[OpenIndiana-discuss] OI on USB flash drive

Sat May 1 05:17:21 UTC 2021

Hi Till,

Many thanks for the detailed response.

My target is an enterprise Sandisk SSD on the end of a Sata/USB
controller. I think I can get it in the case. I've tried a few
combinations and have one that boots, so I'm fairly confident that this
is now down to tweeking; but I might have reached the end of the road
with the USB approach because, as you say, they are a bit exotic.

I do have a couple of HP N54L microservers in service for about five
years, with the custom BIOS flash so I have hot plug/play. The newer
microservers still run to a grand with a decent spec, which is a bit
rich for me at the moment; I need to save.

This is now just a case of not letting the QNAP go to landfill. You're
correct... my model is a half gig flash memory module on a USB header
and it unpacks itself into memory. With that gone, I'm at the 2015
American Megatrends BIOS controlling the boot, but I haven't found an
update that I trust for that motherboard yet.

Thanks for the tip on SmartOS - I'll look it up.

Michelle.

On Fri, 2021-04-30 at 19:21 -0300, Till Wegmueller wrote:
> Hi Michelle
> 
> I don't know how happy you are going to get with a QNAP Hardware as
> base 
> for OI. QNAP is very exotic Hardware. It may be USB what they are
> using 
> in princiapl, but unless you are sure the Controllers are actually
> the 
> Controllers they are saying they are and the Storage is not a SD card
> in 
> Hiding, you are going to have a bad time. ZFS does not assume the 
> Storage to be uncorruptable, and thus far every SD-Card I found was
> so 
> terrible, that one meeting with ZFS showed just how much dataloss
> these 
> cards have.
> 
> QNAP and Synology usually use RAMDISK based approaches which run
> fully 
> in RAM and only use the Storage to boot.
> 
> SmartOS does the same, so this could work.
> 
> In my career and with friends I have seen many OS installation to
> USB 
> drives and SD-cards go horribly wrong. Those storage Options usually 
> don't survive for long and then the whole OS is gone. I've seen it
> with 
> FreeNAS(FreeBSD), Linux and illumos based Oses. I use Disks or SSD's
> as 
> Storage for the Pools. The Cable can be USB. But it needs to be a
> Disk 
> and not a flashdrive to at least Guarantee some use.
> 
> My Hardware recommendations for Cheap Home Servers for NAS on a
> budget 
> include HP Microservers Gen8 (Gen10 works too, but they spew warnings
> on 
> boot) SuperMicro Mini-ITX Boards. HP Workstations, or Workstations
> and 
> Gaming and Office Rigs in general and of course Dan McDonalds HDC3.0
> [0]
> 
> -Till
> 
> [0] https://kebe.com/blog/?tag=HDC
> 
> On 30.04.21 17:19, Michelle wrote:
> > Good suggestions, but sadly didn't work.
> > 
> > Using option 2 single user also fails with the same errors.
> > 
> > I've also tried the USB interface in various booting modes,
> > unfortunately none of which work.
> > 
> > I took a look at the variables in the boot options, just for the
> > sake
> > of it, and couldn't find anything obvious that would help
> > 
> > Michelle.
> > 
> > On Fri, 2021-04-30 at 20:00 +0000, Reginald Beardsley via
> > openindiana-
> > discuss wrote:
> > >   Try selecting the "reconfigure" option when you first boot the
> > > installed image.
> > > 
> > > It is *supposed* to reconfigure, but I spent 50 hrs before I
> > > found
> > > out how to get 2021.04.05 to boot after the install. I thought
> > > the
> > > issue was the particular nVIDIA driver, but that was not the
> > > case.
> > > 
> > > I also got a fresh install of 2021.04.05 to boot properly by
> > > coming
> > > up single user, "touch /reconfigure; init 6".
> > > 
> > > Good luck,
> > > Reg
> > > 
> > > 
> > >       On Friday, April 30, 2021, 02:50:50 PM CDT, Michelle <
> > > michelle at msknight.com> wrote:
> > >   
> > >   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?
> > > 
> > > 
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > > https://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss
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