Hello, I am trying to get unraid to boot more smoothly. I don't have issues with it running but if the system needs to restart it will not restart unless I move the flash drive to a different port each time. It seems weird but I can move it back and fourth between two ports each time it boots and have no problems, but if the drive is not moved Unraid simply will not boot up. Looking for suggestions on how to fix this problem.

 

The system is running a MSI690 with a I9-12900k 64GB RAM, Nvidia 3070TI and many storage drives.

I recently upgraded my system to a MSI MPG Z590 GAMING PLUS motherboard and I had that exact same problem. The system booted fine but once I rebooted or powered it off it would not boot from the USB memory, unless it was changed to a different port.

 

I don't recall right now what I did to fix it but I think I had to tweak the Secure Boot options and/or switch to UEFI booting (my USB drive was configured to legacy on my previous motherboard). If you're not using UEFI, try that first (enable it in BIOS and rename the "EFI-" folder on the USB drive to "EFI"). If it still doesn't work try to enable/disable the option(s) related to Secure Boot. Also be sure to properly configure the boot devices and priority in the BIOS (remove everything but the USB drive) but if I remember correctly, that didn't fix my problem until I did what I explained. I'm not sure if it was because I upgraded from a quite old motherboard (10 or 12 years old) but the MSI BIOS seemed confusing and complicated compared to what I was used to.

 

Let me know if you need any additional help.

Will it work if you completely power down instead of just rebooting?

13 hours ago, trurl said:

Will it work if you completely power down instead of just rebooting?

I can't recall exactly but I think in my case it also happened if I completely powered down the server, the only way to make the USB drive boot again was to change it to another port, let's see what @Austin Detzel says.

 

I also recall that it was not a problem related to Unraid or its booting drive. To isolate the problem I tried with other booting systems (Ubuntu and PassMark's Memtest) and I had the same problem, they would boot fine the first time but they would refuse to boot again unless I changed the USB drive to another port.

 

By the way, this seems to be a known issue:

 

 

I vaguely remember something about Fast Boot so I would recommend @Austin Detzelto test the following (in order):

 

1. Disable "Fast Boot" and try again

2. If that doesn't work, in "Settings > Advanced > USB Configuration" set "XHCI Hand-off" to "Disabled" and "Legacy USB Support" to "Auto" and try again

3. If it still doesn't work, try to tweak the booting options to enable UEFI booting/Secure Boot and be sure that you're booting the Unraid USB drive in UEFI mode (rename "EFI-" folder to "EFI").

 

I can't restart my server right now because I'm rebuilding Parity but if you still have problems let me know and I will check what my settings are in the BIOS so you can compare and see if copying them solves your problem.

14 hours ago, trurl said:

Will it work if you completely power down instead of just rebooting?

No, it still will not boot unless the drive is moved.

On 2/7/2023 at 11:13 AM, Devotee said:

I can't recall exactly but I think in my case it also happened if I completely powered down the server, the only way to make the USB drive boot again was to change it to another port, let's see what @Austin Detzel says.

 

I also recall that it was not a problem related to Unraid or its booting drive. To isolate the problem I tried with other booting systems (Ubuntu and PassMark's Memtest) and I had the same problem, they would boot fine the first time but they would refuse to boot again unless I changed the USB drive to another port.

 

By the way, this seems to be a known issue:

 

 

I vaguely remember something about Fast Boot so I would recommend @Austin Detzelto test the following (in order):

 

1. Disable "Fast Boot" and try again

2. If that doesn't work, in "Settings > Advanced > USB Configuration" set "XHCI Hand-off" to "Disabled" and "Legacy USB Support" to "Auto" and try again

3. If it still doesn't work, try to tweak the booting options to enable UEFI booting/Secure Boot and be sure that you're booting the Unraid USB drive in UEFI mode (rename "EFI-" folder to "EFI").

 

I can't restart my server right now because I'm rebuilding Parity but if you still have problems let me know and I will check what my settings are in the BIOS so you can compare and see if copying them solves your problem.

