Wierd problem-add SSD - cannot boot usb flash drive

[philhu]

The computer on my desk cannot boot from USB at all (because it is too old). Yours seem to boot from USB when no AHCI devices are attached; but otherwise fails to boot from USB and wants to boot from SATA only, right?

I found a few people on the Internet with this symptom; some of them fixed the issue one way or another, others--gave up. Good luck!

With six extra SATA ports you can go SATA only and just write off USB devices. That will make a more resilient system anyway.

That is what I am thinking, just take one of the ssds and install to it, the other for the zil, 3rd for l2arc. I will take the ssd and an install stick to work to creat the boot device.

 

[philhu]

I put a bug report into SuperMicro about this.

2 bugs:
1) ACHI turned on DOES cause some devices not to be bootable
2) With ACHI turned on, if there are more than 10-11 devices marked selectable for boot, it seems to forget the correct one

Sure enough, after building an ssd boot disk, it wouldn't be consistent in booting or even showing up in the list of boot selectable disks. I fixed the problem by replacing in the list, the first few zfs data disks, with the SSD Disks, and that makes it boot consistently

But, Supermicro got back to me. It turns out that their bios, 2.1c, has a problem with boot disk selection IF there are more than 10 disks, like I experienced

They sent me BIOS v2.2-beta, adds a processor and fixes the many disk issue. Wierd that v2.1c is from 2011, and they had a v2.2-beta sitting on a shelf for 5 years. Like the board got too old and they just decided not to release it.

I did not apply it because it is a beta and I got it working my way, but wanted to complete the thread.

 

[Robert Smith]

Thank you for the update.

Kinds of problems we have to put up with... Why does not stuff just work?