Frank1940 Posted March 14, 2018 Share Posted March 14, 2018 Try setting your '2nd Boot Device' to 'Removable Dev'. (About 1:04 in the video.) Say, from the BIOS copyright date, that is really an old system! Is there an update to that BIOS? I seem to recall that some of those old motherboards had some real boot issues when you tried to use flash drives and other removable devices.You might want to go through this old information from the distant past on boot issues: http://lime-technology.com/wiki/USB_Flash_Drive_Preparation#If_the_Flash_will_not_boot.2C_read_over_the_following_tips 1 Quote Link to comment
SSD Posted March 15, 2018 Share Posted March 15, 2018 On the USB/Mass storage configuration, my might try various options including forced floppy and hard disk. Quote Link to comment
makopc Posted March 15, 2018 Share Posted March 15, 2018 I am having the EXACT same issue that @rtcneil is having! I have tried many different brands of flash drives all giving me the same error. I have tried using the USB tool on both my mac and windows computers. I boot from the USB drive, and get an error saying that the drive is not bootable. My config is as follows: Dell T710 server, dual X5630 CPUs, 48GB of RAM, 6x4TB WD Red Drives Yes this server does have a PERC 700 controller... however I had everything working fine prior to trying to upgrade and change the USB drive. All the drives are set up as single drive raid 0 virtual disks in order for unRAID to control the disks independently. Is there a possibility that the problem is with the USB creation tool? Quote Link to comment
SSD Posted March 15, 2018 Share Posted March 15, 2018 1 hour ago, makopc said: I am having the EXACT same issue that @rtcneil is having! I have tried many different brands of flash drives all giving me the same error. I have tried using the USB tool on both my mac and windows computers. I boot from the USB drive, and get an error saying that the drive is not bootable. My config is as follows: Dell T710 server, dual X5630 CPUs, 48GB of RAM, 6x4TB WD Red Drives Yes this server does have a PERC 700 controller... however I had everything working fine prior to trying to upgrade and change the USB drive. All the drives are set up as single drive raid 0 virtual disks in order for unRAID to control the disks independently. Is there a possibility that the problem is with the USB creation tool? It is possible. Obviously experienced users are not rebuilding their USB sticks every release. But does seem unlikely. I used the tool for building a new stick for the 6.4 release and it worked fine. Tagging @limetech to see if he has any ideas. It has actually been quite a while we've had issues with boot problems. 1 Quote Link to comment
rctneil Posted March 16, 2018 Author Share Posted March 16, 2018 Just a quick update here: Just updated my motherboards BIOS to 3002 which is the latest available. No different. 18 hours ago, SSD said: On the USB/Mass storage configuration, my might try various options including forced floppy and hard disk. Just been through and tried each one of those options one at a time and no luck. I have also tried downloading the Ubuntu installer and making a bootable USB drive from that. That boots perfectly and I get into Ubuntu. I still need to try using the creator tool to build a 6.4.0 build drive. The annoying thing is, is that I would like to continue to use my 6.4.1 config that's all set up and configured. Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted March 16, 2018 Share Posted March 16, 2018 2 hours ago, rctneil said: I would like to continue to use my 6.4.1 config that's all set up and configured. Your configuration is totally contained in the config folder on flash and you can copy it. The key file (license) in that folder is tied to a specific flash drive though. Quote Link to comment
rctneil Posted March 17, 2018 Author Share Posted March 17, 2018 On 3/16/2018 at 12:35 PM, trurl said: Your configuration is totally contained in the config folder on flash and you can copy it. The key file (license) in that folder is tied to a specific flash drive though. Ah ok, Yesterday I tried making a 6.4.0 drive using the creator tool but that also failed. Anyone else have any ideas about this? I'm totally stuck now. Tried everything I can think of. @limetech Any thoughts? I want to purchase a license but can't if I can't get into the OS! Quote Link to comment
