Truenas scale 22.02.0.1 install issue, stuck on grub not being happy

[Droz]

I've downloaded Truenas scale three times.
Verified the sha256 hash
Have tried three different flash drives

I keep getting this error....

error: /vmlinuz has invalid signature truenas install
Error: you need to laod the kernal first

Press any key to continue...

After that just goes back to the grub menu

nothing else to do really.


I'm not all that involved with Linux. I've been windows, vmware and building physical infrastructure for 20 years. I build the hardware and let the linux guys have at it.


Thanks

 

[jgreco]

Welcome to the forums.

Sorry to hear you're having trouble. Please take a few moments to review the Forum Rules, conveniently linked at the top of every page in red, and pay particular attention to the section on how to formulate a useful problem report, especially including a detailed description of your hardware.

You've basically given no one anything to work with, so the responses will tend to be random guesses rather than anything useful.

 

[Droz]

Welcome to the forums.

Sorry to hear you're having trouble. Please take a few moments to review the Forum Rules, conveniently linked at the top of every page in red, and pay particular attention to the section on how to formulate a useful problem report, especially including a detailed description of your hardware.

You've basically given no one anything to work with, so the responses will tend to be random guesses rather than anything useful.

OK I am not a complete linux idiot.I understand what's going on and I can research what's the issue is and understand what needs to happen to fix it. I just don't know what needs to be changed and where because I don't do this everyday.



The simple of it all....


download ISO
Use Rufus to get said ISO to a flash drive
Put flash drive into computer
Boot computer from flash drive
Grub menu loads
Choosing option and hitting enter, gets me that error message

Which is pretty much along the lines of what everyone else does.

The system does not have Truenas installed, there is nothing on the drives. I am trying to install truenas via a flash drive, the installer is giving me an issue.


My troubleshooting steps including switching between BIOS and UEFI. Confirming secure boot is disabled

This system has had windows 10/server 2016/Server 2019 installed on it from the same flash drive using the same process as described above with no issue

This system had had VMWare ESXi installed on it from the same flash drive using the same process as described above with no issue



The technical part of it which I know is pretty irrelevant to my issue above

System is

Shuttle SH370R8 (Intel H370 chipset, has latest BIOS installed)
i7-8700k
32GB RAM (four sticks of 8GB)
Four HGST 8TH Hard drives
Two M.2 NVME SSD's


Did I miss any other detail you think might be needed?


Thanks

 

[jgreco]

The technical part of it which I know is pretty irrelevant to my issue above

The technical part of it is completely relevant. You're running into problems booting off a USB thumb drive. The PC architecture has evolved from C/H/S and MFM/RLL to IDE to LBA and ATA, then SATA, then USB was layered on top of that, and then along came UEFI, and then secure boot, and all sorts of other stuff. On top of it, you're booting a desktop platform from an off-brand manufacturer, which means that items like secure boot and UEFI are likely on by default and sometimes they even can't be disabled.

Linux by default doesn't have a solid ZFS boot option, so I know that iXsystems put some work into a custom job of making that happen. Their target platform is servers, so unlike mainline Linux which is focused on booting ext3/etc, the TrueNAS ZFS boot stack hasn't been installed on millions of non-server platforms and had rough edges sanded off, because as I noted above, the PC platform sucks. There are definitely examples of platforms where even default FreeBSD and Linux cannot be installed because they're too Windows-focused.

The thing to do here would have been to answer the questions being asked. I have not booted Scale on a bare metal PC. But I'm aware of some of the issues. I would have liked to have know if this was a USB 2 vs USB 3 port, what kind of thumb drive, and a few other things that might be specifically related to trying to do USB boot on a BIOS that isn't server-optimized. Server-optimized in this case would mean that a manufacturer had put special efforts in to make it highly compatible with Linux, FreeBSD, GRUB, LILO, ESXi, etc., on the understanding that the customer was likely to run a non-Microsoft-Windows-desktop.

