January 15, 20197 yr Hi. I'd appreciate some help with getting my new unraid server to boot. This is a new build. I've built a Windows PC and HTPC previously and decided to move my videos from the PC (and scattered external drives) to an unraid server that I finished assembling yesterday. I mostly want to use it as NAS for my media, but wanted plenty of head room to learn dockers/VMs and hopefully use it for a PVR and maybe content downloader (and some backups). OS at time of building: unRAID 6.6.6 (Unraid.USB.Creator.Win32-1.5b.exe) CPU: Intel Xeon E-2144G (3.6 GHz, 71 W TDP) Motherboard: ASUS C246M PRO (Micro Atx, Intel C246 chipset, 8xSATA, M.2, dual Ethernet) RAM: (2) 8 GB Kingston DDR4-2666, ECC, UDIMM Case: Fractal Design Node 804 PSU: Corsair HX750i PSU Cooler: Be Quiet! BK009 Cables: SATA (8) w/motherboard Fans: (3) w/case USB 2.0 internal header adapter: JiuWu 9-pin, ZYX010, Dbl-Decker Type For Parity Drive: (1) 6TB WD Red HDD For Data Drives: (6) 4TB WD Red HDD For Unassigned Drives: (1) TBD HDD (for future PVR) For Cache: (1) 512GB Samsung SSD 970 Pro, PCIe Gen 3.0x4, M.2 2280 USB Flash Drive: SanDisk Cruzer Fit CZ33 16GB, USB 2.0 I created my unRAID boot drive using the Windows Flash Creator. I updated my ASUS C246M Pro to the latest BIOS (version 0602, 2018/11/27)). I installed all the components except the future TBD HDD I'll pull from my PC. I used 7/8 of the onboard SATA for the HDDs. I installed the M.2 2280 PCIe SSD. (The MB allows 8 SATA plus one M.2 when its operating in PCIe mode.) All components are new. I changed the BIOS settings to ONLY boot from the USB Flash. I have a VGA monitor connected to the motherboard backpanel. (The backpanel HDMI didn't work.) No video card is installed (though I tried that too with no luck). No PCIe cards are installed. There is no BIOS setting to turn on/off the internal Intel graphics, though there were some "GT" power/speed settings that I didn't change. I do not have any ethernet cables plugged in. I'm hoping to boot the unraid GUI directly from the host until I see it running, and then run headless. When I power on, and have the unRAID USB Flash installed (I tried both a MB backpanel USB 2.0 port and using the internal USB 2.0 header adapter), depending on how I have the BIOS configured, the server either keeps cycling through reboots, or after a bit, it automatically opens the BIOS Setup Utility. The BIOS setup is automatically opened when I change the UEFI Boot settings to enabled as suggested in these forums. The default is Legacy w/CSM enabled - which results in the continuous reboots when selected. I think I tried every(?) permutation of UEFI/Legacy/CSM with no luck.) I think POST completes (that is, I can set up BIOS 'POST Report' to wait 'Until Pres ESC' and see that BIOS seems to recognize everything I expect it to). However, when I press 'Esc', it just reboots again. The BIOS Setup Utility correctly reports the CPU and PCH (C246), and well everything correctly. It just doesn't boot to the unRAID OS... and just recycles over and over. The ASUS Q-Code LED does cycle through many codes along the way (some to fast to read). Some of the Dignosis LEDs (DIAG_HDD1, DIAG_VGA1, DIAG_CPU1, DIAG_DRRAM1) turn on/off during the process. I don't know if this is normal operation for this board or not. To debug, I successfully booted my 'old' Windows PC with the same USB Flash drive I tried on the 'server' (after setting its BIOS to boot from USB and without changing any other of its BIOS options), and that worked... I booted unraid on that PC with the GUI option and was asked for User/Password as expected. I ALSO, downloaded Windows 10 to a different USB drive (Samsung 32HB USB 3.0), and put that in my new server build, and it DID boot to the Windows OS (at least the initial screen, I don't have a license and didn't proceed). I was on the default 'Legacy' boot setup for this. SO, it looks like my new NAS can boot Windows 10 from USB (at least to the initial screen), but not unraid 6.6.6. My old PC can boot from the unraid flash. This led me to believe that maybe unRAID doesn't support the C246 chipset (or my specific motherboard), but then this morning I saw that at least one user (Tybio) reported success with a E-2176G and a Supermicro MB (that uses the same Intel C246 PCH). So now again, I'm lost. One thing I noticed today is the "Allow UEFI Boot" check box when using USB Flash Creator. I don't recollect what it was set to when I ran it. I'll try again tonight with it checked/unchecked. Any suggestions on how I can get this to boot, or what more to try for debug, are greatly welcome! If anyone has this working on an ASUS C246M PRO motherboard please let me know. Thank you! Edited January 15, 20197 yr by RGD marked as solved
January 15, 20197 yr 1 hour ago, RGD said: One thing I noticed today is the "Allow UEFI Boot" check box when using USB Flash Creator. I don't recollect what it was set to when I ran it. I'll try again tonight with it checked/unchecked. In order to boot unRAID with UEFI, the EFI- folder on the USB flash drive needs to be renamed to EFI (remove the trailing '-'). The Allow UEFI boot checkbox is supposed to do that, but, you can do it manually. Make sure that, in addition to properly naming the EFI folder, the BIOS is also set for UEFI boot.
