SOLVED Installing FreeNAS 9.3 to Mac Pro (intel)

[Leum]

Good morning all, This is my first post, I've tried to find the answers myself but my Google-Fu is lacking today. I'd appreciate an assist!

I have an old FreeNAS box running 8.3 that I want to update but my hardware won't cope. As a result I've dug out a MacPro (Intel Xeon model with 12GB RAM) and tried to configure it for FreeNAS. There are plenty of guides online for this using the old .img files but nothing yet for the new ISO format 9.3 uses.

I'm a complete Mac novice but I managed to burn the ISO to CD, boot into the installer and play it over to a 4GB USB stick. Everything seemed to go well and I saw no errors but the machine won't boot into FreeNAS.

If hold down the option key to select the drive to boot from - the USB stick isn't available.

I'm beginning to wonder if this version of FreeNAS is incompatible with Mac EFI or if I somehow need to install FreeNAS using a switch that will partition the USB stick with a GUID partition (not actually sure what that is - saw it online as a possible problem).

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[bitsandnumbers]

Did you try something like rEFIt to add a compatible boot loader ? I assume this is your main issue here: being able to boot from USB on a unix partition, which you mac doesn't seem to handle.

Just tell us if it solves your problem.


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[joeschmuck]

One thing, do not use a 4GB USB Flash drive, go get an 8GB. Some users have commented that the 4GB doesn't work on some systems yet the same model type with 8GB works.

The second thing is, if you have a USB Flash drive with a MAC or DOS or any other OS installed, can you select the USB as the boot device? If you can boot from the USB Flash drive then of course there is an issue with your system booting from a GPT drive. If you cannot boot at all from any OS then your computer just can't boot from a USB drive, check on a BIOS update. If there is no BIOS update then I recommend you install a hard drive as the boot drive (choose the smallest capacity you have laying around to minimize the ZFS formatting time for the drive) or a SSD drive (the least expensive one you can purchase, size isn't the factor you should base your purchase on) as your boot device. If that works then you have a work around.

 

[Leum]

Thanks for the tips both - I'll let you know how I get on.

Obviously I'd prefer not to install on a HDD because there are only 4 slots in a Mac Pro for disks and that would drop me from 8TB down to 6.

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Update: It seems that booting from USB is not supported on certain Mac Pro machines (mine included).

Neither swapping to a larger device nor installing rEFInd got me around this and in the case of rEFInd, this bootloader tool installs to the boot hdd which drops me from 4 to 3 HDDs.

I got around it by installing an old PATA HDD into the spare CD-ROM drive (thankfully I rarely throw stuff out!), and installed FreeNAS to the old PATA drive.

Now just trying to establish if it's possible to configure hardware RAID for my 4 drives given that I don't have access to MacOS's disk utility.

------------------------------

Update 2: Looking like I need to partition the PATA drive, install MacOS with rEFInd so I can dual boot into FreeNAS. It's ugly, but it allows me access to the MacOS hardware utilities.

 

[bitsandnumbers]

REFInd allows you to install its records directly into the EFI partition. It would allow you to delete the mac partition afterward (needs checking though). What could be a good idea if you want to keep mac utilities is either creating a mac dvd install disk or find on internet a bundled mac os with disk tools that you can install on an external hdd. I assume you've got a eSATA slot in the back of your mac pro that you could use to boot mac os with the proper hdd case. It would allow you to plug it as needed and prevent it to use resources when not.


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Edit : don't setup RAID from mac os, you're better to do it from freeNAS since you'll want to format it with ZFS and let freeNAS handle the RAID.

Edit2: that is, if you've got ECC RAM ofc.

 

[joeschmuck]

@OP, Apparently you are not familiar with FreeNAS enough to know that you do not use a RAID controller with it. If that were what you really wanted then you should select a different NAS software package. And as mentioned above, hopefully you have ECC RAM.

 

[aaronouthier]

I am trying my hand at this, but I need some help. I have the system booting into rEFInd, but it isn't usually able to auto-detect the kernel and initrd files. It has an option to do so, but 99 times out of 100, it isn't successful. I need to manually tell it what files to use via a config file.

