Newbie here, looking to create a trueNAS system on an HP Proliant ML330 G6. I have 32Gb of ECC RAM and 4 12Tb data centre drives ready to go. The machine is super reliable and I would love it to continue it’s life as a NAS as it is a good bit of kit. I’ve been through the ropes on getting it ready, had to buy disk cages and replace the hardware raid card with a new lsi-hba card, but the server is sitting ready to go. However I’ve been struggling with an issue over the last few days. It almost certainly is BIOS related but I have had no luck on hardware forums so I was hoping someone may have some useful insights here.
The issue is with creating an installation USB that the server will actually boot from. It is proving to be an unsolvable nightmare that has caught me by surprise.
This is what i have tried
- Downloading numerous copies of the ISO on several PCs
- Using Ubuntu Disk’s Restore Disk Image, Ubuntu’s dd command and balena etcher to create a bootable installation USB
- Repeating the above on a couple more Ubuntu pcs of various ages.
- Repeating the above on several different USB keys ranging from 16Gb to 64Gb in size.
In all cases I get a USB that will boot on every other machine I have apart from the HP server. It’s not that the server won’t boot from USB, I have tried every single USB key with an Ubuntu server or Ubuntu desktop image on it. Every time the HP boots into the Ubuntu installation or desktop.
I have tried Ventoy too, with that I get a menu showing me the TrueNAS ISO but I get invalid magic number errors which suggests I’m still not getting anything bootable.
I have tried installing Ubuntu onto the HP server then using it to create a bootable USB, but that doesn’t work. I’ve even tried some of the more out there suggestions like using rpi-installer and fudging the restore process on chromebook to create an installer. In all cases I get a USB I can boot any machine from apart from the one I want.
I’ve even gone and got some recordable DVDs and tried using Brasero to create a bootable DVD from the TrueNAS iso, but that always results in an error telling me that the format of the disk image could not be identified band no visible way to assign it manually.
Going back to the USBs and looking at what is produced by the TrueNAS ISO there does seem to be a difference in the structure to the Ubuntu Boot drives, partition 1 on the TrueNAS USB is an unknown 125kb partition whereas on the Ubuntu USB partition 1 is recognised. I don’t know enough to know if that is significant, but removing it from the USB doesn’t work. There don’t seem to be any options on any of the applications to change any of this either.
The only thing I haven’t been able to try is Rufus because I don’t have a Windows machine but I can’t believe that I need to use Windows to install TrueNAS.
I have been through the HP BIOS settings to see if there is anything to change there, as far as I know there isn’t.
I’m just at a complete loss. I really was not expecting to be halted by not being able to create a bootable USB.
So has anyone run into anything similar, or has anyone got any other suggestions?
afaik with Rufus you should achieve this… maybe a Windows slim VM (also a