Hello,

 

I've just setup an Unraid server and for some reason it seems that it refuses to boot without the keyboard I used for the setup attached to the computer.

It seems to boot through the bios process and then gets stuck on a grey screen. If I plug the keyboard's usb dongle in it, it instantanetely show the boot interface wher you can choose between Unraid's boot options.

I intended to run it absolutely headless without a "disgracefull" peripheral attached to it.

I've tried several other OS and even a trial version of Unraid with this hardware and never ran into that issue.

I'm booting on uefi mode. tried legacy mode but won't boot at all.

 

I've tried to change a couple bios settings without success but in all fairness it seems to be bug from Unraid.

As anybody experienced the same ? Is there a quick fix or a setting I'm missing here ?

 

Any help, lead, idea appreciated !

Many thanks

Edited November 3, 20196 yr by dafidbuteille

5 minutes ago, dafidbuteille said:

it seems to be bug from Unraid.

None of my Unraid servers has a keyboard, I believe I saw this issue before, and IIRC it was an issue with the board's UEFI implementation, you could boot legacy or look for a bios upgrade.

This is almost certainly something in the bios that is refusing to continue booting without a keyboard attached.   You need to check your bios settings for what it is set to do when there is no attached keyboard.

Thank you bot for the leads. This bios is up to date and I've booted it before without anything attached and without having this issue. That and the fact that the Unraid boot option appear instantly when I plug in the keyboard dongle really makes me believe that it's something in the early stage of Unraid's boot process.

i've checked every single possible settings and even put the bios back to factory settings and couldn't make it work. I've read the entire mobo manual and couldn't find anything related to the motherboard needing a keyboard to boot.

Do I need to modify my unraid thumbdrive to boot legacy ? I've tried to boot legacy just by changing the mobo boot order and putting USB:unraidthumbdrive first but it's not working.

2 minutes ago, dafidbuteille said:

Do I need to modify my unraid thumbdrive to boot legacy ?

No, just choose the USB:device instead of UEFI:device. will need to disable secure boot if enable. (that would be for UEFI)

Edited October 29, 20196 yr by johnnie.black

I set the bios to boot on legacy mode (USB:device instead of UEFI:device) and it's working !

Booting on legacy mode allows to boot without the keyboard attached.

 

Thank you guys for your help !

 

Out of curiosity, what do I loose with a legacy boot instead of UEFI ?

 

6 minutes ago, dafidbuteille said:

Out of curiosity, what do I loose with a legacy boot instead of UEFI ?

An interesting question. I think of it this way: what do you lose with a UEFI boot instead of legacy? UEFI boot doesn't allow you to run MemTest from the boot menu. It seems to need a keyboard in some cases! Hardware passthrough of graphics cards to VMs seems more problematic.