Hi Unraid Community,

 

I have been trying to get Unraid running on a recently acquired Dell R720 for a while now and cant seem to get it to boot no matter what I try, below are the steps I have already tried, I have gone over all the similar posts for R720s and for the specific errors that stop the boot but none of the solutions there seem to work to get me into the OS/Dashboard.

 

I have tried booting in both UEFI and BIOS modes, and hit 2 different errors both times;

UEFI - Memory allocation error that seems to be a know issue.

BIOS - Starts to go through boot process then stops at waiting for device with label UNRAID...... Failed press any key to reboot and loops here.

 

I have tried multiple different USB keys, USB 2.0, 3.0, SSD, I have tried manually creating the USB and using the Unraid Creator tool v2.1 as well as multiple brands Sandisk, Lexar, Samsung of the various types just in case it was a weird USB issue.

 

I have used the same USB's to boot and install Windows Server, Ubuntu and Truenas Scale fine, issue only seems to affect Unraid which is my preferred OS moving forward.

 

Happy for any and all suggestions to get past this I have gone over any settings I think could be relevant to this but nothing seems to have worked.

 

If you need any further info, let me know and ill happily send it along.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

 

 

I don't know if you are following this section but read through it again:

 

    https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/getting-started/manual-install-method/

 

Make sure that you Unzip the contents of the downloaded file and copy all the files and root directories to the root of the the flash drive.  (Yes, there have been people who just copied the zipped file over!)

 

If the flash drive is larger than 32GB, be sure to read about dealing with this situation.  (Finding drives smaller than 32GB is becoming a problem. IF possible, get a USB@ drive.  They run cooler and generally have less issues with problems like this.)  Also plug the drive into a USB 2.0 port on the server.  Again, some MB's, USB3 ports, and Unraid have problems with the boot drive getting lost/misplaced/disconnected. 

 

Hope this helps.  You can also google    Unraid.net dell r720 boot from usb   and look at those posts...

Edited November 15, 20232 yr by Frank1940

19 minutes ago, Frank1940 said:

I don't know if you are following this section but read through it again:

 

    https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/getting-started/manual-install-method/

 

Make sure that you Unzip the contents of the downloaded file and copy all the files and root directories to the root of the the flash drive.  (Yes, there have been people who just copied the zipped file over!)

 

If the flash drive is larger than 32GB, be sure to read about dealing with this situation.  (Finding drives smaller than 32GB is becoming a problem. IF possible, get a USB@ drive.  They run cooler and generally have less issues with problems like this.)  Also plug the drive into a USB 2.0 port on the server.  Again, some MB's, USB3 ports, and Unraid have problems with the boot drive getting lost/misplaced/disconnected. 

 

Hope this helps.  You can also google    Unraid.net dell r720 boot from usb   and look at those posts...

 

Hi, yep followed that guide for the manual creation (definitely unzipped lol), used flash drives have ranged from 8GB to 128GB (formatted to fat32) and I have tried all the ports on the R720 (Internal, Back and Front).

 

Will google that and see if there is anything I havent tried yet, thank you 🙂

Just an update to this, looked over all the threads I could find regarding R720s and Unraid and did the below steps;

 

Checked for any new BIOS/firmware packages, manual check and using the latest SUU ISO from Dell and updated everything I could - Didn't help with my issue.

Double checked USBs again, bought new USBs to test - Same issue with old and new sticks.

Reset BIOS to defaults - didn't fix my issue.

!* Ran Lifecycle Controller and performed a system repurpose/retire cycle and reset iDRAC, BIOS all caches cleared etc. - This is what magically got me being able to boot into Unraid.

After this step I set the boot to BIOS and changed the Boot order to the internal USB port and Server can reboot straight to unraid on the Internal port now issues, as mentioned in a few other posts.

 

Not entirely sure exactly what the reset cleared to fix the waiting for device with label UNRAID issue I was getting but thought I'd mention that this is what got it working for me incase anyone else is having the same issue.

 

Thanks to everyone that sent suggestions etc.