FreeNAS 11.2-U5 media preparation woes....

hapachyld

Cadet
Joined
Jul 12, 2019
Messages
1
Hello everyone,

I have been trying for weeks now to prepare USB and CD-ROM installation media to install on my NAS system. Unfortunately, my BIOS doesn't seem to recognize any of the installation media as a boot drive. I am currently trying to use an ASUS Mini PC as my server, with an 8 bay DAS attached for my storage drives. I know it isn't ideal, but it was what I had access to at this point. My primary concern is I cannot even seem to get FreeNAS loaded. Thoughts?

Any and all help is greatly appreciated.
 

zenon1823

Explorer
Joined
Nov 13, 2018
Messages
66
USB boot media can sometimes be problematic on some hardware platforms and OS's, its certainly not an issue unique to freenas, but cd/dvd installs have never let me down for any installation. My first guess is a bios configuration thats causing you the challange. So lets start with the most basic question, does your system recognize other boot media? Say a win10 or ubuntu install on a USB or dvd? If those are not recognized then we know its an issue with bios and/or boot config if they work and its just the freenas media thats a problem we can start asking more specific questions around how your preparing the media.
 

eriso

Cadet
Joined
Sep 12, 2019
Messages
2
I had the same problems with FreeNAS 11.2-U5. I tried multiple USB sticks, several different imaging software and even tried to flash the USB stick from several computers. I had lost all my hope.. as a last resort, I tried to flash FreeNAS 11.1-U7, and IT WORKED! It had no problems booting the USB stick.

Maybe the FreeNAS 11.2-U5 version is somehow corrupt? Does anyone have success at booting the installation from this version?
 

zenon1823

Explorer
Joined
Nov 13, 2018
Messages
66
I was able to successfully install 11.2-u5 via both a usb and DVD as recently as last week. (granted I haven't solved the issues of doing it over ipmi-sol I talked about in my ticket from a few days ago, but that's a wholey different issue) but yes the boot media worked fine. I created the USB using Rufus.
 

pschatz100

Guru
Joined
Mar 30, 2014
Messages
1,184
Some motherboards have issues booting FreeNAS from media that is configured for UEFI. I would try the following:

Configure the FreeNAS installer to create a UEFI boot image. Make certain your motherboard bios is configured for the proper boot device and give it a try. This ought to be OK for most modern systems. However, if it this does not work, then make a BIOS (or Legacy) boot image and give that a try. Again, make certain your motherboard bios is set for the proper boot device.

On the system in my signature, I was able to use UEFI boot from flash drives - but when I switched to booting from SSD, I had to use legacy BIOS boot. I don't know why, but I do know that some systems are sensitive to this problem.
 

eriso

Cadet
Joined
Sep 12, 2019
Messages
2
I had problems creating the bootable USB stick (before choosing UEFI of BIOS mode). Anyways, I finally was able to create a bootable USB installer stick of FreeNAS 11.2-U5 using the ImageUSB tool! Rufus, Balenca etc didn't work for me... don't know why.
 

ThreeDee

Guru
Joined
Jun 13, 2013
Messages
698
alternatively .. I have installed FreeNAS onto thumb drives and SSD's both on different computers and then plug that USB drive and now I run an SSD .. into your server and then boot up and then configure accordingly... instead of trying to install onto whatever kind of drive on your server, use another pc
 
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