USB memory stick won't boot on HP DL360

P

PC-mike

I have access to an old HP DL360 rack-mount server at work that was retired and wiped of its Windows Server software. I was told it is a single-processor Xeon system with 4 Gigs of ram and dual 78 Gig SCSI drives. It does have a DVD reader, but I wanted to try installing FreeBSD 8.2 from a USB memory stick. (easier to carry to work than a DVD.)

I didn't have any problems downolading the img file to this generic 2-Gig memory stick. I burned the .IMG file with the Windows software and that appears to be successful.

However, when I plugged the memory stick into the server and flipped on the power switch, FreeBSD appears to be trying to boot from a floppy drive, which the rack-mount server doesn't have. Here are the messages I get:

Code: 
FreeBSD/x86 boot
default 0:fd(0,a)/boot/kernel/kernel
Boot:
error 1 lba 1785646

Do I need to find out which SCSI controller this server has and then pre-load a SCSI driver?

Or should I just download the CD installation image and burn a CD, then try the CD load?

Thanks!
 
PC-mike said:
However, when I plugged the memory stick into the server and flipped on the power switch, FreeBSD appears to be trying to boot from a floppy drive, which the rack-mount server doesn't have. Here are the messages I get:

Code: 
FreeBSD/x86 boot
default 0:fd(0,a)/boot/kernel/kernel
Boot:
error 1 lba 1785646
Click to expand...

Is there a BIOS boot menu to choose a boot device? If not, or if it doesn't support USB booting (check the BIOS), there's plop.
 
wblock said:
Is there a BIOS boot menu to choose a boot device? If not, or if it doesn't support USB booting (check the BIOS), there's plop.
Click to expand...

DL360's have supported USB booting since the G2 due to the plan to remove the DVD drive as default.
 
More info...

I downloaded FreeBSD-8.2-RELEASE-i386-memstick.img to burn to my memory stick. It seemed to burn to the stick OK. (Windows XP shows a file size of 958,617,600 bytes).

I will also boot the server into the BIOS and look at the settings.

I will see if I can find out the exact model and specs on this HP server. The front and back of the server don't show a serial# or exact model# and it is bolted into a make-shift rack.

If I can't figure it out today, I'll download and burn a DVD image this weekend...

Thanks for all the comments!
 
Do you have access to a unix or linux system? I've never gotten these programs that write raw image files to usb to work properly. There's always some issue like the usb drive isn't properly initialized.

Using only dd on linux:
Code: 
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sd* bs=512 count=2
dd if=freebsd_img_file of=/dev/sd* bs=1024k
Replace sd* with da* on FreeBSD.

When I tried without clearing the start of the usb, writing the image file failed to produce a bootable drive with some usb drives.
 
Hi all,

I revive this (not too ?) old thread because searching for "error 1 lba 1785646" I found it and like the thread starter I get:

Code: 
error 1 lba 1785646
No /boot/loader

FreeBSD/x86 boot
default 0:fd(0,a)/boot/kernel/kernel
Boot:

I can boot with this usb stick on another computer and also I can install Debian (via usb) on this one. So both the write process of the FreeBSD-8.2-RELEASE-i386-memstick.img and the hardware are good I'd say.

The thing is this BIOS sees the usb stick as USB-FDD. I don't know if that fools the program that gave the error into looking for a real FDD which there isn't any.
Since I also don't know how to tell the BIOS this is an HDD I'm stuck.
So I'd like to get suggestions on what to do next.
 
After you write the FreeBSD-8.2-RELEASE-i386-memstick.img to your usb-stick using windows you should see a bunch of files and directories on it if you did it correctly. If all you see is the .img file them for sure you did it wrong.

Will this old HP DL360 boot any OS that is on the USB-stick? Older PCs do not have bio option to boot from usb-hdd or usb-stick. You may be sol.

This may help
http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=11715
 
Yes the stick with Debian on it boots. I tried other values for bs parameter but I think it's the BIOS that is the problem.

Anyway, I only wanted to test on this machine because in my 'real' installation (64bit), after choosing Yes at 'Installing the Ports Collection' (and the drive rattling for 10 minutes), I only can browse documentation later at 'Install Packages'. Whether I choose All, Docs or Misc.
But that's another problem, thanks for replying.
 
Did you try my suggestion for clearing the start of the memory stick in post #6 prior to setting up the image?

I had the same thing happen with my tests before I did that. You need to make sure that the old settings for the memory stick aren't still being used by your system after clearing the stick.
 
I have now and with the same result. Entering '?' gives the contents (8.2-RELEASE bin boot ...) so it can read from the stick. Under Debian I expected [cmd=]mount -t ufs /dev/sbd1 /usbstick[/cmd] to work but no. I understood the file system is ufs, right?
 
fbsd1 said:
After you write the FreeBSD-8.2-RELEASE-i386-memstick.img to your usb-stick using windows you should see a bunch of files and directories on it if you did it correctly. If all you see is the .img file them for sure you did it wrong.
Click to expand...

That's not correct. The 8.2 memstick image contains a dedicated bsdlabel with a single UFS partition. Windows won't recognise that at all.

Unless Linux has support for recognising dedicated bsdlabels (i.e. not encapsulated inside an MBR slice), then it too might not make sense of the stick.


It does seem most likely that the BIOS's emulation of the USB stick as a floppy disk drive is the problem here. It might be that it can't address the entire device when it's emulating a floppy - the image is almost a gigabyte in size. Unless that option can be changed in the BIOS, to USB-HDD, then you might be stuck. A BIOS update might provide this option if it isn't available already.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top