Hi Folks,

 

Started this diagnosis in pre-sales but moving it here to general to hopefully capture a wider audience. As there is a fair bit of diagnoses done already I'll not repeat here, and will summarise instead.

(For any masochists that want to see the initial diagnoses & frustration, original thread is here: https://forums.unraid.net/topic/187268-whats-the-chances-of-getting-a-refund-until-i-can-get-unraid-to-even-boot/ )

 

 

Summary:

I'm building a home server from a mishmash of old & new parts, primarily older processing with new or newer storage and cannot get it to boot Unraid.

 

Main System:

Asus P6X58D-E

BIOS 803 (2012) (last one available from Asus)

Xeon X5677

24GB RAM (6 x 4)

Asus Radeon HD 6450

 

I'll not describe the storage as that's moot for getting it to boot from USB and at the moment for diagnostiscs all storage is disconnected.

 

Trying to boot Unraid always ends up in a black screen and blinking cursor and it's not booting headless (caveat, not tried this yet with the GPU pulled).

I can get the system to to boot and run Slax and Unbuntu from the USB flash no issues whatsoever.

 

I do manage to boot unraid onto an "off the shelf" Packard Bell (from 2010ish) w/ Acer Inc motherboard, so the USB Flash is fine.

Whilst I used to be a little bit geeky from mid to late 90's to 2012, since then I've essentially been running mac and have totally lost touch with building systems and geeking out, and in anycase I think even back then I would have been out of my depth.

 

Does anyone have any tips / tricks / tweaks? 

What's really throwing me is why I can run slax & unbunto from USB with no issues, so it should be something quite simple should it not? But what??

 

Cheers,

Neil.

 

 

 

Edited February 24, 20251 yr by Farlig69
caveat on the headless boot & spelling

2 hours ago, Farlig69 said:

do manage to boot unraid onto an "off the shelf" Packard Bell (from 2010ish) w/ Acer Inc motherboard, so the USB Flash is fine.

Is that booting UEFI or legacy? If the former, try creating the flash drive with Rufus:

 

- Open Rufus and change "Boot selection" to "Freedos"
- Set the "Volume label" to UNRAID
- set filesytem to FAT32
- click START
- once done, unpack the Unraid ZIP to the flash drive

 

If you are booting UEFI nothing else you need to do, if you are booting legacy/CSM, run the make_bootable.bat as administrator first.

28 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

Is that booting UEFI or legacy? If the former, try creating the flash drive with Rufus:

Thanks Jorge!

On the Packard Bell arrangement it would appear to be booting EFI - after I got Unraid working I went back into the BIOS to have a really good look and the USB flash had been "relabelled" as an EFI Device see screenshot below.

 

And this very exact USB didn't work on the Asus arrangement.

I then renamed the EFI folder as EFI- but that didn't work either.

 

So to make it boot legacy in your description above is exactly what I did - not using Rufus though, I formatted the flash with windows then did the rest exactly as you describe.

 

I can give it a try formatting with rufus but as I have a serious lack of windows machines I'm gonna have to rob the PSU & GPU from the Asus arrangement for the Packard arrangement  Can it be something so simple as how Rufus formats a flash drive as a pose to how windows or mac format the device?? I'll give it a try anyway as I'm running out of options..

ETA except I see Rufus requires win8 or later and my old machine is win7, I have a work laptop running win11 but no admin access

I'll see if an older Rufus is available that can run on win7

 

 

Edited February 24, 20251 yr by Farlig69

19 minutes ago, Farlig69 said:

I then renamed the EFI folder as EFI- but that didn't work either.

That won't help, you can still boot legacy with EFI enabled.

 

 

32 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

That won't help, you can still boot legacy with EFI enabled.

 

 

Ok cool, I've rebuilt the PB windows MB, downloaded and installed rufus 3.22 & formatted the flash as per your instructions,

 

I'm away to execute make_bootable.bat as I am pretty convinced now that the Asus MB does not support UEFI...

 

Will report back when I reassemble the server and try it out!

 

Pic for posterity, everyone loves a pic 

Well the PB boots fine and unraid login is on my home net, but then that was working last night too, let's see if the asus / server arrangement will also play ball now

Fingers crossed

 

Nope, that didn't work either, BIOS correct boot device, result black screen flashing cursor top left.

 

It would be good to boot that flash drive in another PC using legacy/CSM mode, that would confirm where the problem is.

OK I will try, I guess I need to force the BIOS in the PB machine then to boot legacy?

The whole point of me not building my server on the packard bell architecture was to give me the asus' flexible bios and motherboard to control a "server" and multiple fans etc but at this rate I'm getting ready to throw the asus and xeon out the window, which would be a shame seeing as slax and unbuntu run fine...

 

I'll dismantle & rebuild again and give it a try see what I can do in the PB bios...

This BIOS is pretty inflexible and not giving me any option to disable boot devices, only to shuffle them around

The USB drive is coming up as both an EFI device and an HDD (?)

Tried making the 1st boot device the hard disk version of the Sandisk and the EFI the last version & it booted Unraid fine, don't know how effective that is as I cannot disable the EFI device...

 

In the BIOS he devices are listed below the Boot Priority Order but I have no idea what these do as selecting them doesn't not seem to do much but I tried making the HDD priority to see if that maybe "forded" a legacy boot - dunno how to deactivate the EFI...

