I have two nForce2 boards, one of them booted and initialized the Unraid USB key fine. The other one (an Albatron nForce2) however, booted fine up to the point where it's attempting to mount 'UNRAID' volume but failed. As a result, /boot/config did not exist and network adapter failed to initialize.

 

I have tried connecting and disconnecting hard disks, moved the usb key to different ports, and the result is the same.

 

Is there a reason why the volume fails to mount? In /var/log/syslog I didn't see any major errors, perhaps I need to turn on the syslog log level?

I'm not clear, are you saying that the same USB flash drive that works on one machine, does not work on the other?

 

If it was the same USB flash drive, then I would suspect the BIOS on the motherboard that did not boot was not working properly, or was set up with a different USB compatibility option, or could not deal with the specific USB flash drive geometry.  (I'd compare the BIOS settings, and also see if an update was available)

 

My 1Gig SanDisk MobileMate did the same thing.  It booted fine on my laptop, but not on the original unRaid motherboard.  It took preparing it with extra options to syslinux ( syslinux -sma x: ) to get it running on that Intel motherboard.

 

Joe L.

To clarify my question, I have 4 PCs at home (2 nForce2 boards, 1 nForce4, 1 Asus P5B-E). All of them are able to boot Unraid using a Sandisk Micro Cruzer 1GB USB drive. The USB drive is formated using HP utility in FAT, and I executed syslinux command on it. I also make sure the volume name is 'UNRAID'.

 

One of the nForce2 motherboards is currently unused, so I am planning to make it into an Unraid server. However, something is wrong during the booting process, the folder /boot/config does not get mounted, and therefore some critical initializations like network adapter does not take place (network.cfg file not found error). My other 3 motherboards do not have this problem because I can access them via //tower after boot process is finished.

 

So I am now trying to figure out why /boot/config does not get mounted during the boot process, I thought as long as the USB drive volume name is 'UNRAID' this should not happen. syslog does not tell me much and I wish there's a way to capture the boot logs.

To clarify my question, I have 4 PCs at home (2 nForce2 boards, 1 nForce4, 1 Asus P5B-E). All of them are able to boot Unraid using a Sandisk Micro Cruzer 1GB USB drive. The USB drive is formated using HP utility in FAT, and I executed syslinux command on it. I also make sure the volume name is 'UNRAID'.

 

One of the nForce2 motherboards is currently unused, so I am planning to make it into an Unraid server. However, something is wrong during the booting process, the folder /boot/config does not get mounted, and therefore some critical initializations like network adapter does not take place (network.cfg file not found error). My other 3 motherboards do not have this problem because I can access them via //tower after boot process is finished.

 

So I am now trying to figure out why /boot/config does not get mounted during the boot process, I thought as long as the USB drive volume name is 'UNRAID' this should not happen. syslog does not tell me much and I wish there's a way to capture the boot logs.

 

Most of the messages generated during the boot process are put into the syslog.  You can display the actual kernel message ring buffer using this command:

 

dmesg

 

To put this in a file use:

 

dmesg >/boot/dmesg.txt

 

You can see if the flash is recognized:

 

cat /proc/partitions

 

It should show up as /dev/sda.

 

You can see if the flash label is recognized:

 

v /dev/disk/by-label

 

You should see a symlink entry pointing to /dev/sda1