January 15, 20197 yr Author Thank you for the help Hoopster. I actually got it to boot up last night after regenerating the USB Flash with 'Allow UEFI boot' checked, turning off "USB Legacy Support" and turning off "CSM Support" (though see below). (I didn't see your post until now, but did notice that the Flash's EFI folder had been named EFI~ and now is named EFI). The BIOS Setup Utility on this board is not trivial... it seems like one needs to be an expert at a lot of things to understand what many of the boot options do, and its 'help', like most 'help', is great if you already know what you're doing, but insufficient if you don't. I still don't know what Legacy/UEFI/CSM settings do, or what unraid needs from it to boot that a Windows OS install doesn't (or perhaps I just got 'lucky' with my BIOS setting when I attempted the Windows install and it wouldn't have worked with a different BIOS setup). Unraid Developers: (If you read this... ) Seems like the BIOS UEFI/legacy/CSM setup is a 'common' enough problem that there should be a footnote or something in the 'Getting Started / BIOS and Booting Up' setup instructions. It would have saved me a day's worth of trouble (and a lot of stress thinking perhaps it was my new build or incompatibility with unraid that may have been the problem). This IS a product 'marketed on the website' as 'relatively easy' to setup/use. Not all users are going to know what these [non-trivial] boot options are and what unraid expects them to be. By default, my BIOS was setup with: USB Legacy Support - Enabled CSM Support - Enabled Boot option filter: Legacy only Network: Legacy Storage: Legacy Video: Legacy Other PCI devices: Legacy Fast boot: Disabled I original had the 'Allow UEFI boot' unchecked in the Flash Setup Utility, so I would expect that this should have worked.... seems like unraid requires something from the BIOS setup that legacy boot (on my system) doesn't provide? (I have no experience with what/how happens when BIOS switches over to the OS (or OS install.) Seems like unraid 'required' me to [partially] boot in UEFI whereas Windows 10 didn't... or perhaps I just missed something else, so please correct me if I'm wrong. However, after changing the Flash to 'Allow UEFI boot' and turning off USB Legacy Support and CSM support, I was able to boot unraid, but the unraid GUI didn't work.... I just got the blinking cursor in the top left corner of the monitor as others have reported. I know the goal / expectation is to run headless, and I will, but when building a new system it's nice to see the GUI come up on the host system itself just to help verify things are working, and I haven't tried connecting to a network yet.... one thing at a time... By making [educated] guesses as to the BIOS setup based on reading some other posts, I did get the unraid OS to boot and the host console GUI to work with the following BIOS setup on my ASUS WS C246M PRO motherboard. USB Flash Setup Utility <= Allow UEFI Boot checked USB Legacy Support <= Disabled CSM Support <= Enabled Boot option filter <= UEFI Only Network <= UEFI Storage <= UEFI Video <= Legacy ( <= I think this was the trick) Other PCI devices <= UEFI Fast Boot <= Enabled SATA Support <= Last Boot HDD Only VGA Support <= Auto ( <= maybe this too... I only tried it this way) USB Support <= Full Initial PS2 Devices Support <= Disabled Network Stack Driver Support <= Disabled (<= not sure if I need this or not for unraid... may just be for network booting which my MB supports) I have no idea which of these settings I actually need. Its still guesswork. And I'm not yet sure if I still need to tweak it to fully get my system running with unraid... I haven't tried connecting to my home network yet, so I may have to tweak some more... I did set up the Flash Setup Utility to Static IP, gave my server an unused IP Address on my local network (which I'll reserve in my router too), gave it my router's IP Address as the Gateway and DNS Server (not sure what to put for DNS Server, as my ASUS RT-AC88U router setup doesn't list any but "ipconfig /all" on my PC shows my router's address for DNS so I assume that should work here too? I'm not sure why unraid needs me to tell it the DNS server if I go through a router... (or if its just good practice to pick a specific one) ... perhaps that can be in the install help too for users who are not [yet] expert at everything (or perhaps that's expected to be 'general knowledge' for anyone who attempts to use this OS)... but that's the next step... Edited January 15, 20197 yr by RGD fix typo
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