Another non-bootable USB problem

[cayenne]

Hi all,

I've tried this with a couple of different brand 8GB USB sticks....from a linux box I run the dd command:

xzcat FreeNAS-8.3.1-RELEASE-p2-x64.img.xz | dd of=/dev/sb1 bs=64k

per the docs I've been reading. I've tried this on a couple different grant USB thumb drives, and I've set the bios on a couple of my computers to boot from USB (different brands of computers), and neither my other computers nor the simple one I put together for the freeNAS box will see it as bootable. Each one, the bios comes back asking to insert a bootable device and hit return.

Am I missing something somewhere, I can't get any machine to recognize any USB drive I set up with the xcat / dd command as bootable.

The box I built for the freeNAS box is untested, it has no drives in it, no harddrives, not cd, etc. I was going to just run it 100% off the USB stick.

I figured since this was untested I'd try it out on other computers around the house, and none of them see any variation on the theme as bootable.

Suggestions?

Thanks in advance....

cayenne

ps. I've tried this with other releases of the img...p1 and a couple BETA ones too...same story.

 

[cyberjock]

Gotta decompress the .xz file first...

 

[dlavigne]

Does the Linux system have xzcat installed? Do you get an error when running that command or do you instead get back the number of bytes written once the write is complete as shown in the docs?

 

[cayenne]

Does the Linux system have xzcat installed? Do you get an error when running that command or do you instead get back the number of bytes written once the write is complete as shown in the docs?

Yes, it has xzcat installed, it finishes by reporting the number of bytes written....so, it appears to be writing to the USB drive properly.....

C

 

[cayenne]

Gotta decompress the .xz file first...

Thank you for the excellent noob install questions documents. I don't have windows running here, so I read through the PDF.

I looked on that PDF, as well as the install manual, and from all I can see, I am doing the xzcat | dd command properly, yet it doesn't seem to give me a bootable USB drive, and again, I've tried different drives on different computers, none of them are recognized as bootable devices. I've set my computers that I'm trying this with to boot first from USB.

Thanks,

C :(

 

[dlavigne]

Sounds like a BIOS setting then. Or try a different brand of stick.

 

[cayenne]

Sounds like a BIOS setting then. Or try a different brand of stick.

Like I mentioned, on all computers this has been attempted on, BIOS set to boot first from USB. I've tried this with different USB sticks, different brands.

Still no go.

:(

 

[gpsguy]

Find any machine that has a CDROM. Burn the ISO to CD, boot that disk and install FN on the USB flash drive.

While burning an image directly should work, it's not working for you. It's time to try something else.


Sent from my phone

 

[tammus]

I have exactly the same problem as Cayenne. My USB install won't boot. I tried following gpsguy's suggestion but that didn't work either. Disappointing really.

 

[tammus]

Should have mentioned USB stick is a Maxwell 4gb.I tried booting from a desktop and a laptop with no success. Both were set to boot first from USB. No success.

 

[tammus]

Seems to me the install script isn't setting the boot script for the USB but I don't know how to fix this.

 

[gpsguy]

Tammus. Have you checked your bios settings?

Tell us about your hardware, ie. system/motherboard, flash drive size, and version of FreeNAS.


Sent from my phone

 

[tammus]

BIOS is set to boot from USB, which is a Maxell 4gb stick.
Desktop motherboard is Asus M5A78L-M LX V2
OS is Debian 7 but I'm booting from USB (or trying to!)
I have 8gb ram
Freenas is version 9.1.0
I also tried booting with Fujitsu laptop. No joy.

 

[tammus]

I think the install to USB has failed to make it bootable but I don't know how to make that right.

 

[PieEater3142]

Has anyone got an update on this - I can't get the img.xz files to create a bootable usb with dd on linux

 

[dlavigne]

Post the exact command and arguments you are using.

 

[PieEater3142]

sudo xzcat FreeNAS-9.1.1-RELEASE-x64.img.xz |sudo dd of=/dev/sdb1 sdb1

sdb1 is a 16gb hp usb thumb drive - brand new. also tried it on an old novatech 8gb drive to be sure wasn't the usb drive - same results. In gparted it says unknown partition of 16gb after running the above line. it starts as fat32

what file format do i want sdb1 to be in to start with, and what flags if any?

 

[dlavigne]

This command should work (do not include the 1 in the device name):

sudo xzcat FreeNAS-9.1.1-RELEASE-x64.img.xz |sudo dd of=/dev/sdb bs=64k

 

[PieEater3142]

Thank you - online guide suggested to me the dd was to an existing partition. slightly confusing.

 

[dlavigne]

It currently says:

On Linux, use /dev/sdX, where X refers to the letter of the USB device.

Do you have a wording suggestion to make that clearer?