Hi, Newbie to Unraid, some 2/3 weeks only. After much playing, testing, frustrations etc.. with config i have the system at a reasonably acceptable condition with the exception 2/3 items i cannot seem to resolve. I have done a few searches on this forum and not found anything as yet that assists me.

 

1. Boot up, will flash the Asus logo then go to black screen and sit for many hours and do nothing. In order to resolve i have been shutting down with power button and place the usb boot thumb into a different port. The system will boot and run then next boot up the system will repeat the issue. The stick is a 16gb Sandisk Cruzer Fit, USB 2.0 brand new purchased for this system.

 

2. The system refuses to boot up without a keyboard. Will show Asus then American Megatrends Inc with drives available stating at the bottom "No Keyboard detected" then stop at a black screen and go no further until the keyboard is plugged in, then it will show limetech boot os scren. I have done a few searches on this and tried some suggestions in the bios to no resolve. Has anyone a resolution for this?? Just want to boot with vga to the board 'igpu', power cable, network cable and Unraid boot usb connected. Headless.. The VGA is only there as a backup as i am having the issue above. Boot Priority is set to the UEFI on the stick with other boot alternatives disabled.

 

3. Connecting a 'Mecer' brand UPS to the system and having it communicate. Model is ME-1000-WTU. It is a 800w smart ups with USB & RS232 for communication. I have only tried USB to the unraid server with no resolve. per documentation 'cat /proc/bus/input/devices' does not reveal the smart ups as an available system. Has anyone any ideas. This is completely new to me so the APC UPS Daemon programming is kind of daunting.

 

Other system information that may be of interest:

Board: Asus P8Z77 -V Pro

Processor: Intel i7 3770 (running at base clock for the time being) 

Graphic: No additional GPU

Ram: 3 x Vengeance 4gb DDR3 1600 XMP ram

1 x 2TB parity

1 x 4TB Parity 

3 x 2TB drives in array

9 minutes ago, Be-Art said:

The system refuses to boot up without a keyboard. Will show Asus then American Megatrends Inc with drives available stating at the bottom "No Keyboard detected"

That is a board issue, some boards have the option to not halt on that error, look for that option in the BIOS.

 

10 minutes ago, Be-Art said:

1. Boot up, will flash the Asus logo then go to black screen and sit for many hours and do nothing

That also looks like a board issue, if you are booting CSM try UEFI, or vice-versa.

 

 

 

6 minutes ago, johnnie.black said:

look for that option in the BIOS.

e.g., this is how it looks on the Asus board I'm working now, but it's not the same on all, some have more advanced options where you can chose on what errors it halts or not, and some might not have any option:

 

Thanks for your quick responses, my Bios boot options are similar options as the image above. i tried the "wait for F1 if error" before but did it again now just incase. With the function disabled I, powered on again and removed the keyboard, the system does the same when the keyboard is removed, sits and waits for it to show up before booting. Shut it down again and booted up with the keyboard in and get the same black screen. nothing moving forward. Another shutdown with the power button and change usb slots for the thumb and boots to lime technology os. 

 

Disabled multiple boot options under 'Launch CSM' (Boot from network, boot from storage, boot from pcie) leaving 'Boot Device Control' on 'UEFI boot only' did not boot into os just black screen. disabled 'Launch CSM' still black screen. Maybe there's something else in the shots attached you can see with likely more BIOS experience than I.

 

 

13 hours ago, Be-Art said:

sits and waits for it to show up before booting.

That would be a BIOS bug, look for a BIOS update or contact ASUS support, or just get a cheap keyboard and leave it connected.

 

13 hours ago, Be-Art said:

leaving 'Boot Device Control' on 'UEFI boot only' did not boot into os just black screen.

Make sure UEFI boot is enable in Unraid, you can easily check by looking at the EFI folder on the flash drive, if it's named EFI- rename to EFI.

I believe the Bios is the latest available, i already updated trying to resolve the other issues i was facing. i'm beginning to think the only way would be to leave a keyboard and be done with it. 

 

The Boot drive EFI folder is labelled "EFI". This pause on the boot is going to prevent me from waking on lan or rebooting when not on site. If anyone comes across this in future and can suggest anything else it would be great. Thanks for the help so far 'tee-tee jorge'

 

5 hours ago, Be-Art said:

i'm beginning to think the only way would be to leave a keyboard and be done with it. 

Instead of leaving a whole keyboard you could just leave one of the logitech wireless keyboard dongles plugged in. They are around $10 or less used on ebay.

4 hours ago, jonathanm said:

Instead of leaving a whole keyboard you could just leave one of the logitech wireless keyboard dongles plugged in

I had the same issue a few years back with my now retired ASRock motherboard. It could start without keyboard while in legacy mode, but as soon as UEFI mode was selected, it wanted to see a keyboard. The simple solution, like @jonathanm mentions, is a logitech wireless receiver to emulate keyboard (and mouse). And if you do have the wireless keyboard, it is still usable too in case local access is required.

 

Thanks for all your responses. Just running with the keyboard in as suggested. Still having intermittent boot hold until the USB thumb is moved to the other USB 2.0 port. On next boot it will do the same putting the thumb back in the original port. Again will continue to work with it as is. Maybe later the motherboard will be upgraded or a resolution comes to light. 

Further to my original post, I could not get the Mecer Smart UPS to communicate with unraid. I did today get a 2U rack mount Smart Ups for this system alone.