[OpenIndiana-discuss] OI on USB flash drive

[Michelle]

OK, this is where things are going to get a bit awkward.

Scenario – QNAP NAS TS-251 decided to install their own Malware Remover
which tells me it’s removed files, but doesn’t tell me which ones it’s
removed, and I can’t kill the remover itself. If I Ssh in and remove
it, it simply re-installs itself. I'm not a fan of malware removers
that don't tell you what files they've removed.

So… the decision to rip it apart and install my own operating system.
After all, it’s on an American Megatrends bios.

The 2gig of RAM was replaced with 8, and the storage is a half gig USB
flash module. So the flash module has to be replaced also.

I thus have a USB header unit and I’ve also tried to install Hipster to
a flash drive connected via a USB harness, and also to a USB key
directly.

On install, I get an error…

openindiana drm: WARNING: [drm:pci_dev_create:93] ddi_prop_get_int()
failed

… which repeats three or four times during the installation.

After installation is finished, the installation OS goes down, but
says…

openindiana genunix:WARNING: xhci has no quiesce()
reboot: not all drivers have implemented quiesce(9E)
Please see veradm/messages for drivers that haven’t implemented
quiesce(9E)
Failed to process boot arguments from Boot Environment.
Falling back to regular reboot

Then on reboot, the boot comes up but gives…

WARNING: pci at 0,0pci8086,f35 at 14/storage at 3/disk at 0,0 (sd0):
Commend failed to complete… Device is gone
Warning: Pool “rpool” has encountered an uncorrectable I/O failure and
has been suspended; “zpool clear” will be required before the poor can
be written to.
Warning: pci at 0,0/pci8086/f35 at 14/storage at 3 (scsa2usb0): Reinserted
device is accessible again.
Warning: Pool “rpool” has encountered an incorrectable I/O failure and
has been suspended; “zpool clear” will be required before the poor can
be written to.

...that last repeats three times and the unit sits there.

I did try searching for devices with no drivers, but the only thing
that came up were the two processor cores. 

I did try creating a Solaris 2 partition and installing to a partition
instead of the EFI whole disk option, but that failed on fdisk and
didn’t even install the files. I had to destroy the partition table in
order to get back to getting the installation to work.

Also, in the installer, when I tried to go to a partition installation
and pressed F5 to change the partition type, it would go back to the
installation menu again, so I’m presuming that it just doesn’t like the
USB as a target.

I’ve got an ugly feeling that I’ve got no way of getting around this. 
Yes, I know I can put the SATA drives in and make a slice for rpool,
but where’s the fun in that?