Again, apologies for the noob questions, I seem to have gone through all of the tech support that I can find on the website everywhere, and when I have gotten to the point that I'm at right now it always says 'refer to the forum for more help'.  Well I've been looking through the forum to try and find some answers so far, but no luck so I guess I'll just plonk it all out here and see what I can get

 

I'm trying to setup my new unRAID server and I'm sure I'm going to have a few teething issues because I've never used linux before, that said I'm having the feeling that the onboard gigabit LAN driver for the motherboard I chose to purchase isn't supported by unRAID, silly me didn't really consider that there might be only specifics that were compatible and not when purchasing and I just went to buy quality parts.  For the 1155 there is so much to choose from, but not much to choose from with 8 ports on board so this is what I ended up with.  Specs of the build are:

 

CPU: i3-2100T

Mobo: Asus P8Z68 V-PRO/GEN3

RAM: 2x4GB Corsair 1600 (but I'm going to run it at 1333)

PSU: Seasonic-X 660W

ParityHDD: Hitachi 7K3000 2TB

CacheHDD: OCZ Agility 60GB SSD

Storage Space: 6x WD Green 2TB + 2x WD Green 1TB

Case: Fractal Define XL

 

The WD HD's I already owned prior to the build, however I bought everything else especially for this build however I didn't do any research into what would or wouldn't be compatible with unRAID which could be a big bad bung for me.  I purchased my unRAID Pro pre-installed double pack and received them both about a week a go and I have been trying to get it working by myself for about that long and I haven't been able to even preclear the drives yet so I thought it was time to bring my questions and queries to the forum.  I hope you can help!

 

So, here we are at the question stage.  I have successfully edited my network.cfg file with the relevant network information, however it doesn't seem like unRAID wants to use that network information.  Plus, it just doesn't seem like unRAID wants to use the network port at all.  When I type in 'ifconfig' it brings up the 'Local Loopback' information and gives me an inet addr that is nothing like my network addresses.  Something like "127.0.0.1", I've tried to access that from my other computers but no dice.  My router also doesn't seem to be detecting a device through the port which I've got the network cable plugged.

 

Next up, when I try and use the 'ifconfig eth0' command it tells me 'Cannot get driver information: No such device', does this mean the network card is not supported and I will need to buy a PCI network card?

 

Now, because I don't believe that I need network access to start the preclear process I wanted to follow the configuration tutorial and find if unRAID has found my SATA drives (of which there are currently 3 plugged in).  1x WD Green, 1x Hitachi for Parity and 1x OCZ for Cache.

 

When I used the "dmesg|grep SATA|grep link" command it just simply goes to the next line of the command prompt without giving me any information, and I assume that means that it has detected no connected drives?

 

My BIOS is a UEFI Bios and I hope that isn't going to be a big part of the problem here - I hope the solution isn't going to be to turf the board, I really I hope I can work with this one because it was a $250 Mobo.  Is it possible to purchase a PCI Network card to work if we can't get the onboard networking device to work?

 

Are there any steps that I'm missing to the troubleshooting that I should be doing before giving up on the board? When searching through the forums I found some topics that discussed this board and it seemed as though someone had successfully used it before, but I'm not 100% sure.  I would assumed that this would be a popular board becuase it's 1155 and is one of the only ASUS 1155 boards with 8 ports on the motherboard, but it is my fault for not checking more in detail beforehand.

 

Is there any way to ad extra drivers or things to the unRAID USB to help it pick up the things that it's missing?

 

I'm really sorry for my ignorance, I hope I have explained everything out as clearly as possible and given as much information as possible up front so that it's not annoying for the people that will try and help me because I didn't want to be a pester and start another question "help me set up my unraid" thread.

 

Thanks in advance very much!

The one thing you don't mention is what version of unRAID you were trying with!

 

From a quick look on Newegg at this board it has an Intel NIC... but I think it is one of the newer ones that requires unRAID 5.0b5 or newer.

A syslog after booting might be helpful too.

Sorry... I think it's whichever unraid version came pre-installed on the card for me.  4.6 it looks to be.

 

So I assume that will mean I need to download the latest beta and put that on the card and over-write any files on there already?

 

What do I need to do to ensure that my pro status stays intact? There is a 'license' file is that the one that I keep safe?

 

Edit - No sorry, just checked, it was 4.7.

 

Edit2 - Okay, I just checked again and it seems I just need to keep the Pro1.key intact to make it stay pro is that right?  I have installed the latest BETA and am going to give that a go now

Thanks guys, updating to the latest version got the network going - i haven't gotten to the sata part yet, but I'm going to assume that's going to go well as well, I'll come back with any further queries along the way if i need any more help

 

Excite

Okay - now I'm up to the 'dmesg|gre SATA|grep link' command and I'm entering that command in and it just goes to the next line and gives me no information.

 

I have attached my syslog.txt 

 

Edit - Looking through that syslog it looks like it has detected the drives... maybe I'm doing something wrong when I type in that command? Because they're definitely showing, all three of the drives that are supposed to be there are there... Hmm.

 

Edit2 - What I can conclude from looking through the syslog is that from the configuration tutorial I was supposed to find this:

 

ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)

ata2: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)

ata3: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)

ata4: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)

ata5: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)

ata6: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)

 

and I have found a similar thing but only 3 instances of that, which is the correct result because I only have three drives connected at the moment.  So I assume all is well.  I shall continue with the tutorial

 

 

syslog.txt

Okay - now I'm up to the 'dmesg|gre SATA|grep link' command and I'm entering that command in and it just goes to the next line and gives me no information.

Just a little typo... 'dmesg|grep SATA|grep link' will do the job. 

 

Okay.... I think I've muddled my way through everything pretty well so far, I've got pretty much every step of the way done up until the preclear step, however it seems like preclear isn't working for me now.

 

Every time I try and use any preclear command it returns the eror 'cannot execute binary file', this happens when I try it through the regular root command and also through screen as well, everything else seems to have been installed all correctly and without hitch so it's all working properly, it just sees like my preclear isn't working properly now.  It's definitely on the key.  I'll keep trying.

 

Edit - figured it out, just copied the preclear file over the top again and replaced the old one and it works now... don't know why it didn't before but it is now

the Asus P8Z68 V-PRO/GEN3 should work fine.

I did run unRAID on an Asus P8P68 V-PRO/GEN3 just fine when I was first building my server.

 

 

few things to be aware of...

1. will only work with ver5 beta 4 or newer.

2. the usb3 does not work yet (may never?)

3. you cannot use LSI based raid/HBA cards in the PCIe 16x slots last time i checked (this is an issue with all of the Asus P8 series boards).

4 to use the 3th PCIe 16x slot, you most likely need to disable the USB3 in the bios.

5. umm.. cant think of a #5 right now... but you might want to disable the audio in the bios and other things you are not using.