Going bald - complete failure to boot any stick I try...

[[XAP]Bob]

I have a P4 system which is going spare, and a bunch of HDDs from a decommissioned storage array at work.

I'd therefore like to get FreeNAS running, with low performance expectations, but ideally RAIDZ running just serving one, or maybe two media devices over DLNA/NFS - when they're not in use it will act as a backup device for a bunch of stuff, but no serious load. just space!

So I download the iso (x86)...
On bootup I get a few SCSI errors, but the process says it's happy and starts up - installs to a USB stick.
- Claims to have completed and asks to to remove CD and reboot (when it should say reboot and remove CD, but hey)
- Please insert bootable device/media :(
Tried it with two unbranded 8GB sticks, a 4 GB SD card in a reader and a 32GB Kingston stick (which I know boots, because it's my memtest stick and I ran memtest on the box)

OK - let's try the image straight to USB - both an unbranded stick and the kingston stick have the same issue.

Ideas anyone? I'm pretty much all out and am considering popping an IDE disk in there to get it running... (would be annoying in terms of bay space, not to mention a bit wasteful)

 

[ben]

Make sure the USB emulation mode is set to hard drive, rather than CD? That's an out-there guess, but it bit me once, so it's worth a try.

 

[[XAP]Bob]

Make sure the USB emulation mode is set to hard drive, rather than CD? That's an out-there guess, but it bit me once, so it's worth a try.

Tried both forced hdd mode and auto mode. Works with memtest, not freenas.

 

[JaimieV]

Did you do the stick install on the same machine that you succesfully wrote the Memtest bootable stick on? I'd try that if not.

 

[[XAP]Bob]

Yep - both done from my work PC (Win7)

 

[ben]

Okay, here's something to try: make a boot USB of FreeBSD-8.3-RELEASE-i386-memstick.img (available at ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/8.3/) and see if THAT boots.

 

[[XAP]Bob]

I thought about whether there was a FreeBSD memtest as well - at the moment the 30G (wasteful) IDE drive is running well, so I'll probably try it over the w/end - I can always save and restore the config...

 

[XyNoix-HIC]

Sorry but I have to ask the obvious, did you set your BIOS boot to USB?

 

[tingo]

And, since it is a P4; does the BIOS even allow usb booting?

 

[cyberjock]

P4s are limited to 4GB of RAM(with very few exceptions) and the manual clearly states that ZFS needs 6GB for reliability and performance. It also says that if you have less than 6GB you should consider UFS until you can afford a system with more RAM.

So good luck!

 

[jgreco]

And, since it is a P4; does the BIOS even allow usb booting?

It is very likely to. The cutover for that sort of thing was around 2000-2002. Prior to 2000, it was odd to find something that'd boot off USB (successfully at least). I can't think of any Intel 440BX gear (that's one of the main PII/PIII chipsets) that supported it, though that info has been rusting in my head for a decade. It's similar in some ways to (and also contemporary to) USB2 adoption, though we have systems here with USB1 that happily boot from USB, and I think we've seen USB2 systems that don't support it. However, the P4 would have been a very high end processor in the early 2000's, and boards that supported it would also have been "high end" boards, so the chances are pretty good that the BIOS supports it.

And of course I forgot the point I was going to make: "but there were several competing theories on how best to handle booting from USB devices, such as treating it as an emulated hard disk with C/H/S translations, etc."

 

[[XAP]Bob]

Yes it supports USB booting - in various modes.

I've done a fair bit of reading around ZFS on "low" memory systems, and given that performance is not important to me (I'll be pulling some overnight backups, but the greatest other load will be the Transmission plugin and a single device streaming over the LAN) with prefetch disabled and a few other memory tweaks combined with not doing dedupe etc the system should be OK.
I'm using ZFS because the disks I have are old (and free) from work - so raidZ has already proved it's worth (one drive DOA, two have failed in use so far - I expect to have a bad initial failure rate then for it to settle down)

Affording a 64 bit system would be lovely, but it's not going to happen for a while - this has cost me £12* so far (to get a supported PCIe SATA card). The system as is does a good job, I like FreeNAS, and will continue using it. the MiniDLNA and Transmission combination means I only have to work out a mini PC to run iTunes for a classic iPod - that'll be the end of (user) PCs in my house.

I've not had an opportunity to try the BSD memtest yet.


* And some time...

 

[coperant]

probleme with installation of free nas please i need a help

i am installing with cdroom
the computer booting in a cd
the systeme write kernet not found
i need to understand why this issue

 

[cyberjock]

Please start your own thread and provide details as outlined in the Forum Guidelines and Rules.

Thank you.

 

[coperant]

let you explaincorrectly my problem
i have one computer processor duo core 2 gh multimedi , it alow boot on cd room and on usb
i setting the bios to boot on cd room
the computer is booting well in cd room
i hahe burn free nas v 8.0.3
when i starting the computer it but on cdroom and i begening it schow write and FREE NASS in big carracter wit 7 option
and after it
the promt write kernel not found

in promt i write the command boot load kernel
the promt write kernel not found
i not understanding any thing
in tutorial of installation i have not see this issue
please i need a help

my english is not perfect please escuse the misteake

 

[Stephens]

- Ask someone who speaks your language and English to help you translate.
- 8.0.3 is old. Use current version (8.3).
- Use 4GB+ flash drive.