HP GEN 8 - Booting Freenas from internal MicroSD card

[molko]

Hi Guys

As per title really, I'm at the point where I have booted into Freenas from an external USB. Freenas is running and I can browse to the URL from a seperate PC

I'd prefer to boot from the MicroSD card, but I cannot figure out how to do this.

I am at the above screen

My best guess is that I need to <9) Shell> and then copy the Freenas from USB to MicroSD and then adjust the boot order, so that it boots from the MicroSD

Like I say, I don't actually know how to do this, so any help you guys can offer would be great.

I've seen refernce to "dd'ing" it - Could someone provide an example of how that might work ?

Thanks

M

 

[JohnK]

read:
http://forums.freenas.org/threads/freenas-9-1-on-hp-proliant-microserver-gen8-microsd-card.15103/

 

[molko]

read:
http://forums.freenas.org/threads/freenas-9-1-on-hp-proliant-microserver-gen8-microsd-card.15103/

Thanks, i've just read that.

It appears to be inconclusive, in as much as sometimes it works with a MicroSD card and other times it does not.

It would have been great, had it shown the syntax for the 'dd' command and how I could use it.

I guess I'll have to purshase a USB Pendrive and boot from that - just seems a waste when the MicroSD card is there.

Thanks for your reply

M

 

[JohnK]

how to dd the image to a usb, which I assume would be the same for a sdcard is in the manual.

Using xzcat and dd on a FreeBSD or Linux System
On a FreeBSD or Linux system, the xzcat and dd commands can be used to uncompress and write the
.xz image to an inserted USB thumb drive or compact flash device. Example 2.4a demonstrates writing
the image to the first USB device (/dev/da0) on a FreeBSD system. Substitute the filename of your .xz
file and the device name representing the device to write to on your system.
Example 2.4a: Writing the Image to a USB Thumb Drive
xzcat FreeNAS-9.1.1-RELEASE-x64.img.xz | dd of=/dev/da0 bs=64k
0+244141 records in
0+244141 records out
2000000000 bytes transferred in 596.039857 secs (3355480 bytes/sec)

 

[cyberjock]

I will warn you that microsd cards don't necessarily work so well as a boot device. It seems obvious that a microsd card with a USB converter isn't much different than a USB stick, but the performance characteristics disagee. I have tried every microsd card I own and every single one will start producing write errors in a few days. The write errors aren't errors related to failed writes, but writes that were delayed for so long the OS failed the write because of the latency. The reality is that even Class-10 microsd cards only promise 10MB/sec sequential for writes(technically reads are included but writes are always slower, so if you hit 10MB/sec write you can expect better for reads). That's far below your typical name brand USB stick. There is no limit to how poorly a microsd card can perform with random writes, but they are typically an order of magnitude worse than your standard USB stick. Even SDHC cards suffer this fate.

I'd highly recommend you just buy a standard name brand USB stick and use that. After all, they aren't that expensive and you can rest assured your configuration isn't going to get corrupted a week later.

 

[JohnK]

cyberjock, Oct 8, 2013
I have many microSD cards, and none of them worked with FreeNAS as a boot device with any of my converters. My advice would be to get a 4GB+ USB stick.

I was going to add to my post that if Cyberjock adviced against it, move on and get the usb stick, but sometimes people want to use this hardware alternatives as a painful learning experience. ;)

 

[molko]

I will warn you that microsd cards don't necessarily work so well as a boot device. It seems obvious that a microsd card with a USB converter isn't much different than a USB stick, but the performance characteristics disagee. I have tried every microsd card I own and every single one will start producing write errors in a few days. The write errors aren't errors related to failed writes, but writes that were delayed for so long the OS failed the write because of the latency. The reality is that even Class-10 microsd cards only promise 10MB/sec sequential for writes(technically reads are included but writes are always slower, so if you hit 10MB/sec write you can expect better for reads). That's far below your typical name brand USB stick. There is no limit to how poorly a microsd card can perform with random writes, but they are typically an order of magnitude worse than your standard USB stick. Even SDHC cards suffer this fate.

I'd highly recommend you just buy a standard name brand USB stick and use that. After all, they aren't that expensive and you can rest assured your configuration isn't going to get corrupted a week later.

You know what fella, I think I will take you up on that advice - I'll get a new USB stick, probably abour 8Gb, that should suffice shouldn't it ?

@JohnK - Yes, I think you are right, as much as a like fiddling with this sort of stuff, I dont have as much time as I used to.


One last thing, does installing FreeNas negate the need to configure HP G8 through its own toolset ? What I mean, now that I am booting and running FreeNas is there anything I need to configure using the HP G8 bootloader prior to this ?

Thanks

 

[cyberjock]

8GB is just fine. Pretty much anything >2GB is fine. :)

 

[JohnK]

molko, Today at 9:34 AM
One last thing, does installing FreeNas negate the need to configure HP G8 through its own toolset ? What I mean, now that I am booting and running FreeNas is there anything I need to configure using the HP G8 bootloader prior to this ?

I assume you have the Microserver Gen 8. If it is I notice that it has a internal USB. Makes that a no-brainer.

As far as the bootloader goes, I would assume you want to disable any kind of hardware Raid and enable AHCI support.

Lastly, people do recommend a brand name usb drive and it seems 8gig is cheaper than 4gig.

 

[cyberjock]

I use corsair voyagers.. never had a problem yet.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233037

 

[JohnK]

I am a cheap skate, running with Sandisk cruzer,