TL;DR: It ended up just being bios settings. Clearing cmos fixed it.

 

 

Hello,

 

I have been using Unraid 6.3.2 (It might have been as high as 6.3.5, I don't remember exactly) on a USB 2.0 stick at home for about 6 months now, and everything was working fine until my USB boot drive failed last week. I had previously tried upgrading using the tool on the web interface, but I always had issues with networking on higher versions so I just reverted back to 6.3.2. Now I'm forced to use 6.5.2/6.5.3 because I deleted my copy of 6.3.2. I'm emailing support right now about getting another copy of 6.3.2, but in the mean time it would be really nice if I could get this problem fixed.

 

The problem is whenever I try to raise any ethernet interfaces it doesn't let me because apparently they don't exist. My guess is that the kernel modules aren't loading properly because before the login prompt it throws some errors about not being able to see the USB drive and not being able to load some modules because it can't find them. I've tried using multiple USB drives from various manufacturers using USB 2 and 3, but no luck.

 

Everything else seems to be working okay like the gui boot mode, but I can't really test it thoroughly because I think I need to be connected to the internet in order to activate my license key anyway.

 

My motherboard is an ASRock ep2c602-4l/d16 with two Xeon E5-2670 and 8*8gb sticks of ECC DDR3.

 

I've attached a picture of the errors, as well as my diagnostics.zip. I've verified that the USB's name is UNRAID and it is formatted in FAT32 and that the modules are in the bzmodules file on the USB drive. If you need any more diagnostic information, I'd be happy to provide it.

 

Thanks for your help

tower-diagnostics-20180630-1351.zip

 

 

Edited July 1, 20188 yr by nbc12

Besides bzimage/bzroot you also now need to copy bzmodules and bzfirmware from the release zip to your usb flash boot device.

1 hour ago, limetech said:

Besides bzimage/bzroot you also now need to copy bzmodules and bzfirmware from the release zip to your usb flash boot device.

 

Yeah, I copied the entire zip and ran the batch file as administrator. Is there anything else I need to do?

 

I'm using a fresh install of 6.5.3 and it's not working. 

Unraid is able to boot from all of the flash drives I've tested on the ASRock ep2c602-4l/d16 motherboard. It worked on 6.3.5, but for some reason it stopped working with any version > 6.4. What changed between 6.3 and 6.4? I was looking through the 6.4.0 release notes, and it said this:

 

Quote

Kernel modules and firmware are now left on the Flash in a squashfs loopback and loaded into RAM on demand.

 

Maybe this is the reason it stopped working? IDK...

The screen shot shows that unRAID is not seeing the USB drive so that it can be mounted correctly at /boot (and thus complete initialisation successfully).  This would explain your symptoms.  You should check that it is formatted as FAT32 and labelled ‘UNRAID’.  Also if you have a choice USB2 ports tend to be more reliable than USB3 ports.

11 hours ago, itimpi said:

The screen shot shows that unRAID is not seeing the USB drive so that it can be mounted correctly at /boot (and thus complete initialisation successfully).  This would explain your symptoms.  You should check that it is formatted as FAT32 and labelled ‘UNRAID’.  Also if you have a choice USB2 ports tend to be more reliable than USB3 ports.

 

If you read my original post, I say I have done all of these things. Unraid changed how it loaded kernel modules after 6.3, so maybe that's the reason it's not working.

Edited July 1, 20188 yr by nbc12

7 minutes ago, nbc12 said:

 

If you read my original post, I say I have done all of these things. Unraid changed how it loaded kernel modules after 6.3, so maybe that's the reason it's not working.

 

One thing sticks out, it can't find bond0  I'd guess that's not a default thing, and it would expect eth0.  Is this 100% a fresh config?  Just wondering how bond0 came to be, any remnant of a previous config perhaps?

16 minutes ago, CHBMB said:

 

One thing sticks out, it can't find bond0  I'd guess that's not a default thing, and it would expect eth0.  Is this 100% a fresh config?  Just wondering how bond0 came to be, any remnant of a previous config perhaps?

 

Nope, fresh install of 6.5.3. I didn't keep backups of my previous config, although I definitely will now...

1 minute ago, nbc12 said:

 

Nope, fresh install of 6.5.3. I didn't keep backups of my previous config, although I definitely will now...

 

Worth checking the BIOS for any NIC related settings?  Thinking out loud here now.....

I'd probably simplify things and disable all but one of the controllers and see if that makes any difference.  Also any network switch grouping and stuff like that as well.

1 minute ago, CHBMB said:

 

Worth checking the BIOS for any NIC related settings?  Thinking out loud here now.....

 

I just checked, and it looks like it's enabled. Although the wierd thing is that it was working with those bios settings on 6.3 just fine...

 

I'll try a pcie nic next

12 minutes ago, CHBMB said:

I'd probably simplify things and disable all but one of the controllers and see if that makes any difference.  Also any network switch grouping and stuff like that as well.

 

Yeah still nothing. I left the first network port enabled in the bios, but disabled the rest of them. Also tried a pcie nic, and nothing.

 

At this point I really think this is a bug in unraid > 6.3.5 because I haven't changed any bios settings but it just stops working starting with version 6.4, even with a fresh config. Canyone else try 6.5 on an ASRock ep2c602 mobo to verify this?

 

My switch and the nics shows a link at 1000mbps, but unraid doesn't see the network interface.

I must admit I'd be very surprised if the root cause was a problem with Unraid, knowing how it's compiled and packaged and given you have Intel NICs I reckon that's unlikely. Intrigued to know though.

No switch with link aggregation or anything like that?

Maybe video the boot process and let's see if anything else shows up...

I also saw this thread which looks like it's the same problem, but I don't think they found a solution. They're even using the same mobo

 

Edited July 1, 20188 yr by nbc12

22 minutes ago, nbc12 said:

I also saw this thread which looks like it's the same problem, but I don't think they found a solution. They're even using the same mobo

 

 

@ashman70 is using the same hardware and I know he's still using Unraid as he's a reasonably prolific poster.  Skimming the thread there's a few things you could try there....

 

If you asked me, I'd definitely try to get hold of a smallish USB2 stick if possible, there's some models talked about in the thread.  And definitely plug it into a USB2 port if you have one.

Try unplugging all USB devices including your keyboard and see if it will boot with just the flash drive installed, and then try different USB ports.

I am a complete idiot...

 

I just cleared CMOS, and that ended up fixing it for some reason... weird because those bios settings worked on 6.3, but not 6.5
 

Thanks for all your help anyways

50 minutes ago, nbc12 said:

At this point I really think this is a bug in unraid > 6.3.5 because I haven't changed any bios settings but it just stops working starting with version 6.4, even with a fresh config. Canyone else try 6.5 on an ASRock ep2c602 mobo to verify this?

 

42 minutes ago, CHBMB said:

I must admit I'd be very surprised if the root cause was a problem with Unraid, knowing how it's compiled and packaged and given you have Intel NICs I reckon that's unlikely.

 

Told ya!   Great you're up and running and now can enjoy the latest version, there's been a few changes since the v6.3 days. Thanks @ashman70 for popping by as well.

No idiots here, just people with questions or problems to solve. Glad you got it fixed.

My pleasure, anytime.