9.3 install to USB boots in VM but not on physical hardware

[sfl]

Hi here,

I thought I'd update freenas (from 9.2 to 9.3) yesterday and seeing as it never caused me any issues I went ahead. Last time I updated things I'd written the image to the flash drive via OSX and all went fine but it seems this time a direct image write isn't possible so I went with installing freenas to USB. Here's what I did:

Seeing as I just have that one thumbdrive that sits in my N40L I couldn't boot off one USB drive and install to the other so I mounted the install ISO image in a virtualbox instance and installed to USB from there. That went fine (well, fine after I updated my BIOS on the N40L - it wouldn't get past POST with the USB installation) EXCEPT that after the post I get "Could not find kernel image: linux" followed by a "boot:" prompt which sounds like a problem to me ... So I figured I *must* have done something wrong and this install isn't the way it should be so I spin up the VM again with the USB connected, and what would you know, GRUB presents me with a choice to boot in freenas.

Does anyone know what could make it such that the kernel image can't be found booting on one host but can on another?

 

[Ericloewe]

That's weird. What kind of VM are we talking about?

You have a couple of options, beyond getting the VM to work:

• Get some more USB drives (you can never have too many of them)
• Burn a DVD and use a USB DVD drive to install FreeNAS to the USB drive
• Use remote management, if your server has it
• Write FreeNAS 9.2.1.9 to the drive, boot it, use the GUI updater to update to 9.3

 

[sfl]

Thanks for he prompt reply Eric. I wasn't really considering running off a VM permanently (not sure if that's what I made it sound like.. ). I just ran the VM off my laptop so I could mount the ISO and setup the USB drive. What I essentially did is the second point on your list but without burning the ISO to DVD (my server doesn't have a DVD bay). This USB drive does work as far as I can tell, it boots freenas just fine on my laptop (not that I should be running if off a VM on a laptop for anything but testing). I wouldn't have thought so but is it possible that the host used to create the USB drive has to be the same as the host that will run off the drive later (hardware implications etc)?

p.s My first attempt was the GUI but the host wouldn't reboot after installation (I later found out that the BIOS on these N40L couldn't deal with the new boot sequence/setup. After upgrading the BIOS I could get past the POST but now I have this problem.

 

[Ericloewe]

Thanks for he prompt reply Eric. I wasn't really considering running off a VM permanently (not sure if that's what I made it sound like.. ). I just ran the VM off my laptop so I could mount the ISO and setup the USB drive. What I essentially did is the second point on your list but without burning the ISO to DVD (my server doesn't have a DVD bay). This USB drive does work as far as I can tell, it boots freenas just fine on my laptop (not that I should be running if off a VM on a laptop for anything but testing). I wouldn't have thought so but is it possible that the host used to create the USB drive has to be the same as the host that will run off the drive later (hardware implications etc)?

p.s My first attempt was the GUI but the host wouldn't reboot after installation (I later found out that the BIOS on these N40L couldn't deal with the new boot sequence/setup. After upgrading the BIOS I could get past the POST but now I have this problem.

I understood the VM was just so you could install FreeNAS, no misunderstanding there. What kind of VM is it? Possibly, the access it's getting is not low-level enough.

 

[sfl]

Sorry, I didn't mean to say you didn't understand, just that I've been known to not be very clear ;-) For the VM I'm just using a VirtualBox instance (setup with a BSD profile). What I don't understand is how the USB drive can work (kernel can be found) on the VM, yet when booting with actual hardware, the kernel all of sudden can't be found.

 

[Ericloewe]

I think some people have done this successfully with virtualbox.

At this point, I recommend you try something else.

 

[sfl]

I'm sure you're right (and hence the post). Thanks for the help.

 

[alykalanany]

If I understand you correctly, you are trying to install to an USB drive on a VM to then use that installation on another, physical machine. But that is not supported anymore since it's installing grub boot loader to support multiple boot images (versions). You have to install it on the machine you are going to run it on.

 

[sfl]

Tanks for the reply.

Correct, that's what I did. It actually worked last night but I am a little concerned about what you're sayin (that it's not supposed to work). Do you happen to know why the inatall to use must happen on the same hardware ? I'm curious about the workings of it.

 

[alykalanany]

I think it is basically because it now installs it with grub boot loader on zfs for the boot device, so if you move it to another machine it may or may not find the correct paths depending on hardware configuration. This new installation behavior is mentioned in the 9.3 release notes while the FAQ still mentions "directly burning to flash drive", but there is no USB image available for 9.3.

 

[sef]

If I understand you correctly, you are trying to install to an USB drive on a VM to then use that installation on another, physical machine. But that is not supported anymore since it's installing grub boot loader to support multiple boot images (versions). You have to install it on the machine you are going to run it on.

I don't know why you think that. What's not supported is installing to the installation media.

But as long as the hypervisor allows for direct access to a thumb drive, there is no reason for that not to work, barring the GPT incompatibility issue that seems to be due to older BIOSes.