Can't get FreeNAS to install

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

Fritz

Well-Known Member
Apr 6, 2015
3,371
1,375
113
69
System consists of -

MSI AM1i Mini ITX MB
8GB Ram

I'm trying to install FreeNAS on a USB drive. I've tried 3 different drives and get the same results. I get dumped to a mountroot prompt and that's all. It appears that it can't find a suitable drive to install to. Can't be the USB ports as the installer will happily boot from any of them including the USB 3.0 ports. Is there a way around this or should I just scrap this MB and go with Intel?

Thanks
 

XmiX

New Member
Oct 7, 2016
10
1
3
45
Try to boot from USB 2.0 port if you have some.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

fractal

Active Member
Jun 7, 2016
309
69
28
33
Try formatting / wiping the USB drives on another computer prior to use. Formatting under windows 10 is good enough. I have had issues trying to install FreeBSD based appliances to USB sticks that were already partitioned in ways it did not understand.
 

keybored

Active Member
May 28, 2016
280
66
28
... I've tried 3 different drives and get the same results. ...
Are they all the same make/model/size? I had issues in the past with a system refusing to work with a certain drive type. Plugged in a drive from a different manufacturer and all went well. One other system refused to read any flash drives at all and would only accept an SD/microSD card connected via a USB adapter.
 

Terry Kennedy

Well-Known Member
Jun 25, 2015
1,140
594
113
New York City
www.glaver.org
I'm trying to install FreeNAS on a USB drive. I've tried 3 different drives and get the same results. I get dumped to a mountroot prompt and that's all. It appears that it can't find a suitable drive to install to. Can't be the USB ports as the installer will happily boot from any of them including the USB 3.0 ports.
There are 2 common problems, one fixable and one not.

The fixable one is that some USB mass storage devices take a while to appear, and they're not "there yet" when the kernel tries to mount the root device. I believe the delays were lengthened in newer FreeBSD versions, but I'm not sure if FreeNAS and other derivatives are up-to-date there. But there's a loader tunable as mentioned in an earlier reply.

The not [user-] fixable one is that there's a changeover between BIOS INT 13 services used by the loader to load the kernel and any modules, and the actual disk driver in the kernel (the kernel can't use real mode INT 13 for obvious reasons). The leads to "it loaded the kernel fine but can't find my device" problems. This is more common with things like IPMI virtual media than with things like real USB drives, though. These need a developer to either tweak an existing kernel driver to avoid things that break the somewhat-fragile virtual device emulation, or to write a completely new driver for the device.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Fritz

Fritz

Well-Known Member
Apr 6, 2015
3,371
1,375
113
69
Try formatting / wiping the USB drives on another computer prior to use. Formatting under windows 10 is good enough. I have had issues trying to install FreeBSD based appliances to USB sticks that were already partitioned in ways it did not understand.

Did a long format on all three drives but still no joy.
 

Fritz

Well-Known Member
Apr 6, 2015
3,371
1,375
113
69
Are they all the same make/model/size? I had issues in the past with a system refusing to work with a certain drive type. Plugged in a drive from a different manufacturer and all went well. One other system refused to read any flash drives at all and would only accept an SD/microSD card connected via a USB adapter.
All 3 were brand name and survived a full format with no complaints.

I've decided to go with another MB/CPU/RAM combo. no sense in wasting any more on this since its an AMD based board and FreeNAS HIGHLY recommends Intel. Who know what others problems I'd face if I got past this one.
 
Jul 2, 2016
62
13
8
39
Iceland
install Freenas from CD/DVD drive ;) ?

My favourite software to install OS to a USB stick is Rufus (at least it´s a well written software), works fine with Legacy bios and UEFI, but installing from a CD/DVD seems to always work no matter what (from my experience).
 
Last edited:

Fritz

Well-Known Member
Apr 6, 2015
3,371
1,375
113
69
Yea, I used Rufus. I think the problem may have been that the box only had 4GB of ram. I know FreeNAS recommends a minimum of 8GB but I thought that was just a recommendation. I have since decided to go with Windows and Drivepool so that I can recycle a bunch of different sized drives. I also ordered 16GB of ram too.