R620, No boot, no matter the boot device

TrueNAS General
1

I have an odd problem. I have TrueNAS running on several old Dell R630s. They are totally perfect for my needs. I have an nmve card installed that acts as a boot disk. One day, one of these hosts just died and would not reboot.
After spending too much time on it, I rebuilt. On rebuild, all of the disks and the nvme showed up fine so I used the nvme as the boot/OS disk as usual. No boot. I then used all of the disks but the nvme to install on and again, no boot. I used BIOS boot instead of UEFI and the controlled is of course flashed to remove RAID.

I’ve spent quite a lot of time doing all I can including updating the BIOS to the latest I could find but nothing, no boot.

What’s confusing is that on install, the disks are all seen fine but no boot. Really at a loss so thought I should post to see if anyone has some thoughts other than replacing the hardware since this setup works perfectly on my other hosts.

2

How have you tested that the selected boot drive is functional? Being detected doesn’t mean everything.

1 Like
3

Hi,

I’ve not tested it, I’m not sure how I would. The machine is remote to me also which makes it a tad more difficult to diagnose. How would I test this, installing another OS perhaps?

4

Seems I can eliminate truenas as the problem. I tried several other OS’s and none boot so it means there must be a physical problem with the hardware.

1 Like
5

If I am understanding this correctly, you are attempting to boot an NVME drive via legacy (non-UEFI) BIOS which isn’t possible without a seperate UEFI bootloader (something like Clover).

IIRC the Dell UEFI settings have a boot entry list where, all configured entries persist even if the target drive is no longer present. You might want to have a look in there and also re-enable UEFI boot.

1 Like
6

Good point. I’ll take a closer look in the coming days when I get a chance and report back.
I did also try to install to one of the disks but it still would not boot. The installer sees the disks but the host does not on boot.

7

I have a R620 and I encountered a similar issue, I was unable to set any PCIE ssds or NVME drives as the main boot drive and I didnt want to sacrifice any of the front bays. So far the most consistent option has been replacing the optical drive ( only available in the 8 bay vers) with a slim optical to ssd adapter with a basic 256G ssd, this is seen by the bios as a viable boot option and it seems to be running smoothly on my system. obviously you dont have the option of redundancy of boot pool but Truenas is easily recoverable through the config file export and import, as ive had to do a few times during testing different boot options. Hope this info helps and good luck. If you need a link to the part I used DM me as I am unable to include links in this post. EDIT: update I can post links now Amazon.com: SATA Hard Drive Caddy, Universal 12.7 mm SATA to SATA 2nd SSD HDD Hard Drive Caddy Adapter Tray Enclosures for DELL HP Lenovo ThinkPad ACER Gateway ASUS Sony Samsung MSI Laptop

1 Like
8

That’s a good idea. My are 10 bay and since the machine is down, I’ll have to rebuild the pool anyhow so losing one bay might not be a problem.

I think I’ve seen trays that can hold two NVME in a slot too? That could be redundancy but maybe I’m thinking some other hardware I have.

My problem is, this machine is remote so it’s going to take a while before I can get there. I have remote access using idrac so maybe I could use one of the disks for now. I’ll try that just for the heck of it to see if it gets it working again.

1 Like
9

Nice, Yeah these ( Amazon.com: ELUTENG M.2 SATA NGFF to SATA Adapter (Not Support NVME/ M.2 PCIE) 6Gbps Dual NGFF MSATA Adapter B Key/ B&M Key SSD to 2.5" SATA III Converter Adapter Max 4TB Support 2230 2242 2260 2280 SSDs : Electronics ) types of adapters would only be redundant if they can be a configured as raid 1, otherwise they might just stripe the data across both m.2s, if thats the case, if one fails you are gonna have to reinstall the OS anyway after replacing the failed m.2. lastly if truenas AND the bios can see each drive individually you can configure a boot pool mirror in software. Sacrificing 2 bays for high quality SAS SSDs and then configuring them as a boot pool mirror would be the best option IMO (given that your Perc card is operational and set to allow boot from the ssds) . Im still testing different boot options for the r620 so i will probably keep this thread updated with my progress.

10

Thanks for the link to that CDROM replacement device. That’s pretty nifty.
That adapter says JBOD only. However, this one says dual M.2 with RAID.

I can’t link to posts either but here is the ID for the device on Amazon.
B018AOZ9QM

I’ll probably order one to test.

Turns out, this host is actually an 8 bay or there are only 8 disks installed plus the nvme. I can’t tell from IDRAC if it’s physically an 8 or 10 bay but I don’t see a CDROM.

I’ve set BIOS as follows but it never boots.
The installer can see all of the SSD disks so I installed on the 8th disk. The install completes but does not boot.

Thanks for the link to that CDROM replacement device. That’s pretty nifty.
That adapter says JBOD only. However, this one says dual M.2 with RAID.

I can’t link to posts either but here is the ID for the device on Amazon.
B018AOZ9QM

I’ll probably order one to test.

Turns out, this host is actually an 8 bay or there are only 8 disks installed plus the nvme. I can’t tell from IDRAC if it’s physically an 8 or 10 bay but I don’t see a CDROM.

I’ve set BIOS as follows but it never boots.
The installer can see all of the SSD disks so I installed on the 8th disk. The install completes but does not boot.

Why can’t I embed images? I can see them in the preview but when I try to save, the site says cannot embed images. Let me see if I can upload them.
Nope, can’t even upload images.

Shows Boot failed: Ubuntu and Windows boot manager which I don’t have set anywhere.
SATA is set to AHCI Mode.
Boot settings, boot mode set to UEFI.
EUFI settings show ‘unavailable’ for ubuntu and windows, again, not something I’ve ever set so not sure where this is coming from.

Anyhow, not sure what I’m missing for this to work.

11

I have no edit options either to edit my previous message.
Was going to add, only options on boot, F11 is ‘Normal’ or network so cannot even see the SSD I used to install on.
Normal leads to ‘No boot device’

12

I finally got all the parts, the nvme cards and the dual nvme raid device.
TrueNas does not see that as disks so cannot even install the OS.

13

It’s silly that I cannot edit. I’ve been on this site for years.
Anyhow, the device I’m testing is

StarTech Dual M.2 SATA Adapter with RAID - 2x M.2 SSDs to 2.5in SATA (6Gbps) RAID Adapter Converter with TRIM Support , TAA (25S22M2NGFFR)

14

What does not make sense is why the server won’t boot even if I use one of the SSD bays as the OS.

15

Did you put it back in UEFI boot mode and check the Dell UEFI boot manager for old entries?

See UEFI Boot Menu here
I would be inclined to remove all entries, and then try a clean OS install.

16

Yes, it’s in UEFI mode but never sees the disks.
Here, I show I’ve deleted old entries.

Nope, I can’t show since I cannot upload or edit.

Anyhow, trying to add boot options shows only the NICs.

17

I cleared boot options and re-installed on one of the disks in one of the bays, but it never sees the installation.

18

I used the CDROM slot with an adapter and now TN boots as it should. However, during the install, I could see all the disks but after install, there are no disks available to TN for pool.

19

I wish I would edit and upload images. I do see the disks after all in ‘Storage/Disks’ but they are not seen in Pools.

20

It’s because the disks still have the old config on them so are being protected by the OS.