I want to clarify: I did not try my buddy's USB drive, he lives 500 mi away. But he sat with me and went over each item in the setup screen. Today, I received the Cruzer Fit USB stick and it performed exactly as all the others have. I decided to run memtest. As you can see, it's running fine. I wonder if that means the MB and CPU are functioning properly.

 

I can take the machine apart and send back the MB to NewEgg for another but that's a major operation and would like to eliminate any other options first.

I want to clarify: I did not try my buddy's USB drive, he lives 500 mi away. But he sat with me and went over each item in the setup screen. Today, I received the Cruzer Fit USB stick and it performed exactly as all the others have. I decided to run memtest. As you can see, it's running fine. I wonder if that means the MB and CPU are functioning properly.

 

I can take the machine apart and send back the MB to NewEgg for another but that's a major operation and would like to eliminate any other options first.

Memtest is not a complete CPU and motherboard test. It is just intended to test memory. There was another user not long ago with a system that passed memtest fine, booted fine, ran unraid fine, but couldn't reliably read and write its disks, probably due to a motherboard issue.

 

Having said that, one of the most frequent causes of unRAID boot problems is improper preparation of the flash drive.

Ok, so have you verified that the USB drive boots unraid properly in another system? It can be practically any machine, you just need to see that it progresses to the point of asking for a login on the local screen. As long as you don't assign any disks, it won't change anything, so you can try it on your current desktop if you can change the boot mode to non-uefi.

So I finally got the server to boot with UnRaid but NOT with the current version. When I tried everything, including hours on line with the SuperMicro support guy, we tried going back to older versions of Unraid. When we loaded: unRAIDServer-6.1.9-x86_64.zip - It worked.

 

Not sure why the newer versions don't work.

 

But at least I can build the server now.

 

 

I am starting my array build now on this older version, which only allows one parity drive. I am leaving one drive unassigned. I want to know how I can upgrade to the latest version without causing the problems I had before trying to load the latest version from the USB key.

 

Can I upgrade an active Unraid array to the latest version and how would I do that if my system cannot run the latest version from a USB drive?

 

 

 

There are some users with Supermicro X11 boards with similar issues, AFAIK there's no solution at the moment, although some can boot with the GUI option.

I am starting my array build now on this older version, which only allows one parity drive. I am leaving one drive unassigned. I want to know how I can upgrade to the latest version without causing the problems I had before trying to load the latest version from the USB key.

 

Can I upgrade an active Unraid array to the latest version and how would I do that if my system cannot run the latest version from a USB drive?

 

IF you have NOT installed any Dockers or VM's, you can try this:

 

Stop your array, copy the entire contents of your Flash Drive to another computer.  (This is your backup copy.)

 

Download the latest version from LimeTech (if you don't already have it)  and unzip it.  Copy over only these three files:

 

    bzimage

    bzroot

    bzroot-gui

 

Reboot and see what happens.  (You can do this all of this from another computer so you don't even have to remove the Flash Drive from the server.) 

 

If it doesn't work, copy back those three files from your backup copy of your flash drive. 

 

EDIT: added bolded text in second sentence.

Thanks, I am waiting now for my parity drive to finish its parity check, later this afternoon. I also notice there's a place to upgrade from inside the dashboard. Is that recommended or is the method suggested; adding the bz-* files to my existing key? Note: I did already buy the license.

 

I am glad this is working but still baffled why my friend Andy has the EXACT SAME hardware and had none of the problems I did getting Unraid to run using the latest version. We both have the identical MBs and CPUs, same rev firmware, same memory, PS and even the same case!

 

 

Thanks, I am waiting now for my parity drive to finish its parity check, later this afternoon. I also notice there's a place to upgrade from inside the dashboard. Is that recommended or is the method suggested; adding the bz-* files to my existing key? Note: I did already buy the license.

 

I am glad this is working but still baffled why my friend Andy has the EXACT SAME hardware and had none of the problems I did getting Unraid to run using the latest version. We both have the identical MBs and CPUs, same rev firmware, same memory, PS and even the same case!

 

For the issues that you have had, I would manually copy the files over to try to see if that solves the problem. (And make sure you use the latest version 6.2.4 or 6.3.0 rc4!)

 

Then, based on the those results,  we (anyone with a theory) can chime in with our thoughts.  (Because what the issue might be, will change with the results of this latest experiment!)

 

EDIT: You might want to try 6.3.0 rc4 after reading this portion of a thread about this issue:

 

    https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=51878.msg505267#msg505267

Like I said above there are some users with Supermicro X11 boards and similar issues, there's no solution, RobJ did a very detailed analysis here:

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=51874.msg502405#msg502405

One thing you can check is if you and your friend are using the same BMC firmware (IPMI), if not update to the same, can't imagine how that would affect boot but this is such a strange issue that you never know, it might help.

Thanks, I am waiting now for my parity drive to finish its parity check, later this afternoon. I also notice there's a place to upgrade from inside the dashboard. Is that recommended or is the method suggested; adding the bz-* files to my existing key? Note: I did already buy the license.

 

I am glad this is working but still baffled why my friend Andy has the EXACT SAME hardware and had none of the problems I did getting Unraid to run using the latest version. We both have the identical MBs and CPUs, same rev firmware, same memory, PS and even the same case!

 

 

Just wondering if you ever got this working. I'm having similar issues with my SuperMicro board and trying to find a resolution.

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=55470.msg528855#msg528855

No, we never figured out why 6.2.4 won't run but 6.1.9 will. I have been stuck on this version since. I was working with Tomm directly to try and figure out why and we never reached a solution. I was hoping that a future release would solve this problem.

 

 

I contacted Tom also. Hopefully it'll get resolved.

Please post here if you find a solution. Did you try the beta releases that are available for download?

Please post here if you find a solution. Did you try the beta releases that are available for download?

Yeah. Tried a fresh install of RC6. No luck though. Seems to be a problem that was introduced in 6.2 and is still present in 6.3.

Some folks have had luck loading the GUI version from the Boot Menu.

Some folks have had luck loading the GUI version from the Boot Menu.

Thanks. I tried that as well. Didn't work for me. Also tried disabling vt-d and virtualization support since I saw a few posts where that worked.

I tried everything, including a motherboard swap to see if that was the problem. We ran memtest for days flawlessly, we duplicated the exact settings on an identical system that did boot with the latest version, we tried every boot config on the Unraid startup screen. - Nothing worked. As I said, I am running 6.1.9 and it works fine but I can't run redundant parity drives which is one of the reasons I wanted to use Unraid. Let's see if 6.3, when it's released will fix things.

 

I tried everything, including a motherboard swap to see if that was the problem.

Swapped for another SuperMicro?

Yes, the identical board.

You might try disabling the fast boot option.  I had to do that with my new Media Server setup to get it to detect one of my drives. 

Please post here if you find a solution. Did you try the beta releases that are available for download?

Just wanted to let you know I was able to resolve this issue for my X10SLL-F board. The firmware installed on the board was several years out of date. Flashing (with a lot of help) to the current version (R 3.0a) corrected the problem. Might be worth checking on yours if you haven't already.