June 12, 201313 yr Allright i'll test it again in about 3 hours from now. But even if it says 'ready' then shouldn't the monitor stay on and ask me to login? Yes and No. There is an entire boot sequence in which all of the drivers get loaded and setup for the chip set that is on your motherboard. When it boots properly, you will see line-upon-line of commands and their results displayed on your monitor. When unRAID has successfully loaded EVERYTHING, that is when you get the log-in prompt.
June 12, 201313 yr Author Believe it or not but it says: READY It was going very fast but i really saw it. So now the question is: why am i not getting the login screen? I mean if ready means i have a working system...
June 12, 201313 yr Believe it or not but it says: READY It was going very fast but i really saw it. So now the question is: why am i not getting the login screen? I mean if ready means i have a working system... It very clearly says READY ... there's no doubt about that. Simply pausing the video shows it; and BobPhoenix captured it nicely at exactly that point in the still he posted above But the interesting thing is that the system's going blank the instant the actual boot process begins. THAT is, of course, not good !! What's perplexing is that the display doesn't blank if you select MemTest. It's like the Linux commands are immediately putting everything to sleep, or shutting down. Try creating a NEW, formatted USB flash drive (use the latest RC14) with just UnRAID basic (no key), and see if the boot sequence works okay with it. Just in case you have something corrupted in your bizroot/bizimage files.
June 12, 201313 yr Author @ Frank The board i'm using is the M4A 89 GTD PRO, i have no other cards installed, updated the bios to the lastest version. It was a board i've used with unraid a while ago. I've tried 2 different usb flash drives (Philips & Cruzer micro) formatted them named it UNRAID unzipped the latest firmware to it and made it bootable by right click run as adm. Then i went to the bios to check if the new drive is listed (which it did) boot as first device but it does nothing, not even the option menu with memtest or unraid. Have to go to work again, i'll try again tomorrow. Need to put my head somewhere else, i'm getting very frustraded... Anyway really like the help of this great community
June 12, 201313 yr Another thing to check is whether the Flash Drive will boot in another computer. Just don't try to start an array!!!
July 1, 201313 yr Author I know it's been a while, but i haven't had any time to test it any sooner. Plugging the usb key in my regular pc works! I can login, it's asking for login. After that i can see the following screens. http://tinypic.com/r/1zx5na9/5 http://tinypic.com/r/2zgfbys/5 So now the questions is, why the hell is it not working on my server?
July 1, 201313 yr So now the questions is, why ... is it not working on my server? Remember what I noted here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=27703.msg244543#msg244543 i.e. you have TWO issues ... the first of which is a hardware issue that you need to troubleshoot and isolate. You've now confirmed you have a good USB flash drive; so now you have to isolate the issue with your UnRAID PC. I'll review the thread and see if anything "jumps out" that you may not have yet tested ...
July 1, 201313 yr A few random thoughts as I re-read the entire thread ... Initial post sounds like no power => and a few other comments along the way also tend to implicate your power supply. Have you replaced the PSU with a new, high-quality unit? When you tried a 2nd motherboard and it worked, it quit working after you "placed the screws back in it's place" ==> are you sure all the motherboard standoffs are properly positioned in your case? CMOS battery been replaced ? ==> You've had several issues that tend to indicate the BIOS is losing its settings. Have you replaced the CR2032 CMOS battery on the motherboard? Known good monitor ? ==> Your monitor has blanked on multiple occasions. This could be from a variety of causes ... one of which is simply a failure of the monitor whenever it's switched to certain resolutions. Are you SURE this display is good? [i.e. have you connected it to another PC and confirmed it works okay with it?]
July 1, 201313 yr Does unRAID change resolutions during the booting process? Could it be switching to a mode unsupported by the monitor? I have noticed that some combinations of video chiopsets, and drivers do at times also change what resolution mode is selected at command prompts while booting into windows... BEFORE Windows actually brings up a GUI... could this be the case here?
July 1, 201313 yr Does unRAID change resolutions during the booting process? Could it be switching to a mode unsupported by the monitor? I have noticed that some combinations of video chiopsets, and drivers do at times also change what resolution mode is selected at command prompts while booting into windows... BEFORE Windows actually brings up a GUI... could this be the case here? The answer is I don't know ... but it's VERY suspicious that the display blanks immediately after the Linux core starts to boot => I certainly don't think that's a "coincidence."