It should be noted, for those who don't know, that although Mac Pros have Intel Core 2 or better CPUs, the earliest models (namely, those released in 2006 and 2007) have a 32-bit EFI, rather than 64-bit. This makes it difficult, but not impossible, to boot an OS on these models. rEFInd makes booting these models much easier. Also, FWIW, if you want to natively boot an OS on any Intel Mac, the boot drive must by GPT partitioned. When I say natively boot, I mean without Dual-booting Mac OS. ie., as the only os on the system, further, there need to be an EFI folder in the ESP, with the appropriate files contained therein.

More to come.

 

[aaronouthier]

I do need some help from somebody familiar enough with the FreeNAS installer, to let me know what files I'll need to use to actually boot into the Kernel. It would also be helpful to know if there might be any reason why the FreeNAS installer might have problems booting from a FAT32 formatted drive? That is to say: If I copy all of the files contained within the FreeNAS iso onto a FAT32 formatted flash drive, and I can take care of installing an appropriate bootloader, is there any reason to suspect that the installer will fail to read any of the files required to install FreeNAS? I haven't gotten that far yet, but I would like to anticipate any potential pitfalls.

 

[Ericloewe]

You'll probably want to ask someone higher up the chain than us. Some devs can be found on IRC late in the day (US pacific time, I believe). A bug report might also get attention, even if it's not strictly a bug report.

 

[joeschmuck]

I can't help out as Mac's are not what I know. And just a thought, because the CPU is an Intel Core 2 that doesn't mean the hardware is compatible. I'd think you need to find out if FreeBSD 9.3 is compatible with your system. If it is then you might have a shot.

Good luck.

 

[aaronouthier]

I can't help out as Mac's are not what I know. And just a thought, because the CPU is an Intel Core 2 that doesn't mean the hardware is compatible. I'd think you need to find out if FreeBSD 9.3 is compatible with your system. If it is then you might have a shot.

Good luck.

Mac Hardware is very similar to PC Hardware on the surface, but somethings are just a bit different. Most of the PCI Express Graphics Cards made for MAC, for example, have PC counterparts. Most are identical, but with different firmware. Others are mostly the same, but with slight differences, like amount of video RAM installed, etc. For this and other reasons, I suspect that an HCL wouldn't necessarily be the last word. For me, if I want to know if something works, I usually try it. Also, Plan A is more likely to succeed when the test subject understands that plan B involves a hammer and a screwdriver...

Still, reviewing an HCL wouldn't be a bad idea, I simply wouldn't take it as the final word.

 

[aaronouthier]

Ok. So, after some experimentation and much research, I have determined:

1. Macs will only boot from legacy (BIOS-style) Boot volumes connect to the Internal SATA and PATA interfaces.

2. They can boot from USB & FireWire, but any such device MUST be partitioned GPT, and be accessible via EFI.

To account for this, I have unplugged the Master PATA port - a DVD-RW drive, and connected instead a 40-PIN PATA to 50-PIN CF adapter with an 8-GB, High-speed CF card. I burned the FreeNAS installer to a blank CD, and put it into the other DVD-RW drive (Slave port on the PATA controller). The installer starts up ok, but shortly after a blurb about i386 compatibility layer or something, it says something about flushing cache, and then it says that the CF adapter and CD Drives are disconnected. Something about CAM status, and a bunch of error codes.

I just found my USB to PATA adapter, and I am going to try using that to Install, and then switch the CF Card back into the internal PATA bus for the first boot. I'll report back when I have something to report.

 

[aaronouthier]

Installs fine, but doesn't boot.

 

[Korwiin]

I believe I have a workaround. I am brand new to FreeNAS, and still experimenting. I have a MacPro3,1 (Early 2008).
I used the Boot Camp Assistant to trick the Mac Pro into letting me install FreeNAS instead of Windows7.

