USB as a Main Storage device
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@Mike-Ralston said:
But the BIOS is all wonky, there's a ton of different levels of nonsensical text, and configuration menus that have nothing to do with their nomenclature.
That may be, but that's just a bad BIOS design, could happen anywhere, if that is the case.
So we had it booting to USB previously, correct? Did we have to do anything to get that to work before? What was just done that got us back to the working state that we have now? Last I knew the BIOS was hosed and you could not get into it. Has it been reset?
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According to this site, the boot from USB option only exists after the USB boot device is plugged in:
http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/servers/f/956/t/19398864
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@coliver said:
@Mike-Ralston That doesn't sound right... could you post a picture or something with the nonsensical text? If it is gibberish or something else then your BIOS may be corrupt, although didn't you try to flash it earlier in this thread?
I don't mean it in a way that it's just gibberish, it looks exactly as a BIOS should, but that the text means nothing in relation to what I'm doing. Just confusing design and pathways to options. @scottalanmiller All I had to do to make BIOS work is unplug the USB that we were trying to install to, the blank one. It was apparently trying to use that to flash itself, but it's all working now. After that step, it still detected the other USB (the boot media one). Then I went into the RAID Configuration Utility, and setup the RAID config that you told me to. Then, I rebooted, and went to boot from the USB, and install on the Hard Drive. Now, it isn't recognizing the USB. I've tried several reboots with no luck.
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Define not recognizing the USB. Does it give you boot options and the USB is not one of them? If you go into the BIOS now with the USB plugged in, is there an option to boot from it? Any boot options at all?
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I saw in one discussion thread that the R510 had an issue where it would not boot to the device reliably. Try several reboots, including a cold off and back on boot. It may be simply that it is not detecting it every time. I've dealt with that kind of issue a surprising amount and in a case like this, all we have to do is get through the install once and we are golden because we don't need to USB boot again since we have the drive in there now.
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But you will want to make sure either way that the USB is the first boot device in the boot order in the BIOS.
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@scottalanmiller It gives me boot options, just the USB is not one of them. I'll try several reboots, including a power flush.
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@Mike-Ralston said:
@scottalanmiller It gives me boot options, just the USB is not one of them. I'll try several reboots, including a power flush.
Okay so we have the right menu. Maybe try a different USB port.
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Did it work using different USB ports? Haven't heard back so we assume that it is working? What's the status?
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@scottalanmiller Still constantly restarting it, still no luck. Also, been working on getting my work PC configured again, as it died.
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@Mike-Ralston said:
@scottalanmiller Still constantly restarting it, still no luck. Also, been working on getting my work PC configured again, as it died.
Did you ever get that single drive working? The small SAS Drive that you were going to try?
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@coliver said:
@Mike-Ralston said:
@scottalanmiller Still constantly restarting it, still no luck. Also, been working on getting my work PC configured again, as it died.
Did you ever get that single drive working? The small SAS Drive that you were going to try?
I think that he did, but the booting to USB isn't working anymore.
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@Mike-Ralston said:
@scottalanmiller Still constantly restarting it, still no luck. Also, been working on getting my work PC configured again, as it died.
So that is a "yes" that you have tried lots of different USB sockets? You are sure that the USB stick that you are using is definitely the one with a healthy boot image on it?
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Try booting a normal PC with that boot image.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Try booting a normal PC with that boot image.
Doing that now. And yes, I tried every USB port on the server.
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okay cool, if the PC works at least it will tell us something.
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@scottalanmiller Sorry about the long delay, but yes, it worked flawlessly on the PC.
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Okay, so we know that we have a good USB stick. So something is wrong in getting the R510 to boot to USB. But we know that it was booting previously because you got to the XenServer menu. And we can't boot to DVD because we don't have one.
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@scottalanmiller Correct. Shall I try a different USB stick for the heck of it? I have USB set to boot device #1, so it isn't that... Is there something else I'm missing in BIOS? Did I format the USB wrong for the server, but it still works on a PC?
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The server is still a PC. The format would be the same. It's a PC server. There are reports of boot issues with that server. Have we tried updating the firmware yet?