 

Anyhoo - whatever I do it boots Unraid fine on this motherboard arrangement.

 

Pics tell more than I can describe:

SanDisk available as both EFI and "hard Disk"

 

Go into this setting..

 

And there's nothing to choose from.

 

So went in here:

 

And selected this as priority in conjunction with 1st boot device (above), stabbing in the dark here I know

 

The rest of the devices are not connected so show nothing:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 24, 20251 yr by Farlig69
clarity

Missed the F12 boot instruction to boot menu and got this:

 

So selected the 2nd option and yep it boots fine...

 

47 minutes ago, Farlig69 said:

don't know how effective that is as I cannot disable the EFI device.

If you rename the EFI folder on the flash drive to something else (such as 'EFI-') then I would not expect the BIOS to offer the EFI option.

3 minutes ago, itimpi said:

If you rename the EFI folder on the flash drive to something else (such as 'EFI-') then I would not expect the BIOS to offer the EFI option.

Tried that before then Jorge said this:

34 minutes ago, Farlig69 said:

So selected the 2nd option and yep it boots fine...

That confirms the flash drive is also booting in legacy/CSM, so looks like some issue with the other board, you can also try a different flash drive, just in case that one works.

Thanks, tried a few different usb sticks now and nothing works.

 

I fail to see how it's an issue with the board through when slax and unbuntu USB boots work fine on it...

Well we kinda have a winner -  I have a boot but no networking, was suddenly very high then I came crashing down again

 

Combination of @JorgeB and @itimpi : I said I had done it before (labelling the EFI folder as EFI-), but I had not done the JorgeB combo of formatting the flash drive with Rufus, then renaming the folder EFI-

 

Tried that as a last resort & result got a boot!!!! Yahoo, buuuuut I have no network, end result is:

One giant leap closer though!!

Back to the search function, thanks for all the help so far guys!!

Edited February 24, 20251 yr by Farlig69

You can now try logging in and get the 'diagnostics' so we can see what is happening around the network,.

16 minutes ago, itimpi said:

You can now try logging in and get the 'diagnostics' so we can see what is happening around the network,.

I'm on it, thanks!!!

22 minutes ago, itimpi said:

You can now try logging in and get the 'diagnostics' so we can see what is happening around the network,.

Here we go, I think

tower-diagnostics-20250224-0735.zip

Edited February 24, 20251 yr by Farlig69

Cannot see any sign of the LAN port even being seen at the hardware level in the diagnostics.   You might want to check it has not been disabled at the BIOS level

No NIC is being detected by Linux, this is not a software issue, make sure it's enabled in the BIOS.

YES!! That was it thank you very much @itimpi and @JorgeB 👍🏼😎

The Marvell LAN1 was set to disabled - I must confess to going through and disabling a heap of stuff earlier in the hopes of eliminating issues, forgot what I did and didn't do  😳 SO a good cmos reset I think is needed when I finish the build

 

But that's enough for now, my brain is mince and I need a break before getting back to the build

 

In any case the main hurdles have been cleared methinks, so a huge thanks again to all who nudged me here and there and helped me get there, you are seriously appreciated!!!

 

Edited February 24, 20251 yr by Farlig69
to add @jorgeb to the credits - our posts crossed!!

3 hours ago, Farlig69 said:

The Marvell LAN1 was set to disabled

FYI - Marvell controllers are known to have problems with Unraid (Linux in general).  This does not mean that you are guaranteed to have problems; just that you may have issues such as disks attached to Marvell controllers dropping offline.

 

Here is a controller discussion thread started by @JorgeB with recommended controllers should the Marvell cause you problems.

Edited February 24, 20251 yr by Hoopster

13 hours ago, Hoopster said:

FYI - Marvell controllers are known to have problems with Unraid (Linux in general).  This does not mean that you are guaranteed to have problems; just that you may have issues such as disks attached to Marvell controllers dropping offline.

 

Here is a controller discussion thread started by @JorgeB with recommended controllers should the Marvell cause you problems.

Hmmm... Thankks Hoopster, interesting info, I'll give that a read through, probly not too much of a concern for the LAN port but I did install my two cache SSDs on the Marvel controller 6.0 Gbps ports (set the controller to normal speed).

 

Might explain a little something... Finished my build last night, allocated the array & then let Unraid do its thing overnight Woke up this morning to one of the cache discs not listing anything under file system / size / used / allocated; though the drive is checkmarked green & allegedly healthy.

 

I'll give it another try though as when trying to label all my discs physically, I could not for the life of me find a s/n on the SSD's so the only way to ID them physically for me was to shut down, disconnect one, reboot and see which was missing in the cache pool, before shutting down and reinstalling - of course the one with the missing data labels is the one I disconnected 😳

 

And pics, everyone loves a pic (don't they?) 😂

Not too enamoured with the blue LEDs - guess this tower was a gaming machine before but not gonna complain as it was free  including the really nicely 3D printed orange SSD bay, must confess I was blown away by the quality and accuracy of the print and made me reassess getting one to play with!! But I digress haha

Edited February 25, 20251 yr by Farlig69
more waffle at the end, and clarity

Is this normal to have no file system etc attributes for a cache 2??

Nothing I do seems to bring it back includng doing a new config just now (still wiating for it to finish though an that will take some time...)