HP P4500G2

[ScoutMaster]

Hi All..
I have a 12bay HP P4500G2 box I want to get running with Nas4FREE... v11.x
It has 12x HDD, and 2x 8Gb usb thumbdrives (+CD +Floppy)
I can boot from either a .img written to USB or from a live CD, or virtail .iso from ilo, each varient boots up fine and can see the HDDs as passed through the raid410 controller all good, even see the 2x usb thunmdrives as umass etc. no problem.. BUT....
I've tried installing OS from both the live.iso and from a .img on USB that booots from, and install to one of the USB thumbdrives but when it reboots I get a msg stating :
"This is a NAS data disk, and cannot boot system. System Halted"
I've removed all partitions from the usd drive each time I went to install, I've done diskpart / clean / etc
Any clues on how to get past this ?
Q: Would I also be able to make a zfs pool of 2x thumbdrives for boot drive protection? ( like freenase does !! )

(PS: Also, how can I get more than one user to be able to login at UI and have administrator/root privledges?)
( PPS, FreeNAS installs fine to dual USB thumbrives [its own zfs pool for redundancy of boot!!!], but f/nas does not have some features I like in Nas4FREE such as F/W etc.)

Cheers,
Scout

[raulfg3]

Hi All..
I have a 12bay HP P4500G2 box I want to get running with Nas4FREE... v11.x
It has 12x HDD, and 2x 8Gb usb thumbdrives (+CD +Floppy)

"This is a NAS data disk, and cannot boot system. System Halted"
I've removed all partitions from the usd drive each time I went to install, I've done diskpart / clean / etc
Any clues on how to get past this ?

Q: Would I also be able to make a zfs pool of 2x thumbdrives for boot drive protection? ( like freenase does !! )

Scout

disconect phisically all disk in you HP, use only liveCD and your future N4F boot USB key.

install N4F embeded on USB ( booting from livecD use option 9 to install).

retire CD from tray and reboot, this time must boot correctly, if no, revise HD boot order in BIOS until works, once works, you can atach/connect your data disk and do a new boot, this time all must works as expected.

[raulfg3]

Q: Would I also be able to make a zfs pool of 2x thumbdrives for boot drive protection? ( like freenase does !! )

viewtopic.php?f=66&t=9522

is what you ask for.

[ScoutMaster]

Hi Raulfg3,
nope, tried removing all disks, insert usb, + cd etc.. boot live iso, install to da0, reboot, failed to boot from da0.
This machines bios is set to boot from usb, and 1/2 dozen other installs on usb I have boot from usb fine, just N4F v11.x wil not boot after install !
This machine will run and boot from usb earlier versions of N4F (v9? etc), just seems not v11.x

One thing I noticed is that during 'install', it says installing system, image on on da0p2.. but thats not the boot partition ???

stumped, and giving up, I've wasted waaay to much time on something that should have been far simpler/easier.

Seems I have no choice but go back to FreeNAS, that just worked out of the box.

[raulfg3]

in my side I have an HP 360 G6 that is simmilar to yours and boot without problems from USB.

install early version until more info appears.
or
alternative can be to do a embeded install on a small and cheap 20 or 30 GB SSD <- This use a valuable SATA port that you perhaps need to data disk, but is an alternative until the problem you describe can be corrected.

[raulfg3]

my only suggest is that revise your BIOS, perhaps there are some updates that solve this boot order problem, your hardware is not so new, and probably your BIOS are from 2010 or so, so try to update to latest is always a good idea.


PD: I suspect that problem reside on the server side and not in the BSD/N4F side because you are the first one to repot this problem.

[raulfg3]

Please post the exact 11.0.x version that are you trying.

[ScoutMaster]

Hi raulfg3,
Thanks for perservering with helping me identify the problem.
I really dont believe its a a BIOS problem (it has lastest available). The P4500G2 (equiv of Proliant SE1220; DL380-G6, so yes, same motherboard design as your DL360-G6, just in 2RU), so we have almost equivalent H/W, except for Raid Controller perhaps?
...ok, so, as other OS's such as FreeNAS and 1/2 dozen other distros (ESXi, FreeBSD, etc all install and boot from USB perfectly as they should on thsi chassis, adn also, the kicker is, the fact that the P4500G2 boots absolutely fine from N4F using the .img file I dd DD'd to a USB, so I am having a hard time believing its a boot from USB issue.
It seems more of a INSTALL boot blocks to da0P1 issue to me.
It does not make a difference if I install from either live.iso or usb.img; neither writes bootable blocks to on the USB.

