June 9, 201214 yr I downloaded the stable version of UNRAID. I followed the instructions to install it on my new 4 Gigabyte Flash Drive. It's the 4.7 AIO version. The flash drive is a new 4Gb. Lexar drive. My computer is based on an older Abit IC7 Max3 motherboard. I set the boot sequence priority so the Flash Drive was first. But I cannot get the computer to boot up. I repeatedly get at 'boot error'. I've tried setting the USB to 2.0 and 1.0, disabled sound card, network, etc. Tried setting all the boot options to various USB components, disabled all drives but the USB. Same error. None of the function keys seem to give me any boot options. I really cannot tell if the computer is trying to boot from the USB drive or from one of the 3 drives connected to the motherboard. I'm not a Linux person. The drives have been partitioned and formatted under Windows 7. Then I installed the download UNRAID files to the flash drive. YES I did click on the Make Bootable item. And I did eject the flash drive. So, I've been considering some work-around options: 1. Could UNRAID be loaded to a CD or DVD? Then can the computer boot and run UNRAID from there? If so, are there any instructions that detail how to do this? 2. Three drives is the limit for the Freeware version. Can I use an older small IDE drive (80 Gig) to boot from, then use my 3 Two Terabyte drives as the UNRAID/server drives? I see the Flash Drive listed at the end of bootup - but nothing in the boot-up sequence actually tells me the drive the computer is attempting to use for the OS. I'm open to any and all suggestions. I'm pretty sure I followed the instructions correctly for setting up the flash drive. But I've yet to be able to get UNRAID to load. Thanks in advance for any assistance. Bach On
June 9, 201214 yr By no means an expert but I've had my share of computer builds. So, first check that you did the MakeBootable.bat correctly (ie. Run As Admin if Win7, etc...) just in case. In the bios make sure you've done 2 things: 1) That you have set hard drive as the primary boot device AND 2) that under device priority you've moved your usb to the top of the stack. If you don't do both it will kick past your flashdrive and give you a boot hang like you've described. Another quick test if it's just a priorty issue is to use your mobo's boot order key during startup. (F8 on Asus boards, but boards vary.) A successful boot after selecting your flashdrive here will confirm the issue is as above. You'll still have to make the changes though to persist through a reboot. Hope you get lucky and it's an easy fix. Cheers.
June 9, 201214 yr You can't use a CD/DVD to boot from for unRAID. It may be possible for the free version, but then you'd have to use a flash drive (or something with a unique UID) in order to upgrade, so it hardly seems worth the bother. I believe you can boot from a hard drive, but then you'd have to do a full Slackware Linux install, with unRAID running within that. unRAID runs a pared down version of Slackware, and others have done this. However, it's a pretty involved process, and not something you want to undertake just because you're having trouble configuring a flash drive. It doesn't sound like the syslinux command was run properly on your drive. But some older motherboards were really squirelly about allowing USB flash drives to be bootable. Do you have another system you can test the flash drive on? That would at least eliminate one variable.
June 9, 201214 yr You can't use a CD/DVD to boot from for unRAID. It may be possible for the free version, but then you'd have to use a flash drive (or something with a unique UID) in order to upgrade, so it hardly seems worth the bother. You actually can boot from anything, a kicker-floppy, a CD, another hard disk, whatever... However, there must be a volume labeled UNRAID to mount as the /boot mount point. To use ANYTHING other than the free version there must be a USB type of drive, and it must have a registered unique GUID and it must be the one labeled as UNRAID. (The drive you boot from can be labeled as anything you like, but if not UNRIAD you must handle the mounting of the other flash drive or boot device) See here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=244.0 search for "kicker" on the forums for other posts.
