Debugging TrueNAS SCALE Black Screen Issue

TrueNAS General
1

Hey
After succesfully installing TrueNAS Core on my system, i ran into some problems since the support for Nextcloud via the Plugins isnt supported anymore.

But in contrast to the smooth procedure of Core, i ran into multiple problems when trying to install Scale but got it ultimately working. So i am simply sharing my experiences to help others in the future.

System Setup

  • Hardware: i7 2600k, 4GB RAM, GIGABYTE GA-Z68PA-D3 (Bios F3 / F8)
  • TrueNAS Version Attempted: SCALE Stable 24.10.1 and SCALE Legacy 24.04.2.5

I initially booted the Stable Version from a USB-Stick, installed with Universal USB Installer, and got error Unable to find a medium containing a live file system. Solved it by enabling EFI in the BIOS. I now got to the grub menu and could select the TrueNAS iso on the USB-Stick, but after that got a black screen instead of the setup window.

Troubleshooting Steps

  1. Disabled Serial Port in BIOS: Turned off unused ports to minimize conflicts. - no fix
  2. Used a USB 2.0 Stick: Switched from USB 3.0 to 2.0 to ensure compatibility. - no fix
  3. Forced Onboard Graphics: Configured the BIOS to enable and force integrated graphics (iGPU) as the primary display. - no fix
  4. Modified GRUB Parameters: Added i915.modeset=0 to the GRUB configuration during boot to disable Intel GPU mode setting. - no fix
  5. Switched to Ventoy USB-Installer as recommended in some posts. Even tried balena etcher. - no fix
  6. Switched to TrueNAS Legacy. - no fix

Final Solution

  1. Updating the BIOS from Version F3 to F8
  2. Switched to Rufus USB-Installer

After these steps i could finish the setup process, but still got an error json.decoder.JSONDecodeError: Invalid control character (char 197). This resolved when going back to TrueNAS Stable instead of TrueNAS Legacy.

Might also be solved by using integrated or dedicaded graphics respectively.
Hope it helps somebody

1 Like
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I assume there was only integrated graphics or did you have a GPU/graphics card?

The 4GB RAM is “unsupported” and not recommended, but I’m not sure if there’s any correlation with your issues.

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I only had integrated graphics but have often seen in posts that switching to dedicated graphics (or vice versa) helped.

The 4GB RAM work for now, even if they are filld to 85% even while idling. Will update soon.