July 1, 201313 yr Ok, just did some quick testing on one of my newer systems, with an older monitor... Note that results will likely CHANGE based on what video chip is in use, and BIOS versions and such... and even possibly what monitor is connected and if the video card supports reckoginition of the monitor modes before an actual video driver is loaded at the OS level, etc... BUT... in my first test... the video resolution seemed to stay the same throughout the POST and BOOT process to the login prompt. I say seemed, because the VERTICAL frequency, (refresh rate), kept changing between 60 and 70 Hz. So if there was also a quick resoultion change somewhere in there, I would not have been able to see it, since the monitor blanked out at each mode change, till it was again stable, then operated in the new mode, till it changed yet again!
July 1, 201313 yr The key finding of that little test is that the monitor DOES change modes .. implying there is SOMETHING different in the video signal as the Linux drivers "gets control" => and in this case, it's resulting in a blank display.
July 1, 201313 yr So, I would say it is very possible that with some combinmations of video card, BIOS, and monitor, the resolution MAY also change under some situations, not just the vertical refresh rates... I am going to pull out an older monitor and see what happens... It looks to me like the current problem joeyke87 is having, may just be the case of the monitor not being able to operate with the signal presented, even if the unRAID envirnment is booting properly...
July 1, 201313 yr It looks to me like the current problem joeyke87 is having, may just be the case of the monitor not being able to operate with the signal presented, even if the unRAID envirnment is booting properly... Yes ... that's why I've asked several times if this is a "known good monitor" => and suggested he test it on another system. Without being able to SEE what's going on, it's very difficult to make any real progress on troubleshooting it.
July 1, 201313 yr Another possibly better option, might be to try a different monitor on the problem system. What monitor brand and model is the one that has been used for testing so far? If we know that we also can learn what video modes it supports.
July 1, 201313 yr I also have seen a couple instances with newer, lower vertical resolution, cheaper LCD, (LED backlit), 16:9 monitors not being able to display some 4:3 resolution modes...
July 1, 201313 yr Monitor resolutions can indeed "bite you". It's been a LONG time (over 20 years) ... but I once bought a nice new high-end monitor (paid several hundred extra to get the "better" display) => and when I set it up on my system it wouldn't work for all display modes. Turned out it was unable to display resolutions lower than VGA mode. So I returned my nice new $900+ display for a $600 unit that had no issues with the full range of PC resolutions available at the time.
July 3, 201313 yr Author The original psu was a Corsair 400 W now i'm trying it with a Be Quiet Dark Power Pro 850 W. I have also replaced the CMOS battery. I can't remember when i said that i had a 'working' system that it would just boot or let me login to the tower. But tomorrow i will reinstall everything again. I'll even try it without the screws connected. Now i'm wondering something: isn't it necessary to connect at least one disk drive in order to boot? About the monitor: i've used an Acer V203H and an Acer S243HL. They both didn't work, so the next thing i tried was plugging the usb key in my notebook while the vga cable was connected to the monitor, and then the monitor stays on just fine. So i'm guessing it's not the monitor. I'll post an update tomorrow.
July 3, 201313 yr ... isn't it necessary to connect at least one disk drive in order to boot? No, you can boot to the USB flash drive with no disks on the system. You should still be able to access the Web GUI, browse the contents of the flash drive, etc. Obviously not a very useful system
July 4, 201313 yr Author Good news! I have definitely a working system! Yesterday i found another old motherboard (ASUS P5Q DELUXE). So i thought: let's try that one. Only issue i had is that this one doesn't have onboard video. So i tried my NVIDIA GT 430. And now everything works, i can finally login. So now i'm ready for the next step. What should i do in order to get my system back online safe? Should i add one disk at a time? For example connect my parity drive to sata 1, boot the system assign the disk and so on for the next drives? And start the array. Or what should i do?
July 4, 201313 yr Connect everything EXCEPT parity (once you assign parity, you can't add more disks that have data on them without losing everything due to the clearing of the new disk). Assign them all to the array; Start the array and confirm all is okay [if the system wants to Format any disk, do NOT allow that -- you'll lose data. If that happens post a picture of the Web GUI and wait for further advice. If the array looks okay; then Stop; assign the parity drive; and then Start the array and let it do the initial parity sync. When that completes, run a parity check to confirm all went well. Then you're ready to go ...
July 10, 201312 yr Author SOLVED! Thanks everyone, everything is all green now! Escpecially you garycase. Followed your last post and everything works now. Only small downside is that i have 527 errors on one disk. I'll run another check soon for that. Thanks.
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