TrueNAS SCALE Can Install to USB SSD But Won't Boot

[grone]

I want to move my boot drive from a SATA port to internal USB, so I've bought a USB M.2 SSD enclosure & a 120GB M.2 SSD.

The installation can see the drive just fine, and completes the install - BUT - once I reboot, despite having set the USB drivekey to boot #1, and the system showing that it is at least looking for something on the USB to boot, it just skips over it like there's nothing bootable there.

I've removed all other drives from the computer and run the installation multiple times. Nada.

Any tips?

edit: The USB port is bootable. I've previously booted installation media from it. Now that I have iLO set-up I have been installing from remotely mounted media.

 

[sretalla]

Maybe some UEFI or secure boot settings in the BIOS need a look?

 

[grone]

Maybe some UEFI or secure boot settings in the BIOS need a look?

It can only boot from BIOS.

I just installed core the same way I've been trying to install scale, and it boots fine.

I'll try scale again tomorrow morning.

 

[grone]

I installed SCALE over the CORE installation.

Back to not seeing a bootable drive.

Why would CORE install and boot, but SCALE not?

 

[grone]

I moved the M.2 SSD from the USB enclosure to a SATA port adapter and it boots just fine.

Put it back in the USB enclosure - will not boot.

CORE boots just fine from the USB. SCALE does not.

What does SCALE do that could be stopping the computer from booting from USB?

 

[grone]

Installed Debian on the USB drive and it boots just fine. It's only TrueNAS SCALE that won't boot after installation.

 

[Samuel Tai]

What installation option are you choosing? For BIOS boot, you need to select Enterprise mode. You may be choosing UEFI mode.

 

[grone]

What installation option are you choosing? For BIOS boot, you need to select Enterprise mode. You may be choosing UEFI mode.

I must be overlooking something, because I don't see an option for UEFI or BIOS or Enterprise mode.

I saw the option in CORE, but not in SCALE.

But remember, it can boot TrueNAS SCALE just fine from the SATA port. It's only on the USB port that it won't work, despite the port being able to boot a regular Debian installation.

 

[grone]

Tried the external USB 2 and 3 ports - no success.

 

[sretalla]

It all makes sense until you say that plain Debian works fine.

Core uses the FreeBSD bootloader and SCALE uses GRUB, so there's a clear difference that would be a possible explanation for the difference in outcome... but plain debian uses GRUB too... so I'm fresh out of ideas on this one.

 

[Subsonic]

@grone hy mate, have you found out something with the usb-boot problem on your microserver? i´ve had the complete same problems. truenas core was booting without a problem. the reason i wanted to switch to scale because i had massive performance drops when writing data over SMB to truenas core. it dropped to 355 kb/s and stayed there, then it would go up to 110 mb/s and then dropping again. most of the time the transfer broke up after a few minutes.

 

[grone]

@grone hy mate, have you found out something with the usb-boot problem on your microserver? i´ve had the complete same problems. truenas core was booting without a problem. the reason i wanted to switch to scale because i had massive performance drops when writing data over SMB to truenas core. it dropped to 355 kb/s and stayed there, then it would go up to 110 mb/s and then dropping again. most of the time the transfer broke up after a few minutes.

Unfortunately not! I haven't opened a support ticket yet.

 

[Subsonic]

did you test your system with core so far?

 

[grone]

did you test your system with core so far?

It ran CORE just fine - maxed out the gigabit connection transferring to SMB shares. I only moved to SCALE because of the GPU passthrough in VMs (which I haven't got working yet; my support ticket is low priority). But it is working with HW transcoding in plex, so that's a plus.

 

[Subsonic]

then i will go with core once again. don´t know what was the problem with my setup. maybe the raidz1 config? will try one of the integrated nic´s in the next step.

 

[homer27081990]

Give us the full system specs, please.

 

[Subsonic]

Give us the full system specs, please.

look at my signature.

 

[diogen]

I'd try changing the media/port the original ISO is on.
For example, create a bootable USB using Rufus...

 

[Subsonic]

i just tried to install to a 64GB usb-stick and it´s booting without a problem. can´t understand whats the problem with usb to sata adapters. i´m trying now to clone the installation to my ssd and then try to boot.

update: cloning didn´t work, it still wont boot with the usb to sata adapter. sticking with the usb thumb drive. don´t have the time and nerves to troubleshoot such a stupid error and finding a workaround for it.

 

[homer27081990]

USB to sata adapters, depending on model, can sometimes not be loaded correctly by the BIOS (or at all). It doesn't matter if the TrueNAS installer can see the drive, but if BIOD does. Because if it doesn't, no boot. Check if the drive is detected correctly at BIOS (its not enough for the adapter to be detected, the drive should be detected).