But since you are

not a complete linux idiot.I understand what's going on and I can research what's the issue is and understand what needs to happen to fix it.

then you obviously don't need any of my suggestions to help isolate what the problem is. If it were me, I'd:

Try a USB 2 port, because EHCI and XHCI often have different "drivers" inside the BIOS so it's kinda like a second chance if one of them isn't doing the right thing

Try a true SSD attached via a USB-to-SATA adapter, because we really HAVE seen cases where people have multiple thumb drives that have gone bad, didn't properly tolerate getting written to, etc., or had weird issues with being picked up incorrectly by the BIOS

Try installing the appliance directly on a SATA port based hard drive and see how that boots

Load up a generic Debian install on the USB and see if that works

Solving these kinds of problems generally involves some experimentation and debugging effort. The problem is, if you don't have the experience or knowledge to see that, when you post on a forum asking about it, and you don't provide the details because you THINK

The technical part of it which I know is pretty irrelevant

well then you're handicapping those of us who do have the experience and might have been able to help you.

 

[Droz]

Right, so in testing with an old version of Truenas as well as discussion with a friend of a friend who used to work at Truenas.

There is no fix for my issue. The answer was as I thought it was.


I look forward to seeing how your paid support team offers service to customers in the near future.

 

[jgreco]

Right, so in testing with an old version of Truenas

22.02 being the first release, THAT's interesting

as well as discussion with a friend of a friend who used to work at Truenas.

Almost equally interesting as "Truenas" is not a company

There is no fix for my issue.

This being software, that seems unlikely

The answer was as I thought it was.

Which doesn't explain why you came here asking for help if you already knew the answer

I look forward to seeing how your paid support team offers service to customers in the near future.

Well, my paid support team doesn't offer TrueNAS support, because I don't work for iXsystems.

iXsystems, the company that sells TrueNAS-based systems, offers service to paying customers by way of selling fully supported hardware which TrueNAS is known to work well on. And by all visible measures, they do very well at it. If you had actually talked to someone who "worked at Truenas" about this, it seems likely that you'd know that.

 

[sretalla]

Four HGST 8TH Hard drives

How were you planning on putting those inside that super-small case? (or were you thinking of USB attachment?) ... EDIT: I looked at the specs sheet and see they mention some kind of rail solution... still don't get it. It would be interesting to see a picture if you have one.

In any case, you could try something like OpenMediaVault (which doesn't boot from ZFS) and see how you go.

USB disks don't serve well as ZFS pool members anyway.

 

[Droz]

How were you planning on putting those inside that super-small case? (or were you thinking of USB attachment?) ... EDIT: I looked at the specs sheet and see they mention some kind of rail solution... still don't get it. It would be interesting to see a picture if you have one.

In any case, you could try something like OpenMediaVault (which doesn't boot from ZFS) and see how you go.

USB disks don't serve well as ZFS pool members anyway.

It is not as small as you are probably thinking

The beauty of Shuttle's, in my opinion. Is that they are slighlyt larger than ITX for the motherboard, which is great because you get two PCIe slots (x16 and an X4).

See pictures I found online of the inside of the case

 

[Droz]

22.02 being the first release, THAT's interesting



Almost equally interesting as "Truenas" is not a company



This being software, that seems unlikely



Which doesn't explain why you came here asking for help if you already knew the answer



Well, my paid support team doesn't offer TrueNAS support, because I don't work for iXsystems.

iXsystems, the company that sells TrueNAS-based systems, offers service to paying customers by way of selling fully supported hardware which TrueNAS is known to work well on. And by all visible measures, they do very well at it. If you had actually talked to someone who "worked at Truenas" about this, it seems likely that you'd know that.

I really do not like your tone in your messages.

You have a very condescending tone. You come off as "high and mighty" and you niggle over minor details like someone has committed a crime.

Granted this is a text based communication method. Where tone and demeanor can not be conveyed easily. However your choice of words and structure of your replies was surprising and leaves a bad impression of truenas/ixsystem and the people they choose to represent them. Now I say that in the very basic sense. I don't know how you came to be a moderator. I am assuming that you know someone at truenas/ixsystems and invited you to be a moderator.

I really did not expect this from truenas/ixsystems or even any random person on this forum.

 

[jgreco]

I really do not like your tone in your messages.

And I didn't like yours, and in addition the things you were saying did not seem to be based in reality, so I called you on it.

You have a very condescending tone. You come off as "high and mighty" and you niggle over minor details like someone has committed a crime.

