Embedded USB disk does not boot with blinking underscore

[nore]

Greetings,

So I have an old motherboard (http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Produc ... 24&LanID=0) that I want to use with NAS4FREE.

I downloaded the live USB image, flashed it to a USB disk then booted from it. Then I got another USB disk and used it for the embedded OS installation. The installation went fine, so I rebooted and then got a blinking underscore, NAS4FREE didn't boot, any ideas?

I tried installing the OS twice, once using GPT and the other using MBR, nothing worked. The drive is an old 4GB USB disk.

Thanks

[JoseMR]

I tried installing the OS twice, once using GPT and the other using MBR, nothing worked. The drive is an old 4GB USB disk.

Hello welcome to the forum, since you already tried both GPT/MBR, I can tell you that some legacy USB drives are notorious for having this kind of booting issues, also very prone to corruption, I will highly recommend you to try a branded USB stick such as SanDisk Cruzer Fit 8GB for a reliable NAS4Free Embedded installation.

Regards

[Snufkin]

So I have an old motherboard (http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Produc ... 24&LanID=0)...

May be GeForce 7050 / 610i (MCP73V) chipset is not compatible?
Did not find it in FreeBSD 11.0-RELEASE Hardware Notes.

[JoseMR]

May be GeForce 7050 / 610i (MCP73V) chipset is not compatible?

Seems that he was already able to boot from an USB stick and installed to another one, but target disk cannot boot correctly for some reason.

[nore]

I tried installing the OS twice, once using GPT and the other using MBR, nothing worked. The drive is an old 4GB USB disk.

Hello welcome to the forum, since you already tried both GPT/MBR, I can tell you that some legacy USB drives are notorious for having this kind of booting issues, also very prone to corruption, I will highly recommend you to try a branded USB stick such as SanDisk Cruzer Fit 8GB for a reliable NAS4Free Embedded installation.

Regards

I actually thought about that when the USB disk was read by the live system as "USB disk 2.0". So after your comment, I tried it on two branded disks I have, Samsung and Kingston, both didn't boot. Also tried with GPT and MBR. I can't figure out the issue, it's very odd.

Thanks

[nore]

So I have an old motherboard (http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Produc ... 24&LanID=0)...

May be GeForce 7050 / 610i (MCP73V) chipset is not compatible?
Did not find it in FreeBSD 11.0-RELEASE Hardware Notes.

oh and btw, I have used FreeNAS 7.0 back in 2010 on this same system.

[JoseMR]

oh and btw, I have used FreeNAS 7.0 back in 2010 on this same system.

Hi, if you already used Legacy FreeNAS on this same system, then I will assume that the old USB disk as well, so please pay attention for the SWAP space dialog wen installing, then set a lower SWAP space like "512" or "1024", since NAS4Free requires a 2GB root partition.

You can always erase "zero fill" old legacy media to properly sanitize them evenly .

Regards

[nore]

oh and btw, I have used FreeNAS 7.0 back in 2010 on this same system.

Hi, if you already used Legacy FreeNAS on this same system, then I will assume that the old USB disk as well, so please pay attention for the SWAP space dialog wen installing, then set a lower SWAP space like "512" or "1024", since NAS4Free requires a 2GB root partition.

You can always erase "zero fill" old legacy media to properly sanitize them evenly .

Regards

I tried with 8GB (Kingston) and 32GB (Samsung) USB disks with 2048 for swap. I guess there is enough space for the root partition. Regarding the legacy FreeNAS, I installed it on an IDE 20GB HDD, and not embedded on USB.

[JoseMR]

I tried with 8GB (Kingston) and 32GB (Samsung) USB disks with 2048 for swap. I guess there is enough space for the root partition. Regarding the legacy FreeNAS, I installed it on an IDE 20GB HDD, and not embedded on USB.

Hello, sometimes boot USB is a pita to work with on select consumer grade hardware, glad you running off an old HDD, which is of course much reliable than USB.

Just to inform you, NAS4Free Full RootOnZFS now supports Firmware upgrades in the same way Embedded does, and the upgrade function will be available on next release, so if you want to be able to upgrade Full without accessing the hardware to boot live media each time you upgrade, consider NAS4Free Full on ZFS root, that is the last option in the installer, if you need more info about, don't hesitate to ask.

Regards

[nore]

I always thought the USB disk was the first disk in boot order, turns out the boot order is messed up. It booted just fine after fixing that.

Apologies for my idiocy.
Thanks for your support.