My drives are:
OSX Boot - Internal Sata III PCie card with a Samsung 850 SSD
FreeNAS OS - Original 320gb SATA II drive in slot 1
3 internal slots left for SATA II drives (I have 2x TB I will be using for a mirrored VDEV)


You will need:
Freenas iso burned to a disk
Windows 7 dvd
A spare USB drive, MBR partition table, single FAT partition.
A boot device that Apple supports for bootcamp.

Boot into OSX
Open a terminal prompt and run
sudo nvram SMT=0
This is to turn off hyperthreading, or else you will hit this bug on boot: https://bugs.pcbsd.org/issues/4024

Run the Boot Camp Assistant. Follow the wizard. Tell it which drive you want to boot "windows" from, it will erase the entire disk. Select the option to download latest bootcamp windows support from the internet, and give it the location of your USB drive. Give it the Windows 7 Install dvd when prompted..... If you have appeased the Apple gods with all those things... it should reboot to the DVD.

Hold the power button to force shutdown, anytime after you confirm it is in fact booting the Windows 7 dvd.
Remove the USB stick, you're done with it.
Power on the Mac Pro holding down the left mouse button to eject the Windows DVD, you're done with that too.
Insert the FreeNAS cd/dvd, powercycle and proceed with your install to the bootcamp drive.

When done eject the FreeNAS dvd the same way (power on + LMB)

Now whenever the Mac Boots up, it will go directly to FreeNAS
If you want to boot OSX, hold down the option key while booting. You wont see the Freenas partitions in the boot menu, only OSX.

I verified that it gets a DHCP address and the admin web site is accessible. That's as far as I have gotten tonight.

 

[derTorbs]

I believe I have a workaround. I am brand new to FreeNAS, and still experimenting. I have a MacPro3,1 (Early 2008).
I used the Boot Camp Assistant to trick the Mac Pro into letting me install FreeNAS instead of Windows7.

My drives are:
OSX Boot - Internal Sata III PCie card with a Samsung 850 SSD
FreeNAS OS - Original 320gb SATA II drive in slot 1
3 internal slots left for SATA II drives (I have 2x TB I will be using for a mirrored VDEV)


You will need:
Freenas iso burned to a disk
Windows 7 dvd
A spare USB drive, MBR partition table, single FAT partition.
A boot device that Apple supports for bootcamp.

Boot into OSX
Open a terminal prompt and run
sudo nvram SMT=0
This is to turn off hyperthreading, or else you will hit this bug on boot: https://bugs.pcbsd.org/issues/4024

Run the Boot Camp Assistant. Follow the wizard. Tell it which drive you want to boot "windows" from, it will erase the entire disk. Select the option to download latest bootcamp windows support from the internet, and give it the location of your USB drive. Give it the Windows 7 Install dvd when prompted..... If you have appeased the Apple gods with all those things... it should reboot to the DVD.

Hold the power button to force shutdown, anytime after you confirm it is in fact booting the Windows 7 dvd.
Remove the USB stick, you're done with it.
Power on the Mac Pro holding down the left mouse button to eject the Windows DVD, you're done with that too.
Insert the FreeNAS cd/dvd, powercycle and proceed with your install to the bootcamp drive.

When done eject the FreeNAS dvd the same way (power on + LMB)

Now whenever the Mac Boots up, it will go directly to FreeNAS
If you want to boot OSX, hold down the option key while booting. You wont see the Freenas partitions in the boot menu, only OSX.

I verified that it gets a DHCP address and the admin web site is accessible. That's as far as I have gotten tonight.

Is this method still viable? Have you tried it with FreeNAS 9.10? I have a Mac Pro 2012 that I would like to use and am getting stuck with an error:

KDB: debugger backends: ddb
KDB: current backend: ddb
RCPI:BIOS Error 9bug): A valid RSDP was not found (201660527/tbxfroot-261)
panic: running without device atpic requires a local APIC
cupid = 0
KDB: stack backtrace:
db_trace_self_wrapper() at db_trace_self_wrapper+0x2b/frame 0xffffffff81eeeb20
<db_backtrace() at kdb_backtrace+0x39/frame 0xffffffff81eeebd0
vpanic() at vpanic+0x126/frame 0xffffffff81eeec10
panic() at panic+0x43/frame 0xffffffff81eeec70
apic_init() at apic_init+0x111/frame 0xffffffff81eeec90
mi_startup90 at mi_startup+0x100/frame 0xffffffff81eeecb0
btext() at btext+0x2c
KDB: enter: panic
[ thread pid 0 tid 0 ]
Stopped at kdb_enter+0x3e: movq $0.kdb.why

when trying to boot from my USB FreeNAS.