In your opinion. You posted a vague message with minimal information. I called you on that, asking for more information. You posted a follow-up that insisted you were not a "complete linux idiot" and telling me that the "technical part of it" is "irrelevant". This sort of adversarial tone is not conducive to problem resolution. Nevertheless, you were provided with additional generic help, along with some explanation of the background of the boot loader and why this could be a problem. You again chose to argue the point, having talked to a "friend who worked at Truenas" and claimed "There is no fix for my issue. The answer was as I thought it was." which I called shenanigans on.

You come off as "high and mighty" and you niggle over minor details like someone has committed a crime.

Sure. I've helped thousands of posters over the years with thousands of systems. I know the score. You've provided no major details that are particularly relevant, so, given that you've only provided minor details about your conversations with "friends" who worked at "Truenas" who allegedly told you that you were right for some answer that apparently is something along the lines of "that's unfixable", this flies in the face of long experience with both PC hardware and interactions with iXsystems. You appear to be resisting attempts to help you.

In addition, you're making inflammatory jabs such as

I look forward to seeing how your paid support team offers service to customers in the near future.

which totally misunderstands a number of things.

Now I say that in the very basic sense. I don't know how you came to be a moderator. I am assuming that you know someone at truenas/ixsystems and invited you to be a moderator.

The story of this is available on the forums. It would show you wrong.

I really did not expect this from truenas/ixsystems or even any random person on this forum.

I really do not expect such obstinate refusal by a poster to help resolve their problems. So, now, with moderator hat on, and you having disregarded the previous warning, I am now warning you in public.

Your tone is unacceptably hostile and argumentative.

Your uncooperativeness in refusing to provide relevant requested information is unnecessarily intractable.

Your intransigence is counterproductive, though you're of course welcome to whatever opinion you wish.

Your deflections are unwarranted; you were the person who set the tone here.

You are now strongly cautioned, second warning, to cease and desist this kind of behaviour. If you cannot work to cooperatively discuss your problems in a constructive manner, helpfully answering questions from the community even if you think them irrelevant, then perhaps a public forum isn't the place for you.

I would like to think that you're a genuine poster who wants help. If so, you're certainly welcome here, subject to the just-stated conditions. But I've been doing message system administration and moderation for nearly four decades. I started back in the days of Usenet and bulletin board systems in the '80's, writing BBS software and operating BBS nodes and Usenet. I'm getting some "troll" vibes from you, but I've also seen enough cases to recognize that there are just some personality types where they just come across poorly. We want to help you if you need help and are open to being helped. There's a lot of great people on this forum.

 

[Droz]

Oh, that's great.

I used to work for The Well (the terminal/text based version) small world (sarcasm there)

Though interesting, don't care for your resume.

I think we can agree on one thing. Our personalities don't mix. So you can rest assured I will limit myself from interacting here. Mostly because I think forums are a horrible way to get help/support. But I understand the reason why for a free product on unsupported hardware.

Having had to resort to finding other hardware to work with. I got Truenas working with a lot of incredulity over the hoops I had to go through to get it working on relatively modern hardware (8th gen). After going through dozens more attempts using a a dozen different flash drives, new and old and testing installing everything short of Aix, Irix, vax/vms. I finally had to resort to using a 15 year old no name brand SD card in an Anker SD Card adapter. The thing that gets me is the SD was in a junk box all that time as it had failed in my camera.

Infuriating


Anyway. I'm testing and it's working. I'm learning truenas. Wish the UI/UX was better

It should not be this hard to make work

 

[Jeff_at_CraftComputing]

@Droz Turns out the issue is SecureBoot not liking GRUB. Disabling it during install fixed my issues. Hopefully it will for your setup as well.

 

[JoshDW19]

Hey guys. I just wanted to apologize about the response to this thread. I'm not happy with the short responses I'm seeing from the moderation team. Even if we feel slighted, as moderators of the community, we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard and this ain't it.

Moderation team, please do not respond to this thread further. Closing this as I agree that disabling secure boot is a great place to start troubleshooting and I don't see the thread producing any valuable discourse beyond that at this point.

 

[Droz]

Hey guys. I just wanted to apologize about the response to this thread. I'm not happy with the short responses I'm seeing from the moderation team. Even if we feel slighted, as moderators of the community, we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard and this ain't it.

Moderation team, please do not respond to this thread further. Closing this as I agree that disabling secure boot is a great place to start troubleshooting and I don't see the thread producing any valuable discourse beyond that at this point.

Thank you Josh. This would have been a much more helpful reply and led me down a less frustrating path.