I really belive this is a N4F 'INSTALL" script problem, not a boot order issue

FYI, I am using "NAS4Free-x64-LiveUSB-11.0.0.4.3252.img | .iso"

Also, another install script problem that I am now finding absolutley insanely frustrating right now is that I cant tell N4F to store the config.xml somewhere else other than '/dev/fd0' during install? There is no floppy disk, there may be a controller, but no floppy!
I think is insane in this revison version, there is zero way I can see up changing this during install... so, ergo, the box upon reboot cannot loads saved configs its oWN USB as its never saved.. aAain, absurd for a product to get this far in dev cycle and someone not noticing or bother to fix this great blunder !!
We really should have this boot drive on ZFS / RAIDZ1 mirrored, or mirrored Vdev's etc... These are suposed to be 'server class' boxes...

ie, I often see "You can not mount partition '/dev/fd0' where the config file is stored. "

I also note that by default, NF4 stil searches for a "conf" directory for the config.xml file...
but part of the install process is does not create a conf dir in "partion4" of the USB during install. again, badness...
Such simplicity in things to do, but massive fail I think...

I hope I am wrong, but I see no where "simple" to fix this...

again, I really feel like going back to FreeNAS !!! it just works !! ( its still got arrogant devs, and even more arrogant and incredibly stooopid ppl moderating the forums, and they refuse to do basic security like like adding ipfw etc, or allow multiple admin/root/wheel accounts to log into the UI ( again absurd in this day and age!)

but so far its proven so much less of a headache.

Someone,...please.. PLEASE... prove me wrong ?

Cheers,
Scout

[JoseMR]

Someone,...please.. PLEASE... prove me wrong ?

Cheers,
Scout

Hello, just to clarify this "This is a NAS data disk, and cannot boot system. System Halted", this is a boot code FreeNAS insert to your drives and obviously after you install NAS4Free onto the usb stick, the system could not find the boot code from the stick and proceed with the next drives available to boot, therefore the above message.

I will suggest you few steeps you can try:

1: NAS4Free have 2 installation methods to install the OS/boot code, #1 GPT(Guid Partition Table) which is the default, and the #2 MBR(Master Boot Record) which is the Legacy most distros still uses, you can try either one and see which work best for you, MBR creates only 3 slices where GPT creates 4 partitions by default.

2: Pull one of the 8GB USB stick and leave only one, theres is still no official mirrored boot support, but for testing purposes only and posted in the Beta section called RootOnZFS which also supports UEFI for very specific hardware.

3: Since you used mirrored USB boot drives, metadata was stored in both drives and in some weird cases, the best thing you can do to bypass headaches is wiping the USB drive you want to use with the dd command, or with DBAN if you preffer a GUI and percentage counter, a simple ZERO fill pass will destroy any metadata left overs present on the entire disk, but PLEASE pull your data drives before try the dd command of DBAN under any circumstances.

Also I will recommend you to use the NAS4Free 11.x LiveCD verify the file integrity and re-try, in the end most simple things could look just difficult.

Regards

[raulfg3]

i do a test install on a testing USB in my G6 and boot OK, so I can't help so much to you because i can't reproduce your problem.

[ScoutMaster]

Hmm, ok, so I've tinkered a bit more, and seems no matter what I do, the HP P4500G2, (~G6) does not get boot blocks written to the only 1 USB thumbdrive (Sandisk 16Gb) disk when no other HDD discs are present in chassis, and irellevant what it's installed from, either CD, another thumbdrive or a .iso as a virtual image from ilo remote console... Again, this box installs from a CD and then boots perfectly fine from the same sandisk USB drive using latest FreeNAS.iso, So I am at a puzzeled loss why NF4 wont do the same.
IE, insert freenas CD, boot, install from, then remove cd, reboot from usb, no problem, just works, done serveral times....
ok, take out FreeNAS CD, insert Nas4free CD, boot, install to usb, says success, remove CD, wont boot from usb, so fail.

Anyway, guys, thanks greatly for taking the time, effort and persistance to help me, I really do appreicate it, and thats what I like about N4F, the community... Was great years ago when helping dive into HAST stuff as well.

I think I'm just be chasing ghosts now to try and patch around this as really I dont want to deviate from a std install for this pseudo production box.... So sadly, and relucanlty this install gets to be Freenas, (with some IPFW rules) as I've ran out of time... Yuk, but so be it... Next time and a few more itterations of N4F and hopefully we get standard out of box dual ZFS boot drives installing/booting correctly, I know I'll be jumping for joy to build a new N4F storage cluster soon (Distributed redundant storage across multiple DataCentres is my next step, GlusterFS anyone? )

Again, thanks all
Scout