 

[SwisherSweet]

Is this method still viable? Have you tried it with FreeNAS 9.10? I have a Mac Pro 2012 that I would like to use and am getting stuck with an error:

KDB: debugger backends: ddb
KDB: current backend: ddb
RCPI:BIOS Error 9bug): A valid RSDP was not found (201660527/tbxfroot-261)
panic: running without device atpic requires a local APIC
cupid = 0
KDB: stack backtrace:
db_trace_self_wrapper() at db_trace_self_wrapper+0x2b/frame 0xffffffff81eeeb20
<db_backtrace() at kdb_backtrace+0x39/frame 0xffffffff81eeebd0
vpanic() at vpanic+0x126/frame 0xffffffff81eeec10
panic() at panic+0x43/frame 0xffffffff81eeec70
apic_init() at apic_init+0x111/frame 0xffffffff81eeec90
mi_startup90 at mi_startup+0x100/frame 0xffffffff81eeecb0
btext() at btext+0x2c
KDB: enter: panic
[ thread pid 0 tid 0 ]
Stopped at kdb_enter+0x3e: movq $0.kdb.why

when trying to boot from my USB FreeNAS.

Hi, this works so long as you install FreeNAS in BIOS mode, not EFI. Also, it will only boot via built-in SATA. It will ignore any other devices.

Your error looks like you installed FreeNAS via EFI mode.

 

[aaronouthier]

Hello,
Long time, no visit…

I've been reading this forum here and there, but I don't think I've posted here in about a year or so.

Anywho, I've learned quite a bit recently about (U)EFI verses BIOS booting. This has brought me much closer to finding out what I needed to do to boot my 2006 Mac Pro into the FreeNAS installer. UEFI and EFI require a FAT32 partition to boot. On most systems, this partition is small and hidden. I know how to access this partition, and I know what I need to do. What I don't have, is the time to do it myself. It would require a FreeNAS development environment. Although I may end up breaking down and building one myself, I would appreciate some help in this area. The finished, compiled result has a file called /efi/boot/bootx64.efi. Embedded in this file is a hidden config file telling the executable code where and how to load the kernel and other critical boot files. This file will boot fine n Macs with a 64-bit EFI. On Macs with a 32-bit EFI, such as mine, the file it wants is called /efi/boot/bootia32.efi . Renaming the bootx64 to bootia32 doesn't work. I wouldn't expect it to. What I need is a compiled bootia32.efi from the FreeNAS build environment, with the same embedded config file info as the bootx64.efi file . This is a GNU Grub 2.02 UEFI boot loader, but with ZFS support compiled in, and as I said earlier, the specific instructions for loading the boot files needed. I have tried dropping in a generic Grub 2.02 file for this purpose, but even if I hand-typed the boot instructions at run time, there is no support for ZFS partitions, so I couldn't load the needed files anyway. AFAIK, it should even boot from USB, but I need to drop the appropriate file into the hidden EFI partition. I do not wish to go through BootCamp.

 

[aaronouthier]

BTW, my specs for this Mac Pro:
4x internal SATA 2TB Western Digital Black Edition Enterprise HDDs. 32 GB FB-DIMMs (Fully-buffered, ECC, Registered, DDR2 SDRAM).
2x Quad-core Intel Xeon 5300 series CPUs @ 2.66 GHz each. 1 HighPoint RocketRaid 2314 4-port eSATA card, running in JBOD/non-raid mode.
2x IDE/ATA/PATA DVD+/-RW Drives. ATI Radeon X1900 Video card with Dual DVI outputs.