June 14, 201214 yr Author 1) That you have set hard drive as the primary boot device AND 2) that under device priority you've moved your usb to the top of the stack. If you don't do both it will kick past your flashdrive and give you a boot hang like you've described. Hope you get lucky and it's an easy fix. Cheers. hlidskialf, I understand your second point: setting the USB device as the priority drive. But I'm not certain I get the first point: setting the hard drive as the primary boot device. It looks to me that those two things contradict one another. Would you mind explaining? The way I'm seeing it, I'm planning to use the hard drives (3) as the drives for UNRAID. They won't actually be boot devices. Only the USB stick will be a boot device. What am I missing? This motherboard has six SATA ports. Two run off the onchip RAID controller, but the controller can be cut OFF or ON. Two of the drives are showing up in the BIOS. The third only shows up in the RAID section. I'm assuming I'll need to have all three hard drives show up in the BIOS before I can configure UNRAID. My issue is that I cannot get UNRAID to start at all. Thanks for the feedback. Hope you won't mind giving a little more assistance. Bach On P.S. Here is what I'm seeing in the root directory of the USB stick when I view the contents on another computer. I'll also show the sizes and type of the individual files) bizimage (2,260 KB) File bzroot (53,545 KB) File license (6 KB) Text Document make_bootable (1 KB) MS-DOS Batch file memtest (162 KB) File menu.c32 (33 KB) C32 file readme (7 KB) Text Document syslinux (CFG 1 KB)) CFG File syslinux (no size is shown) Application There is also a file folder named Config This file folder contains these files: disk (1 KB) CFG file go (1 KB) File ident (1 KB) CFG file network (1 KB) CFG file share (1 KB) CFG file
June 14, 201214 yr Sorry for the confusion. What I meant was that on many boards, the usb drive will show up under hard drives, not removable media. So it becomes part of the hard drive stack. The hard drive stack has a priority list as well. So, you have to put the flash drive with UNRAID on it to the top of the stack. Then you have the other boot section which is by device type, ie) Removable Media, cd/dvd, hard drive, etc... Under that section, select your hard drive to boot from, which due to being the top of the priorty list of hard drives, your flashdrive will be the selection. Adding/removing drives can mess with your hard drive priorty, and often you'll have to go in and adjust the bios in order to boot after changing hardware. Hope that was less confusing, just had my first sip of coffee for the day.
June 14, 201214 yr Make sure every other drive is disabled in BIOS. Only the Flash should be selected.
June 14, 201214 yr Author Make sure every other drive is disabled in BIOS. Only the Flash should be selected. So I disable all the hard drives in the BIOS. But are you saying the USB flash drive should appear as a drive in the BIOS? I have USB device as the first drive in my stack. And the motherboard finds it during booting. But it never actually shows up in the BIOS. Bach On
June 14, 201214 yr I just ran into this issue the other day so perhaps I can help. Here is my thread: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=20812.0 You want to look for a section that says something like "Hard Drive Boot Priority". Inside you should find a listing of all your hard drives, including your flash drive. Disable all the other drives except for the flash drive. Then go back to the Boot Device Priority and you should now see your flash drive. From what I read, a lot of Mobo's BIOS reads removable drives >512MB as Hard Drives and not removable media which is what causes this issue. I would go take some pictures of my BIOS to show you, but it's running a parity check for the next few hours.
June 14, 201214 yr Make sure every other drive is disabled in BIOS. Only the Flash should be selected. So I disable all the hard drives in the BIOS. But are you saying the USB flash drive should appear as a drive in the BIOS? I have USB device as the first drive in my stack. And the motherboard finds it during booting. But it never actually shows up in the BIOS. Bach On The flash should be the only drive shown followed by "Disabled".
June 15, 201214 yr you can try the bootloader we use for getting ESXi VMs to boot UnRaid http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/index.html you install it on a HDD that the machine boots, and then you can tell it to boot to USB. from the ALTAS thread http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=14695.0
June 15, 201214 yr Author Make sure every other drive is disabled in BIOS. Only the Flash should be selected. Guys, I'm not as dense as I probably appear, but I admit to some confusion. As you know, there are two pages in the BIOS concerning drives. The first page sets the motherboard to configure the ports and find the drives. My motherboard can do this automatically, or manually. I've had it set to do so automatically. dgaschk seems to be telling me to disable all the hard drives. But the USB flash drive never shows up on this page. I do not see how the SATA ports can find my three 2Tb drives if I do not have the ports set. So I cannot see how UNRAID could find the drives. It is on another page of the BIOS where I set the boot priorities. I know how to set the boot priority. But what I think I'm hearing about this is two different things. One person is saying the motherboard will see the 4 Gb. USB memory stick as a regular hard drive. The readme file seems to be telling me to set the USB port as the first priority. I KNOW you guys are REALLY trying to help. And I really do appreciate it!!! The confusion on my end is that you guys are providing steps for me to follow. But you are not always indicating on which of the pages these steps should be performed. Do you see my point? Bach On