 

My apologies for the late reply. I did read through all of your comments but needed a proper opportunity to take the server offline. The fastboot seemed to work for me.

 

Many thanks to everyone.

 

 

I've got this same issue. I'm using an MSI Mortar motherboard that doesn't seem to have a fast boot option. I've tried every combination of boot order to try and get my system to remember to boot off USB. The only fix for me is to actually manually go to the bios and then proceed to boot (save and exit, no changes). That's the only way I can boot into UNRAID.

 

If anybody has any ideas I'd LOVE some help here...

13 minutes ago, atmaledy said:

I've got this same issue. I'm using an MSI Mortar motherboard that doesn't seem to have a fast boot option. I've tried every combination of boot order to try and get my system to remember to boot off USB. The only fix for me is to actually manually go to the bios and then proceed to boot (save and exit, no changes). That's the only way I can boot into UNRAID.

 

If anybody has any ideas I'd LOVE some help here...

Do you see these option in the boot config? Are you on the latest BIOS

Maybe Unraid should overthink the concept with USB Sticks.. This is just not reliable.. Just got a message that my USB Stick was disconnected while Server was running.. Why the hell USB Sticks? No professional would do this..

6 hours ago, glockmane said:

Maybe Unraid should overthink the concept with USB Sticks.. This is just not reliable.. Just got a message that my USB Stick was disconnected while Server was running.. Why the hell USB Sticks? No professional would do this..

This has been brought up several times over the years.  It is true that USB implementations vary from motherboard to motherboard and chipset to chipset.  Unfortunately, some are not very reliable.  USB2.0 seems to be much more stable than USB 3.x, thus the recommendation every time these USB boot issues come up to use a USB 2.0 flash drive in a USB 2.0 port on the motherboard.

 

I doubt Limetech will ever consider moving away from USB flash drives for the following reasons:

1.  Ease of tying license to flash drive GUID
2.  Portability of OS/system files and Unraid configuration to another machine or ability to change hardware without effecting license
3.  Ease of replacing/re-licensing another flash drive if original fails
4.  Ease of running an Unraid trial with a USB flash drive

There have been requests to license via SSD in the same way but they have never received any traction.

 

I am currently struggling with USB-related issues on one of my Unraid servers (ASRock motherboard) where some USB flash drives will boot properly and and some will not yet they all boot on my other Unraid server.  It varies between flash drive not recognized at all to start to boot Unraid just fine and then fails to find a USB with the Unraid label (even though they all have that label).  Just changing USB ports makes no difference.

@Hoopster

 

If this is true than it is licensing over stability which is no good.. Also if I wanted to run without valid license this would be no problem at all but I won't explain that any further..

 

What if Mainboard Manufacturers decide to cap USB 2.0 some day?

 

Maybe Limetech could at least certify a bunch of USB Sticks..

Edited March 19, 20233 yr by glockmane

2 hours ago, glockmane said:

If this is true than it is licensing over stability which is no good

I doubt it is an issue of choosing one over the other.  Limetech is not going to deliberately sacrifice stability for convenience. 

 

USB for the most part is fairly stable and the issues that do exist are a function of hardware problems (usually, as I believe it is in my case) and not Unraid/Linux kernel. 

 

The USB flash drive is really just a repository for files that load into RAM on boot and for storing configuration and a flash drive as small as 2GB is more than sufficient.  Seems like a waste to dedicate an SSD to this task as Unraid does not have the concept of a boot/OS drive like Windows, MAC, etc. 

 

Unless there could be a small partition on an SSD for Unraid files and config and the rest utilized for cache/storage, it seems like a waste.

 

I have been using Unraid for 12 years and swapped out motherboards/CPU/RAM on my two servers at least five times total and have never had a USB issue until now and I believe it is the fault of the motherboard in my backup server.