limetech Posted March 17, 2018 Share Posted March 17, 2018 5 minutes ago, rctneil said: Ah ok, Yesterday I tried making a 6.4.0 drive using the creator tool but that also failed. Anyone else have any ideas about this? I'm totally stuck now. Tried everything I can think of. @limetech Any thoughts? I want to purchase a license but can't if I can't get into the OS! Please use the USB Creator tool to prepare your flash device. In the tool click Customize and check "Allow EFI boot". After flash created, plug into server and get into bios. Make sure USB mass storage is set up in "standard" way (meaning no forced-FDD or anything like that). Make sure your flash device is selected for UEFI boot as the first boot option, and then make sure all other boot options are disabled. See if that works. Quote Link to comment
rctneil Posted March 18, 2018 Author Share Posted March 18, 2018 16 hours ago, limetech said: Please use the USB Creator tool to prepare your flash device. In the tool click Customize and check "Allow EFI boot". After flash created, plug into server and get into bios. Make sure USB mass storage is set up in "standard" way (meaning no forced-FDD or anything like that). Make sure your flash device is selected for UEFI boot as the first boot option, and then make sure all other boot options are disabled. See if that works. Right, just tried following that to the letter and it still doesn't work. It boots and I get "Reboot and Select proper boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected boot device and press a key." Please be aware that I have tried making a bootable Ubuntu drive using this exact same drive and that works perfectly. Quote Link to comment
Frank1940 Posted March 18, 2018 Share Posted March 18, 2018 Have you tried to boot with that USB drive in another computer? (This is safe to do as unRAID will not do anything to the drives installed in that computer unless you specifically tell it to!) Quote Link to comment
rctneil Posted March 18, 2018 Author Share Posted March 18, 2018 I only have a Macbook to test on. Can I boot from the drive using that? Quote Link to comment
rctneil Posted March 18, 2018 Author Share Posted March 18, 2018 (edited) 21 minutes ago, rctneil said: I only have a Macbook to test on. Can I boot from the drive using that? Just tried to boot up from it on my Macbook Air. It sees the drive but freezes when I select to boot from it. I don't have anything else to test it on. Edited March 18, 2018 by rctneil Quote Link to comment
rctneil Posted March 18, 2018 Author Share Posted March 18, 2018 I've been having a mess around with all sorts of different settings in the BIOS. Nothing seems to work whatsoever. I get 3 differing outcomes and can't predictably say which will happen each time I boot. Sometimes I get "Reboot and Select proper boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected boot device and press a key." Othertimes I get a Non system disk error saying the disk is not bootable. and thirdly I sometimes get just a flashing "_" character in the top left. It continues to flash and nothing ever happens from that point on. I have looked at this thread: and tried a whole load of the options there as the BIOS seems to been laid out very similarly to my own. No luck either. AAAAARRRRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! Quote Link to comment
Frank1940 Posted March 18, 2018 Share Posted March 18, 2018 Unless, someone jumps in here and says there is a problem with the Macbook Air not be able to boot from unRAID boot drives, there must be some issue with the Flash Drive or its partitioning or the way that the unRAID boot is being setup on this drive. What is surprising is that if it was the last one, we should be seeing more posts about this problem. (Most of the recent issues have been BIOS or UEFI setup related.) Comments, any one? @rctneilDo you have access to, or a friend who has, a Windows computer? If you do, I would take over two flash drives-- one a 'virgin' and this particular drive. Use the unRAID USB Creator to setup both drives and let's see what happens. Quote Link to comment
limetech Posted March 18, 2018 Share Posted March 18, 2018 On 3/3/2018 at 1:49 AM, rctneil said: Hi all, As my extended trial has just expired, I thought it was about time I bought myself a real license. Before I did, I decided to switch to a better quality USB drive before getting it. I plugged both drives into my Mac, copied the contents of the old to the new, ran the make bootable mac file and tried to use it to boot from. Each time I get: "this is not a bootable disk please insert a bootable floppy and try again". The drive is correctly set as the boot drive but I get that error every single time. If I put the old drive in then Unraid boots as normal. Any ideas as to what is going wrong here? Thanks, Neil How did you create the bootable device which is running your Trial? Also what is the vendor & model of that device? In the USB mass storage spec there's a way for a device to present itself as removable or not. These days most usb flash presents as removable, but I've seen older devices which show up as "hard drives" under windows (because the removable flag is not set). Quote Link to comment