June 15, 201214 yr Make sure every other drive is disabled in BIOS. Only the Flash should be selected. Guys, I'm not as dense as I probably appear, but I admit to some confusion. As you know, there are two pages in the BIOS concerning drives. The first page sets the motherboard to configure the ports and find the drives. My motherboard can do this automatically, or manually. I've had it set to do so automatically. dgaschk seems to be telling me to disable all the hard drives. But the USB flash drive never shows up on this page. I do not see how the SATA ports can find my three 2Tb drives if I do not have the ports set. So I cannot see how UNRAID could find the drives. It is on another page of the BIOS where I set the boot priorities. I know how to set the boot priority. But what I think I'm hearing about this is two different things. One person is saying the motherboard will see the 4 Gb. USB memory stick as a regular hard drive. The readme file seems to be telling me to set the USB port as the first priority. I KNOW you guys are REALLY trying to help. And I really do appreciate it!!! The confusion on my end is that you guys are providing steps for me to follow. But you are not always indicating on which of the pages these steps should be performed. Do you see my point? Bach On Do not disable the hard disks themselves, but instead disable them as potential boot devices. (very different)
June 15, 201214 yr Guys, I'm not as dense as I probably appear, but I admit to some confusion. As you know, there are two pages in the BIOS concerning drives. The first page sets the motherboard to configure the ports and find the drives. My motherboard can do this automatically, or manually. I've had it set to do so automatically. dgaschk seems to be telling me to disable all the hard drives. But the USB flash drive never shows up on this page. I do not see how the SATA ports can find my three 2Tb drives if I do not have the ports set. So I cannot see how UNRAID could find the drives. We don't want you to disable the drives by turning off the SATA ports. We just want you to exclude them from being an available device for the computer to use to boot the machine. The server will still see and use the drive inside of unRAID because the SATA ports are enabled in the BIOS, but it won't try and use it to boot the machine. It is on another page of the BIOS where I set the boot priorities. I know how to set the boot priority. But what I think I'm hearing about this is two different things. One person is saying the motherboard will see the 4 Gb. USB memory stick as a regular hard drive. The readme file seems to be telling me to set the USB port as the first priority. I said that it's common for a drive over 512MB to be seen by the BIOS as a HDD. But it might not be that way in your case. Perhaps this will help. Lets say for example you have a total of 4 HDD's and one Flash drive attached to your system and the BIOS is classifying the flash drive as a hard drive. The BIOS lists them in a particluar order which typically lists the flash drive as last. These are your available bootable hard drives: -HDD 1 -HDD 2 -HDD 3 -HDD 4 -USB Flash Drive When you look at selecting the boot device you'll be given a list of available devices similar to this: -CDROM -Floppy Drive -Network Boot -Hard Drive -Disabled Here is the problem, if you look at your particular list, it probably substitutes HDD1 for where it says Hard Drive. So you'll see something like this: -CDROM -Floppy Drive -Network Boot -HDD 1 -Disabled So the computer goes through the list of boot devices, only looks at HDD 1 and skips the other drives such as HDD 2, HDD 3, HDD 4 and lastly your Flash drive. What we need to do is disable HDD 1, 2, 3 and 4 as bootable device options so that the Flash Drive moves to the top of the list. That will change your boot device selection screen to: -CDROM -Floppy Drive -Network Boot -Flash Drive -Disabled Does that make sense? As you can see it's not the easiest thing to explain without being able to see your BIOS screen. The confusion on my end is that you guys are providing steps for me to follow. But you are not always indicating on which of the pages these steps should be performed. Do you see my point? That's probably because you haven't given us the BIOS version information. You gave us the motherboard model, but not what BIOS you're using.
June 15, 201214 yr The Abit IC7 Max3 is an AGP 478 motherboard and may not be bootable from a USB device. It has a Phoenix/Award Bios. I would use the method Joe L is suggesting You can't use a CD/DVD to boot from for unRAID. It may be possible for the free version, but then you'd have to use a flash drive (or something with a unique UID) in order to upgrade, so it hardly seems worth the bother. You actually can boot from anything, a kicker-floppy, a CD, another hard disk, whatever... However, there must be a volume labeled UNRAID to mount as the /boot mount point. To use ANYTHING other than the free version there must be a USB type of drive, and it must have a registered unique GUID and it must be the one labeled as UNRAID. (The drive you boot from can be labeled as anything you like, but if not UNRIAD you must handle the mounting of the other flash drive or boot device) See here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=244.0 search for "kicker" on the forums for other posts.
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