***EDIT***

 

USB Flash drive died that was not linked to the upgrade. 

 

 

Hello,

 

I had a perfectly running Unraid 5.0 and decided to give the beta 6 a try.  I upgraded the stick drive to the beta version and gave it a go.  After a few hours I checked my server and it wasn't working.  Since I didn't see what went wrong (headless setup), I put the stick drive back to 5.0 and tried to boot it again.  Nothing, I just get this boot error.  So i'm coming to you guys and trying to figure out what went wrong. 

 

I've reformatted my usb drive FAT 32

I've used the make bootable batch file

Copied all my old stick drive data back over to the usb  (Is there just a file or 2 I should be copying over?  Shares?  Drives?)

 

Still nothing.  Attached is the video of my boot up.  Also i did check the bios and the USB is selected to boot from.  I've come to you guys with my hat in my hand, and trying to figure out what little stupid thing went wrong here.

 

http://youtu.be/4VamHU-8zjc?list=UUgqJdqtU2fP2MXJdlNgXakw

 

Thanks!

Matt

Matt,

 

Have you ever figured out what happened? I am in the same boat. V5 working fine, tried to upgrade to 6 and now I am getting boot error after POST on two different USB sticks, freshly formatted and made bootable. I am now trying to copy back the old flash contents, but I am doubtful it'll go back to working.

 

Thanks,

Carsten

Do you have a monitor and keyboard attached? Are you sure it is trying to boot from flash? Did you follow all the instructions for a clean install when you upgraded?

Yes, I hooked up a monitor after booting didn't appear to complete on two separate USB sticks. Another explanation is that the motherboard is confused. After nothing appeared to work, I went into the BIOS settings and loaded up the boards defaults and changed the boot sequence to USB HDD first, with the second and third option being disabled. The SATA interface is set to emulate Native IDE, though I think that this shouldn't make a difference this early in the boot sequence. When the box boots up, it displays "Verifying DMI pool ...", followed by "Boot Error". Sometimes it cycles through the boot process a few times until it finally hangs after the "Verifying DMI pool ...".

 

I used a Windows box at work to create two flash drives with a fresh install of 6.0.1 and tested them on that same PC. At least that computer appeared to be able to boot just fine. I'll try these once more when I get home. If these fail at home, that should indicate some issues with the board or BIOS settings. That computer had been running unRAID for many years w/o a problem, so that's kinda odd.

 

Thanks,

Carsten

You don't what to use IDE emulation for your drives, but that probably doesn't have anything to do with booting from USB.

 

Does the BIOS have the correct time? The reason I ask is perhaps your CMOS battery is dead and the motherboard lost whatever settings you had been using.

 

Are you trying to boot from a USB3 port? If so, maybe try a USB2 port instead. Also maybe try a USB2 flash drive if you have been trying it with a USB3 flash drive.

 

Sounds like your issues are either with the BIOS or the preparation of the flash drive. Does the motherboard have other USB "modes" besides "USB HDD". If so, try them. I think I had to use FDD on a motherboard once.

The motherboard doesn't have any USB3 ports, so we can rule that out, and the drives themselves are USB2 ... and at least the original one registered with unRAID in 2010 worked ever since. Good point about the battery. I will do a little experiment, setting the time and then unplugging the box from the outlet. Other modes are USB FDD and USB CDROM. When I checked the BIOS last night before loading the default settings, the boot sequence was set to CDROM (first), USB HDD (second), disabled (third). I can try that once more if nothing else works. Do you think that a dead battery could confuse the board? I always thought it was only there to keep feeding the RTC when the machine is unplugged.

 

Thanks,

Carsten

I spent some more time with the system tonight. For good measure, I reset the BIOS by removing the battery for a couple of hours while the system was unplugged. No luck.

 

As of tonight, I cannot even use an external USB keyboard to get into the BIOS, but have to use a PS2-style one. Looking at the num-lock light of an attached USB keyboard, it appears that the power to the USB ports - both front panel and back panel - is being established too late in the boot sequence for the computer to read the data from the flash drive. I am even suspecting that the computer cannot source enough current to properly operate a flash drive; the flash-drive’s LED is pretty dim when connected and I cannot install an updated BIOS firmware from a third flash.

 

This is all pretty strange to me, and there are two things I’d like to try next. First, use a powered USB hub, and second, use a USB charger doctor pass-through. The computer itself seems to be working and I got it to boot from a Linux Live CD w/o apparent problems.

 

If someone has additional ideas about what might be going on, I’d appreciate your help, but I realize that this has now moved outside of the scope of this forum. It would seem kinda sad to rip the motherboard out just because the on-board USB interface isn’t working. Which reminds me, maybe one could try a USB PCI card … might have one of those flying around at work.

 

Thanks again for the helpful suggestions.

 

Carsten

It does sound as if there may well be a problem with the on-board USB ports - particularly if you cannot even get a USB keyboard to work reliably.

 

With respect to a comment in an earlier post, the battery is used to maintain the BIOS settings - not just the RTC.  That is why a flat battery can result in BIOS settings being lost.

Another thing which I have experienced in the past on older hardware is the USB ports not resetting unless power is completely removed. Try unplugging the power supply and wait for its capacitors to discharge, which you can usually tell when all the LEDs go out on the motherboard and power supply.