[OpenIndiana-discuss] OI on USB flash drive

Sat May 1 05:24:26 UTC 2021

Hi Reg,

Thanks for the efforts. I did try the GUI installer but got the same
problem at initial boot. My issue does seem to be the USB controller.

It is looking like I'll have to do the slice technique for the rpool on
the data drives. They're a pair of 6tb wd reds so I won't loose a lot
:-) ... but they're getting a little old and I didn't want to risk the
OS on them at well... but it is what it is. I last did it several years
ago so I'll have to look it up again!

The 8tb I took out of the QNAP and put in an N54L, zfs quickly flagged
one of them (which is now RMA) whereas the QNAP was still happy to use
it... so I do prefer ZFS for the error checking.

Till mentioned SmartOS, so I'll take a look at that, but I by far
prefer ZFS wherever I can get it.

Many thanks for your efforts and write up.

Michelle.

On Fri, 2021-04-30 at 22:55 +0000, Reginald Beardsley via openindiana-
discuss wrote:
>  
> 
> While I don't have prior experience booting from flash drives, I
> agree with Till's recommendation to try a USB hard drive.
> 
> Have you tried installing to a regular disk drive and booting from
> that? If you can I recommend doing that and skipping the flash drive
> boot. The RAIDZ bootloader seems to work though I don't have the 10
> years of experience I have with using 2 slices to provide a mirrored
> rpool and a RAIDZ export pool.
> 
> Reg
>      On Friday, April 30, 2021, 05:22:03 PM CDT, Till Wegmueller <
> toasterson at gmail.com> 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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> > > openindiana-discuss at openindiana.org
> > > https://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss
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> 
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