I had another thread going on this, but the title no longer reflects what's actually happening.

 

I'm trying to create a backup flash drive using my second license key, but when I try to boot off of this drive, my server will only boot every other time. Just to clarify, it will boot fine one time, then the next time it will make it past the expansion card initialization, then the screen goes black except for a flashing cursor. If I wait long enough, a message is displayed that says something to the affect of

 

Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device

 

If I reboot the server (ALT+CNTRL+DELTE) the server will boot fine with no changes, or I can pull the USB drive out, and put it back in and hit any key and the server will start. Just hitting any key will not work, and the error message gets redisplayed. Once my server is up and running, if I restart from the unRAID browser page, the server will not boot not boot reboot and stops as described above.

 

Finally, my primary flash drive works fine, every time. The only difference is my primary drive is an 8 GB drive and the backup that's not working is a 16 GB. Both are Lexar Firefly drives.

 

I've also downgraded my expansion card firmware per this post by Rajahal

 

Any help is appreciated!

 

 

 

 

I had something similar on another. After a cold restart (off/on) the system would not boot, after a ctrl-alt-delete (hot restart) it would. Issue was that the boot device was not ready to be used the moment the bios needed it. A ctrl-alt-delete is a softer reset, everything is allready under current and that would work... Might not be exactly what you are experiencing but maybe this helps you in a direction ?

 

Is "any other time" really any other time ?  So independent on the kind of reboot (hot / cold)

.........Is "any other time" really any other time ?  So independent on the kind of reboot (hot / cold)

 

I "think" so 

 

The first time I realized that it would actually boot off of the flash drive was first thing in the morning after the server had been off all night. So that would be a startup from a complete power down. The rest of the time I spent troubleshooting I would either do a clean restart from my unRAID browser, or restart with CNTRL+ALT+DELETE if the server hadn't booted up properly.

 

It seems to be consistent so far, but I agree that it's odd.

So reboots (no full downs) are really every other time, so:

 

boot - no boot - boot  - no boot - boot - no boot ?

 

Weird...

I didn't do a very good job explaining that. Whether it is a cold boot, or a reboot doesn't seem to matter. The server starts every other time. So you are correct with regard to

 

boot - no boot - boot - no boot .......

 

But it doesn't seem to matter whether it's a full down or restart.

 

And yep..... weird! 

Sorry for the bump, but still having trouble. I left my server off for a day or two, and when I tried to restart, no luck. I reset the server and it booted fine.

 

Any advice?