD previously without any problems and now, I can't seem to get the system installed with Samsung EVO 850 1 TB SATA 6 Gbps SSDs.

So, my next question is is there a way to clone the HDD to the SSD so that instead of doing a fresh, clean install, I can just clone it and then add a second Samsung EVO 850 1 TB so that then I can put the SSDs into a mirrored configuration.

Is there a way of doing that?

 

[patrick0525]

I am having similar problems. I burned a 12.0-U3 dvd and when I do an install it says it cannot open with an error /boot/lua/loader.lua .

I did not have problems installing FreeNas 11.2-U8

Update: I read that a windows burned *.iso could be a problem and is not comparable to a Linux dd bootable usb stick. I did a redo with the same iso image but used the Rufus app on W10. All I had to do was insert the usb stick into the motherboard USB port - next to ddr3 ram. It worked and I was able to migrated from 11.2-U8 to 12.0-U3. I am very happy.

My board is a HP ML10 Gen6 with an onboard USB port.

 

[alpha754293]

Just as a follow-up to this, for those that might be interesting, it is entirely possible that this problem occurred because of PEBKAC.

1) The DVD+RW disk that I had been using has been written to and erased countless times, so the media probably wore out. (I didn't notice this until I tried to install CentOS and it was reporting bad blocks/read errors when I was trying to install it. Threw out the old disk and burned a new copy and it ran without a hitch, right away.)

2) There is also a possibility of an interface incompatibility between the Supermicro X7DBE motherboard and the Samsung EVO 850.

Apparently, the motherboard only has SATA 3 Gbps ports onboard, whilst the Samsung EVO 850 SSD has a SATA 6 Gbps interface.

I thought that when SATA 6 Gbps wouldn't be available, that the Samsung EVO 850 SSD would just run at the SATA 3 Gbps speeds.

But I CAN be wrong there as well, which can also potentially be a contributing factor to why the install failed on said both SSDs.

I don't know.

Now that I know that at least (1) is true, that I will burn the TrueNAS Core 12.0-U1.1 ISO again and maybe it might work the second time around.

Dunno.

We'll see.

Thanks.

 

[patrick0525]

Any updates? Thank

 

[alpha754293]

Any updates? Thank

Not yet.

I am still currently in the process of evacuating the data from the systems. Once that is done, then I would be able to burn the ISO onto a new DVD+RW disk, and then try the installation process again.

It's probably going to be a few more days to another week before the next attempt at installing will begin.

But if you are interested in the outcome, I can definitely post the results from those efforts here when I start attempting to install it again and let you know what the outcome is from that.

Thanks.

 

[patrick0525]

I like to read your findings.

 

[alpha754293]

I like to read your findings.

Will do.

Will report back when the process begins/completes and will let you know what's the ultimate outcome of it.

Thanks.

 

[alpha754293]

It failed.

I tried connecting the pair of Samsung EVO 850s and set up the Intel RAID1 and the TrueNAS install wiped said RAID1 configuration so that failed.

And then I tried installing again where I selected both Samsung EVO 850 SSDs (hoping that it would install it as a mirrored pair, but I don't know that for certain), it also failed as well.

And then to try and simplify things, I tried a 3rd time to install on only a single Samsung EVO 850 SSD and that failed as well, as before.

So, something's up with it, and there isn't like any error nor diagnostic messages that gets printed to the console to try and help figure out why it is spontaneously rebooting.

So right now, I am using a HGST 1 TB SATA 3 Gbps HDD that I had previously managed to get TrueNAS Core 12.0-U1.1 on and using that as the OS drive for the system.

It looks like that this failed.

Not sure why.

(And unfortunately, I won't be able to test it any further because I need to bring the system back up online and deployed back into production.)

Thanks.

 

[patrick0525]

How about this as a try.
TrueNas-12.0-U3-> Rufus->install to another ssd manufacturer which is connected to the Mobo.

 

[alpha754293]

How about this as a try.
TrueNas-12.0-U3-> Rufus->install to another ssd manufacturer which is connected to the Mobo.

Don't have another SSD available.

As I mentioned, the server is already re-deployed back into production and the reverse data migration has already begun so unfortunately, I won't be able to do any more testing with this server.

Thanks.