rctneil Posted March 18, 2018 Author Share Posted March 18, 2018 (edited) 26 minutes ago, limetech said: How did you create the bootable device which is running your Trial? Also what is the vendor & model of that device? In the USB mass storage spec there's a way for a device to present itself as removable or not. These days most usb flash presents as removable, but I've seen older devices which show up as "hard drives" under windows (because the removable flag is not set). I used the USB Creator Tool for that with 6.4.0 It just shows up as "Generic USB". Just one of those cheapy ones from a tradeshow. It worked perfectly to trial it with. My intention all along was the swap it out with a better one before purchasing a license. What's bugging me now is that i've just tried booting to the trial but that also fails to get into Unraid. Everything is configured as it was and it still fails. As said previously, I can create an Ubuntu bootble disk on the same new usb drive and it boots fine! I'm really starting to get aggravated by this and wondering if it's worth bothering at all. Neil Edited March 18, 2018 by rctneil Quote Link to comment
limetech Posted March 18, 2018 Share Posted March 18, 2018 4 minutes ago, rctneil said: I'm really starting to get aggravated by this Yes this is maddening. How are you installing ubuntu? Quote Link to comment
rctneil Posted March 18, 2018 Author Share Posted March 18, 2018 Just now, limetech said: Yes this is maddening. How are you installing ubuntu? It's not installing Ubuntu, I followed the guide on their website to create a bootable drive. Downloaded the main file and used Etcher to make it a bootable Ubuntu drive. Guide I used: https://tutorials.ubuntu.com/tutorial/tutorial-create-a-usb-stick-on-macos#0 Quote Link to comment
rctneil Posted March 18, 2018 Author Share Posted March 18, 2018 @limetech Just to be sure, I used my brand new usb drive and made another Ubuntu boot disk and tried that and it boots perfectly into there. Quote Link to comment
limetech Posted March 19, 2018 Share Posted March 19, 2018 7 hours ago, rctneil said: Just to be sure, I used my brand new usb drive and made another Ubuntu boot disk and tried that and it boots perfectly into there. Are you using UEFI boot with ubuntu? Quote Link to comment
rctneil Posted March 19, 2018 Author Share Posted March 19, 2018 6 hours ago, limetech said: Are you using UEFI boot with ubuntu? To be perfectly honest, I have no idea. I opened Etcher, drag the downloaded Ubuntu image onto it, select the drive I want it to be written to and click Write. And off it goes. It just works. Sorry I can't be of more help. Is there a way I can find out? Quote Link to comment
limetech Posted March 19, 2018 Share Posted March 19, 2018 26 minutes ago, rctneil said: Sorry I can't be of more help. Is there a way I can find out? Just curious how you have boot priority set up in bios. Quote Link to comment
makopc Posted March 19, 2018 Share Posted March 19, 2018 I solved my issues by doing a manual USB creation..... follow the directions on the download page and see if that works for you.... Also, if you used the USB creation tool... you "might" just have to use the make_bootable.bat file as an administrator. This may solve your issue as well. Quote Link to comment
rctneil Posted March 20, 2018 Author Share Posted March 20, 2018 20 hours ago, makopc said: I solved my issues by doing a manual USB creation..... follow the directions on the download page and see if that works for you.... Also, if you used the USB creation tool... you "might" just have to use the make_bootable.bat file as an administrator. This may solve your issue as well. Ok, I just used did a manual USB creation on my new drive. Wasn't sure whether to use UEFI or not so I first chose yes and tried that, it failed. Then I came back, formatted the drive, copied the files across and this time chose No. That also failed. I have tried to use the make bootable file after the usb creation tool sometime ago and that also didn't work. I'm at a complete loss. Why should Ubuntu boot from the drive but not Unraid? Quote Link to comment
Frank1940 Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 Have a look at this post. Your situation may not be identical but it may give you a clue. https://lime-technology.com/forums/topic/70095-unraid-os-version-650-stable-release-available/?page=8&tab=comments#comment-644097 I suspect the changes made to allow UEFI booting is going to be a issue for a while. Quote Link to comment
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