Hi everyone. I'm attempting to migrate over from FreeNAS to try out unRAID before I migrate 24TB of data over.

 

I made my flash drive, it boots up and I get to the Tower prompt however I have no webgui and the only IP is a 169.xxx.xxx.xxx assigned to br0.  I do not see eth0 in ifconfig but if I list PCI devices I do see my Intel NIC there.

 

What can I try to do to get this up to be able to try it out?

 

Main System:  | Dual Xeon E5620 | Gigabyte GA-7TESM | 24GB DDR3 ECC | 240GB SSD + 64GB SSD

EVGABQ850 PSU | Rosewill RSV-L4500 | 6x 8TB WD Red (RAIDZ2) | Mellanox 10GBE

 

 

 

By default unRAID is set to use DHCP. A 169.254.xxx.yyy address means the server did not get a response from a DHCP server.

 

Is your server connected on a network with DHCP server on it? Also check cabling and make sure your network connection is okay.

 

Yep, connected and I can reboot the exact box into FreeNAS and get an ip with no issues.

 

I can edit the network.cfg file to match below and still am unable to connect.  I also do not see eth0 when doing an ifconfig.  Is that normal?

 

# Generated network settings
USE_DHCP="no"
IPADDR=192.168.1.250
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
GATEWAY=192.168.1.1
BONDING="yes"
BRIDGING="yes"
 

 

 

 

Edited August 6, 20187 yr by ryanakata

At the console, list the contents of /boot

Sorry for the delay, I'm running FreeNAS on the box so anytime I need to log a command I have to hop in, reboot, choose unraid and hop in the console over ipmi.  I can't copy/paste text but images are attached.

 

 

If the flash drive has been correctly mounted then the ‘ls /boot’ command would show the contents of the flash drive.    Since that is not showing then the flash drive is not mounted and the /boot location you are listing is just in RAM.  If the flash drive is not mounted as /boot then unRAID will not be able to read any configuration information and correctly finish the initial startup process.    This would explain why you cannot get the network running and the GUI showing up.

 

Possible reasons would include:

- the flash drive is not FAT32 format

- the flash drive is not labelled ‘UNRAID’

- the motherboard is not handling the flash drive reliably.   USB2 ports tend to be more reliable than USB3 ports.

 

it might be possible to manually mount the USB drive and the use the ‘cp /var/log/syslog’ command to get it onto the flash drive so that you can then post it here to see if anyone can spot what is going wrong.

You're going to have to provide a lot more information about what you are doing.  As the first point, are you attempting to boot on bare metal?  

 

This is what I get from the ls /boot command:

 

Linux 4.14.49-unRAID.
Last login: Tue Jul 24 08:36:39 -0400 2018 on /dev/pts/1.
root@Rose:~# ls /boot
Capture3.png.old*  bzroot-gui*                             ldlinux.sys*          memtest*           readvz*
EFI/               changes.txt*                            license.txt*          packages/          syslinux/
bzfirmware*        community.applications-2018.05.18.txz*  logs/                 preclear_disk.sh*  update.assistant.tmp*
bzimage*           config/                                 make_bootable.bat*    preclear_reports/
bzmodules*         extra/                                  make_bootable_linux*  previous/
bzroot*            ldlinux.c32*                            make_bootable_mac*    r8168.ko*
root@Rose:~#

 In yours, There is no EFI  folder/directory  and not syslinux folder/directory and both of those are necessary.  There should also be the bz* files

That would make sense considering I had to run FreeNAS off a SSD since it wasn't working on a USB drive as it did on my previous server.  If the USB is what is causing the issues then I'd have to install unraid to a SSD which is fine, but that would be a 64GB ssd that I planned on using for cache.    To clarify, this was a new build and I've tried multiple flash drives.  It's the entire USB setup on the board having issues.

Edited August 6, 20187 yr by ryanakata

2 minutes ago, ryanakata said:

That would make sense considering I had to run FreeNAS off a SSD since it wasn't working on a USB drive as I did on my previous server.  If the USB is what is causing the issues then I'd have to install unraid to a SSD which is fine, but that would be a 64GB ssd that I planned on using for cache. 

It is not that simple!   It is a requirement that unRAID can read the USB drive during the boot process as that is the only place it will look for the configuration information and the license key.

I really wanted to get off FreeNAS but it appears this board and it's bugged USB bus isn't going to let me.  I appreciate everyone's quick responses.  Quite impressive.

Post up what MB you are using.

Gigabyte GA-7TESM

It has been used for unRAID.  See here:

 

       https://lime-technology.com/forums/topic/73055-actually-going-with-unraid-this-time/

 

5 minutes ago, Frank1940 said:

It has been used for unRAID.  See here:

 

       https://lime-technology.com/forums/topic/73055-actually-going-with-unraid-this-time/

 

 

Well in that case I have my replacement motherboard on the way.  I appreciate the help everyone!

Quick word of caution.  For your flash drive, go with a USB2 Name Brand flash drive less than 32GB in size.  (Name Brand means that manufacturer actually  manufactures flash storage devices.)  Plug it into a USB2 port (black plastic insert).  The reason for this is that some MB's seem to have problems with USB3 flash drives and/or USB3 ports.  Not all MB's have an issue but it is always a headache when they do.  

8 minutes ago, Frank1940 said:

Quick word of caution.  For your flash drive, go with a USB2 Name Brand flash drive less than 32GB in size.  (Name Brand means that manufacturer actually  manufactures flash storage devices.)  Plug it into a USB2 port (black plastic insert).  The reason for this is that some MB's seem to have problems with USB3 flash drives and/or USB3 ports.  Not all MB's have an issue but it is always a headache when they do.  

 

Currently have 4 of these.  SanDisk Cruzer Fit CZ33 16GB USB 2.0 Low-Profile Flash Drive- SDCZ33-016G-B35.  Two were being used for the FreeNAS Mirrored install and then one of the others I tried with unraid.  I'm hoping th enew motherboard doesn't have the USB issues and I can be up and running shortly after it gets delivered. 

Perfect!

 

Well I got the replacement board in yesterday, put a spare CPU and RAM in and and it had a different bios (F8l vs F8).

 

It boots and sees my NICS which it previously did not do on the other board.  However none will pull an IP.  I can see tx and rx traffic on my eth0 port and when I do an ls, nothing shows mounted.

 

I appreciate everyone's help but at this time I do not believe it is feasible for me to consider the switch over to unraid until I have new hardware that supports it in the future.

Unexpected update.  I got a THIRD board and a spare set of RAM and CPUs for a friend's build.  Moved my unraid flash over and it booted up and is working.

 

I'm currently copying my data over to one 8tb disk to evaluate unraid and assess how it performs compared to my existing setup.  Getting Plex installed was jokingly easy.  Once that is up and running I will run that as the primary media host for a couple of weeks and if all seems well then I may behind to migrate more drives over and decom the freenas box.

 

Thanks