TrueNAS CORE boot problems in HP Proliant Gen8

stardust · May 23, 2024, 6:29pm

Hello,

I just acquired an HP Proliant Gen8 Microserver to use as a home server.

I installed TrueNAS CORE in a drive I added to the SATA port on the motherboard.

The system boots without any issues, but then when I add other drives in the bays, the system won’t boot any more.

I’m seeing the message “Non-system disk or disk error”.

Any idea how to select which drive to use to boot?

Thanks!

prez02 · May 23, 2024, 7:40pm

I remember that being a little tricky,

There is a SATA port on the mainboard, that was meant to be used for an ODD drive. Due to a kind of bug, it is not possible to set this a boot drive. Search for HP Microserver Gen8 boot from ODD. There is a pretty good thread on the omv forums, with input from someone actually working at HPE.

IIRC there are one or two different solutions. I installed grub on a SD-card, which then points to the boot drive. I do not remember the details, and just hope it never breaks…

stardust · May 23, 2024, 7:49pm

I managed to solved it thanks to the tips here: Microserver Gen8 - Boot order from different SATA ... - Hewlett Packard Enterprise Community

I changed the setting in the BIOS from AHCI to Legacy, then after I restarted I could see two SATA controllers. Then I chose the second one and could boot again.

prez02 · May 23, 2024, 8:15pm

Mmmh, but legacy actually means the proprietary raid function is activated, and it is not just passing through the disk? Not sure this is a good thing in combination with ZFS, even if it is soft raid with the HP B120i.

Here are the instructions I used, http://jarrodla.blogspot.com/, and there is a thread on omv forums, hpe proliant servers, created by Spy Alelo.

stardust · May 23, 2024, 8:52pm

Thanks for sharing, I’ll have a look.

stardust · May 27, 2024, 7:44am

I’m going to reset settings, enable AHCI and to try to make this work using a SD card.

Any tips @prez02? To be honest, I’m not very experienced TrueNAS and Linux. To start with, I’m running the first command dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/... but taking ages.

Not sure if I’m doing something wrong.

prez02 · May 27, 2024, 5:20pm

Okay, this is another description, in German, but maybe you can google-translate it? It also offers a download of a ready made image to install grub on a sd card.

Apart from that, not sure the zeroing is necessary, and if you have a large but slow sd-card, it probably takes quite a while?!

stardust · May 27, 2024, 7:25pm

Thanks for sharing. Zeroing was not a good idea in this card, it’s still running and it will probably take all night.

We’ll see if the rest of the steps work, fingers crossed.

stardust · May 28, 2024, 7:55am

I may try with a USB stick, I cannot get the SD card to mount.

stardust · May 28, 2024, 8:05am

I see the sd in the disk list:

But when I run fdisk I see the following:

Any ideas?

stardust · May 28, 2024, 1:42pm

I tried with a USB stick and managed to make it work. Thanks for sharing the info @prez02, it was very helpful.

huu · December 31, 2024, 9:17am

Hi Team, I just finish setting a TrueNAS box using the HP Microserver Gen8 and I thought I will share my issue with the boot problem.

A linux utilities pen boot drive usually boot up with a menu, if no input from a user it will default boot back into HDD.The beauty of this is we can hack the menu to choose which HDD it boot to!

I use this to create a pen drive (i been using this for more then a decay, that why i still use the legacy version. Since this G8 old i think stick with legacy version instead of the new one because i know it worked).

https: / / yumiusb . com / yumi-legacy/ (no space)

Stick a mSD card into usb adapter and stick it into PC
Run the YUMI-2.0.9.4.exe you’ve just download.
Choose the USB drive you just insert !! (be careful here DO NOT wipe wrong drive) !!
Tick “Format” and “Wipe entire disk”,
When select distribution, its does not matter what you choose here, since you are not going to use it anyway. i found this is the quickest - scroll all the way to bottom select “Try unlisted iso (GRUB)” and browser for a small iso so it copy quicker. (you can even rename a text file to name.iso)
Create - Yes - Yes - Next - No - Finish
Now you should have a usb drive call MULTIBOOT… look in there
Edit the file call “syslinux.cfg” it should look like this.

# Menu Entry Created by YUMI - (Your USB Multiboot Integrator)
UI vesamenu.c32
TIMEOUT 300
MENU TITLE Your Universal MultiBoot Integrator
MENU BACKGROUND yumi.png
MENU TABMSG  https://www.pendrivelinux.com
MENU WIDTH 72
MENU MARGIN 10
MENU VSHIFT 3
MENU HSHIFT 6
MENU ROWS 15
MENU TABMSGROW 20
MENU TIMEOUTROW 22
menu color title 1;36;44 #66A0FF #00000000 none
menu color hotsel 30;47 #C00000 #DDDDDDDD
menu color sel 30;47 #000000 #FFFFFFFF
menu color border 30;44	#D00000 #00000000 std
menu color scrollbar 30;44 #DDDDDDDD #00000000 none

LABEL Boot from first Hard Drive
MENU LABEL Continue to Boot from ^First HD (default)
KERNEL chain.c32
APPEND hd1
MENU DEFAULT

label Unlisted ISOs (via GRUB)
menu label Unlisted ISOs (via GRUB) ->
MENU INDENT 1
KERNEL /multiboot/grub.exe
APPEND --config-file=/multiboot/menu/menu.lst

See the bit “APPEND hd1” change that to “APPEND hd5” (hd5 is the ODD)
you can delete the the iso section so it look like this.

# Menu Entry Created by YUMI - (Your USB Multiboot Integrator)
UI vesamenu.c32
TIMEOUT 300
MENU TITLE Your Universal MultiBoot Integrator
MENU BACKGROUND yumi.png
MENU TABMSG  https://www.pendrivelinux.com
MENU WIDTH 72
MENU MARGIN 10
MENU VSHIFT 3
MENU HSHIFT 6
MENU ROWS 15
MENU TABMSGROW 20
MENU TIMEOUTROW 22
menu color title 1;36;44 #66A0FF #00000000 none
menu color hotsel 30;47 #C00000 #DDDDDDDD
menu color sel 30;47 #000000 #FFFFFFFF
menu color border 30;44	#D00000 #00000000 std
menu color scrollbar 30;44 #DDDDDDDD #00000000 none

LABEL Boot from first Hard Drive
MENU LABEL Continue to Boot from ^First HD (default)
KERNEL chain.c32
APPEND hd5
MENU DEFAULT

# label Unlisted ISOs (via GRUB)
# menu label Unlisted ISOs (via GRUB) ->
# MENU INDENT 1
# KERNEL /multiboot/grub.exe
# APPEND --config-file=/multiboot/menu/menu.lst