SuperMicro X8dtn+ boot problem (solved)


kingpin

Recommended Posts

i picked up this board and am having difficulties getting it to boot from the USB drive.

 

i go into the bios, and make the usb drive priority #1 (it sees the drive in there and labels it by name: USB_SanDisk)

 

i have tried reformatting the flash drive, but with no luck.

 

the post screen seems to see everything (the 6 hard drives from the motherboard (technically 5 since i have a bay open), 7 drives from one of the Sat2-mv8 cards (again one bay open), 8 drives from the other Sat2-mv8 card and the usb drive. when it gets to the part where it should start loading the bizimage and bizroot, it never gets there. it says "please reboot or insert the media with the correct software (or something along those lines). also, the USB drive seems to have gone dormant in the meantime. there is a slow fade on and off from the drive itself. I have tried all 4 usb slots on the motherboard (2 on the back and the 2 on the board itself).

 

any help would be appreciated

 

christopher

Link to comment

just arrived at work for the day. i will be back home in 10 hours or so and will upload some shots then.

 

here is what i can tell you from memory

 

under the "boot" section of the bios screen it goes like this

 

boot device priority - 1st boot device - USB SanDisk

USB Drives - 1st drive - USB SanDisk

 

i will snap some shots when i get home though

 

are there any screens in particular that you are looking for?

 

 

christopher

Link to comment

just arrived at work for the day. i will be back home in 10 hours or so and will upload some shots then.

 

here is what i can tell you from memory

 

under the "boot" section of the bios screen it goes like this

 

boot device priority - 1st boot device - USB SanDisk

USB Drives - 1st drive - USB SanDisk

 

i will snap some shots when i get home though

 

are there any screens in particular that you are looking for?

 

 

christopher

Mainly your boot priority and what in particular I'm wondering is if your BIOS identifies the flash device twice (once "vanilla" and the other as a UEFI boot device).  I haven't been able to get unRAID to boot off USB if I specify the entry with the UEFI option.

Link to comment

OK this one is really stumping me...

 

Now I know that this worked on your previous board, but can you plug the stick into your pc and run make_bootable.bat again and if on windows, make sure to run it as an administrator?  Just want to sanity check this.  Also, do other USB boot devices work?

Link to comment

Alright, we are up and running (doing a parity check now).

 

here is what happened.

 

before reading your response i tried a brand new san disk cruizer flash drive (loaded with the free unraid software). still nothing.

 

then i downloaded ubuntu and loaded that onto another flash drive, still nothing.

 

after that i removed both of the pci-x sat2-mv8 cards and put my original UnRaid usb back in.... it booted up.

 

went into the bios and found these settings

 

Slot1~Slot3 PCI-X Option ROM/Slot4~Slot6 PCI-E Option ROM

Select Enabled to enable the onboard PCI Slot Option ROM as specified (except

the VGA card). This is to boot computer using a network interface. The options

are Enabled and Disabled.

Load Onboard LAN1 Option ROM/Load Onboard LAN2 Option ROM

Select Enabled to enable the onboard LAN1 or LAN2 Option ROM. This is to boot

computer using a network interface. The options are Enabled and Disabled.

 

i disabled everything, reinstalled the pci-x Sat2-MV8 cards and everything booted up the way it should have.

 

like i said, currently doing a parity check 84.6MB/sec, 13 hours to go (4 TB parity)

 

thank you for all the advice, like i said in a different thread "i might not be sophisticated, but i know my way around a computer." i just had to figure out why the pci-x cards were stopping the usb from booting.

  • Like 1
  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
  • 3 years later...
  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 year later...

If anyone encounters this again it turns out that Supermicro are aware of the issue:

 

https://www.supermicro.com/support/faqs/faq.cfm?faq=21114

 

Question

I am having problems booting  X8DTN+ motherboard from a USB . I have a PCIe raid card and a PCIe HBA card on the board. If both cards are installed, it will not boot to USB. However if I remove one of the cards (doesn’t matter which) it will boot to USB. I have tried using different slots with the same result.

 

Answer

Please disable the OpROM for the card that does not have the OS. Say HBA is used for data drive, then disable the OpROM for that PCI-e slot. Disable under BIOS >> Advance >> PCI/PnP Configuration >> Slot# PCI-E Option ROM >> disable the slot which HBA is installed in.

Link to comment

Just for other people that find this topic after hours of troubleshooting: this problem unfortunately also exists on the Supermicro X10SRL-F. If it wasn't for this post I probably would never have found the issue (except removing PCI-e cards which would have been a logical next step). In my case disabling the OpROM didn't help and I had to remove a couple of HBA (LSI 9211-8i) cards. It worked with only two HBA cards left.

 

Really frustrating bug. I hope someone finds this post faster if he/she has a X10SRL-F.

Link to comment
  • 4 months later...
  • 1 year later...
On 9/20/2014 at 12:47 AM, kingpin said:

Alright, we are up and running (doing a parity check now).

 

here is what happened.

 

before reading your response i tried a brand new san disk cruizer flash drive (loaded with the free unraid software). still nothing.

 

then i downloaded ubuntu and loaded that onto another flash drive, still nothing.

 

after that i removed both of the pci-x sat2-mv8 cards and put my original UnRaid usb back in.... it booted up.

 

went into the bios and found these settings

 

Slot1~Slot3 PCI-X Option ROM/Slot4~Slot6 PCI-E Option ROM

Select Enabled to enable the onboard PCI Slot Option ROM as specified (except

the VGA card). This is to boot computer using a network interface. The options

are Enabled and Disabled.

Load Onboard LAN1 Option ROM/Load Onboard LAN2 Option ROM

Select Enabled to enable the onboard LAN1 or LAN2 Option ROM. This is to boot

computer using a network interface. The options are Enabled and Disabled.

 

i disabled everything, reinstalled the pci-x Sat2-MV8 cards and everything booted up the way it should have.

 

like i said, currently doing a parity check 84.6MB/sec, 13 hours to go (4 TB parity)

 

thank you for all the advice, like i said in a different thread "i might not be sophisticated, but i know my way around a computer." i just had to figure out why the pci-x cards were stopping the usb from booting.

 

KINGPIN LET ME BUY YOU A BEER. HOLY SHIT

 

I spent 2-3 hours trying to get my system to boot after adding in a new LSI card. USB just would not boot, even though the BIOS detected my sandisk cruiser as boot drive. Just kept on getting the select boot media message. Bought a new USB, did a whole reinstall of unraid, but nothing. Followed your advice, disabled all boot options for PCIE devices. Not only does it boot, but no more device specific boot options are coming up anymore, so much faster boot too!

 

Dude you rock man, seriously.

 

For people who are gonna browse this:

I have a X8DT6, and two LSI SAS cards + a 4 port SATA PCIe card. Disabled 'options ROM' as directed under Advanced UPNP for ALL PCIe slots. I included my GPU (GTX 960) and unraid is still utilizing it properly for plex encoding/decoding without any issues. Only options I kept on were for LAN.

Edited by Blaze9
Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.