[SOLVED] Unable to boot unraid (Dell T410)

[broadcastthebadger]

Hi All, 

 

I've been running Unraid for about 6 months now and powered off my tower as I had an electrician around. 

 

On reboot, unraid failed to boot and after determining it was likely the USB stick, I copied the contents over and reflashed a new USB stick. I'm now getting errors on my Dell T410 saying: "No boot device available". 

 

I've tried recreating the flash drive in MacOS and Windows using the unraid utility as well as manually creating the drive in both MacOS and Windows. 

 

I had been using BIOS before but tried UEFI just to see if that would work and that gives me an "ok bad file number" when attempting to boot. In UEFI mode I get the Unraid menu but then followed by the previously stated error. 

 

 

I'm a little lost now and would really appreciate some support.

[trurl]

If you were able to copy from original flash that suggests the original flash might still be good but just needs some fixing. Better if you can keep working with that original flash if possible so you won't have to transfer the license to a new one.

 

Put original flash in your PC and let it checkdisk. Try booting with it again. Be sure to boot from a USB2 port.

[broadcastthebadger]

Okay I’ll continue to use the original flash drive for that reason but had wanted to see if it was the USB stick hence trying a spare. 
 

Unfortunately it still isn’t working. 

 

[trurl]

3 hours ago, broadcastthebadger said:

still isn’t working

What have you tried and what are the results?

[broadcastthebadger]

I have tried: 

- Flashing 2 different drives (both USB 2.0) using both the manual method and the unraid USB creator. 

- I've tried the manual method in both MacOS and Windows

- I've attempted to use both UEFI and Bios (bios had been previously running on my machine) UEFI gets a "ok bad file number" error after the unraid menu.

- Bios does not boot at all (never makes it to the menu) with my machine saying that no bootable drive is found. The USB itself can be seen by the machine and the boot order is setup to see the USB stick. 

[itimpi]

39 minutes ago, broadcastthebadger said:

I've attempted to use both UEFI and Bios (bios had been previously running on my machine) UEFI gets a "ok bad file number" error after the unraid menu.

This suggests that there might be a problem in writing to the USB drive.   It could be worth trying to create it on another machine if possible (this has worked for others).  You can also try booting it on another machine (as long as you do not attempt to do anything after booting it will not change anything on that machine) to see if it works in that scenario as that will at least prove the drive is written OK.

[broadcastthebadger]

Fantastic, I'll attempt to create the USB on another machine. Is it likely that it might be a mac related issue and I may be best off on a windows machine? 

[itimpi]

1 hour ago, broadcastthebadger said:

Fantastic, I'll attempt to create the USB on another machine. Is it likely that it might be a mac related issue and I may be best off on a windows machine? 

In theory both should work, but I think a Windows machine is less likely to interfere and would thus be the preferred choice.

[theruck]

On 12/29/2020 at 7:56 PM, broadcastthebadger said:

Hi All, 

 

I've been running Unraid for about 6 months now and powered off my tower as I had an electrician around. 

 

On reboot, unraid failed to boot and after determining it was likely the USB stick, I copied the contents over and reflashed a new USB stick. I'm now getting errors on my Dell T410 saying: "No boot device available". 

 

I've tried recreating the flash drive in MacOS and Windows using the unraid utility as well as manually creating the drive in both MacOS and Windows. 

 

I had been using BIOS before but tried UEFI just to see if that would work and that gives me an "ok bad file number" when attempting to boot. In UEFI mode I get the Unraid menu but then followed by the previously stated error. 

 

 

I'm a little lost now and would really appreciate some support.

most probably your bios got reset and you need to setup properly the USB boot mode in it. not every USB drive can act as disk and it depends on the bios settings as well so check your bios for USB and legacy USB and boot USB settings

[broadcastthebadger]

Ayyyy! We are up and running again!!!!

So after some trial and error I managed to get it working.

 

In case anyone has a similar issue in the future...

 

Looks like the trick was to prepare the USB using Rufus and check the make "add fixes for old bios" once I did that, copy the unraid contents over manually and run the make bootable script. Managed to find this solution browsing the forums and it looks like I just happened to find another Dell PowerEdge user with the same issue.

[jmbrnt]

Thanks @broadcastthebadger - this gives me some hope at 1:40am...

 

I have recently brought my (encrypted) Unraid server across the ocean, and when it came time to boot up I was getting all sorts of kernel panic messages (about sync..). Doing it all from the iDrac terminal made gathering logs tricky, but I thought I would try and recover my config files from the existing USB stick (which had been working well for 2+ years) and go with a new stick.. Several hours later and still no boot - the closest I got to that nice blue syslinux menu was using UEFI, which doesn't seem to work with my Dell R720..

 

Can you share what settings you used in Rufus to make your bootable stick?

 

Tonight I've tried:

- 3 different USB (2, 2, 3) sticks

- UEFI/BIOS

- Creating the sticks using the Unraid tool on Mac, PC

- Creating the stick by hand using Mac, PC, Linux

- Booting the stick in another PC (which worked)

- Drinking

 

 

[Lioncat55]

On 12/31/2020 at 10:37 AM, broadcastthebadger said:

Ayyyy! We are up and running again!!!!

So after some trial and error I managed to get it working.

 

In case anyone has a similar issue in the future...

 

Looks like the trick was to prepare the USB using Rufus and check the make "add fixes for old bios" once I did that, copy the unraid contents over manually and run the make bootable script. Managed to find this solution browsing the forums and it looks like I just happened to find another Dell PowerEdge user with the same issue.

 

I have Spent a good 20 hours trying to get this working on my Dell R620 and this is what got it working for me and I'm running the latest 2020 BIOS!

 

In some hopes to help other people, Dell, BIOS, UEFI, Server, No Device.