Edited March 19, 20233 yr by Hoopster

Older thread, but:

 

After upgrading my MSI board to the latest firmware (July 2023) I had an "MSI quick boot" option and a "quick boot" option. Disabling both fixed this nagging problem for me.

On 2/7/2023 at 9:13 AM, Devotee said:

1. Disable "Fast Boot" and try again

Disabling Fast Boot worked for me.

On 9/22/2023 at 6:18 PM, SomeUNRAIDguy said:

Older thread, but:

 

After upgrading my MSI board to the latest firmware (July 2023) I had an "MSI quick boot" option and a "quick boot" option. Disabling both fixed this nagging problem for me.

 

Same issue for me... MSI h510m-a pro board to the latest firmware (July 2023) in my case only "quick boot" option was enabled but unraid booted after disabling it.

 

Additional issue which i assume was caused by the fact that it was the first run after install, once the boot was done, root password was no longer working.

 

Performed a password reset using the below procedure :

 

 

Lost root Password

Occasionally users lose their password for managing Unraid via the Unraid webGUI or console. This may be that they simply forgot the password, but corruption of the flash drive can also result in the password not being recognized.

Passwords for shares can be changed/reset from the Unraid webGUI.

To reset the management password use the following process:

Shutdown server and then plug the USB boot flash device into a PC or Mac

While there it is a good idea to run a check on the flash drive and make a backup of its contents

Delete these files:

config/passwd

config/shadow

config/smbpasswd

Plug the flash back into the server and start up again.

Note that this will reset all user passwords including 'root' user to null (blank).

 

After a refresh of the browser ....

 

 

Password change was successful.

Also one additional thing that I have observed is that  the other user that I had previously created was no longer present, so I had to recreate it.

 

PS : for noobs ! (like me... :)) ) if the array does not start go to Settings --> Disk Settings ---> SET "Enable auto start" option to YES

 

Edited December 19, 20232 yr by Fene
minor change

This is happening to me as well.    It started after I upgraded from unraid 6.9 to 6.12.8  (yes, I don't upgrade often)    When the install wrote to the USB drive, it will not consistently boot unless I swap the usb drive to another usb port.   Fast boot is disabled.   Anyone have a fix?

On 2/25/2024 at 1:09 PM, delious said:

This is happening to me as well.    It started after I upgraded from unraid 6.9 to 6.12.8  (yes, I don't upgrade often)    When the install wrote to the USB drive, it will not consistently boot unless I swap the usb drive to another usb port.   Fast boot is disabled.   Anyone have a fix?

Same. I updated to 6.12.8 from 6.12.6 and had this happen. Except now the drive is missing from my boot manager altogether. 

Do you have a current flash backup?

Yeah. I backed up before updating

46 minutes ago, ptyler said:

now the drive is missing from my boot manager

Do you mean your BIOS doesn't see it?

On 2/27/2024 at 12:48 PM, trurl said:

Do you mean your BIOS doesn't see it?

Yes. I moved my USB to a USB 2.0 slot (Thought it was in one already... oops) but it booted right up without an issue.

On 2/27/2024 at 7:01 PM, ptyler said:

Same. I updated to 6.12.8 from 6.12.6 and had this happen. Except now the drive is missing from my boot manager altogether. 

 

Same here. It doesn't even show in BIOS. Need to keep changing port... My motherboard doesn't have a usb 2.0 port though... only internal

I just upgraded my server and have hit this same issue. My board is an MSI z590 wifi pro. I will try disabling Fast Boot and see. Thank you! 

Quote

 

be sure that you're booting the Unraid USB drive in UEFI mode (rename "EFI-" folder to "EFI").

 

Thanks for this.  I had this trouble today, and this was the solution. 🙂

 

I appreciate you sharing your expertise.

 

Kevin

There is easy solution for any kind booting issues.

 

- copy all files from your pen drive to temporary location 

- use rufus4.6p or later to format your pen drive with 'boot selection' choose 'Syslinux 4.07'

- copy all files back to pen drive

- enjoy