booting from USB stick

Hi
I'm a perfect n00b/newbie concerning Linux in general and OpenMediaVault particularly. My home-made NAS (6x2TB) was formerly driven by a Windows 2008 Storage Server... too "big" for my needs and my mobo (ITX Asus Mobo with Intel Atom 330, 4 GB ram). Long time ago, I used to play with FreeNas, but I think I would feel more confortable with a debian distro. I'm definitely not a BSD pundit :-/

That's why I chose OMV.

I read in the wiki section that booting on a USB stick was not recommanded. But this option would be really usefull for me, for many reasons (gain of one drive rack, shorter boot time and so on). Is there any way to "backup" a running image of this booting OMV USB key to avoid any problem due to a crash or bad stick reliability ? Does a booting USB key cause some limitation to OMV features (other than the number of write cycle a flash memory can handle ?)

Tanks
Mark

Many Tnks for this prompt answer

That's precisely because I wish to avoid crash that I want to duplicate this booting USB stick. A 2 gigs key cost less than an floppy and could be replaced in a snap. I did'nt intend to duplicate the key while the system is up. I'll try Clonezilla and will duplicate 3 or 4 "usb boot ammo's". Thanks for the tip.

Booting on a USB hard drive is not an option... it's probably the worst configuration to boot quickly :- (

Anyway, all this stuff is still science-fiction for me right now. My version of OMV don't seems to boot on any kind of media after 5 o 6 attempt (hard drive or USB key). I think the problem is caused by Grub. Still a lot of work to desserve it

Mark

Hi
Once again, tnk to ryecoaaron for his wyse advices.

My OMV is up and running (almost... now building it's RAID5 array). And I deeply regret my "usb stick" option, looking at the number of read-write made on the key. Gee, it's definitely NOT the same thing as FreeNAS

... I've to quickly find out how to move my boot flashdrive on a normal plain old good mecanical hard drive. I doubt the answer is "clonezilla/gparted", but a M$ nerd like me will have to struggle with cryptic unix command lines and magic secret switches.
Hope I'll find a good "how to"

Mark

Tnks Agn, ryecoaaron

Hope I'll be able to do that all alone without boring you... it's a matter of honor 8>O
I'm waiting for the end of my RAID resync and will try it. I just burned 2 usb keys with live versions of Gparted and Clonezilla

TNKX
Mark

Hi

Zitat von "zenographie"

Hope I'll be able to do that all alone

... I'm not :-(((

I've cloned (I hope) my usb boot key with Clonezilla, on a hard drive called "sdf1" (sda to sde is my RAID5 array). After changing my bios boot order and unplugged my usb key, all I have is a "GRUB>" prompt.

Grub> boot (hd gives me hd gives me "hd0 hd1 hd2 hd3".
Grub> boot (hdx mostly answers "not a known filesystem", except hd1 (answer : (hd1) )

device hd0 has a partition called hd0,msdos1 filesystem ext2, and another partition hd0,msdos5, not a known partition.

If I boot from my usb key and have a look at the filesystem admin webpage, my sdf1 is no more recognized as a ext4 hard drive, and all the fields of the spreadsheed are marked "n/a". The drive is considered as "mounted"

.... In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
(I'm going around in circles)

Mark

Hi Ryecoaaron

impressive. I wish one day I could understand my kernel as you can.

root (hd0,0) send me an insane "unknown command" or whatever... boot (hd0,0) told me that it was unable to find a kernel but the order was accepted.
my boot disk was /dev/sde.

except some warning and cryptic insults during the boot process, everything run fine. My OMV is up and running TNKS !

What should I do to fix Grub permanently?

Once again, a big Thank You

Zen

Hi

Nice screen full of "ace of diamond" ending with a final insult : Filename too long

Zen

root@OMV:~# blkid
/dev/sdc: UUID="3555bdad-3122-60fd-7496-30392302ef58" LABEL="OMV:Vishnou" TYPE="linux_raid_member"
/dev/sdd: UUID="3555bdad-3122-60fd-7496-30392302ef58" LABEL="OMV:Vishnou" TYPE="linux_raid_member"
/dev/md127: LABEL="Media" UUID="ef0232e3-2e93-436c-8479-acb2e7dfb8c3" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sda: UUID="3555bdad-3122-60fd-7496-30392302ef58" LABEL="OMV:Vishnou" TYPE="linux_raid_member"
/dev/sdb: UUID="3555bdad-3122-60fd-7496-30392302ef58" LABEL="OMV:Vishnou" TYPE="linux_raid_member"
/dev/sde1: UUID="5b015bbf-9a1f-4543-9526-e27bdb8847e2" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sde5: UUID="21c80a39-e72b-41a3-bcf7-2f244db66863" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sdf1: LABEL="Quarantine" UUID="3165849d-167a-4755-a325-2acd66606bd3" TYPE="ext4"

root@OMV:~# cat /etc/fstab|grep UUID
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
UUID=5b015bbf-9a1f-4543-9526-e27bdb8847e2 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
UUID=21c80a39-e72b-41a3-bcf7-2f244db66863 none swap sw 0 0
UUID=ef0232e3-2e93-436c-8479-acb2e7dfb8c3 /media/ef0232e3-2e93-436c-8479-acb2e7dfb8c3 ext4 defaults,acl,user_xattr,noexec,usrjquota=aquota.user,grpjquota=aquota.group,jqfmt=vfsv0 0 2
UUID=f4a7da97-9369-4ad8-87cb-eb013e6c70bb /media/f4a7da97-9369-4ad8-87cb-eb013e6c70bb ext4 defaults,acl,user_xattr,noexec,usrjquota=aquota.user,grpjquota=aquota.group,jqfmt=vfsv0 0 2
UUID=3165849d-167a-4755-a325-2acd66606bd3 /media/3165849d-167a-4755-a325-2acd66606bd3 ext4 defaults,acl,user_xattr,noexec,usrjquota=aquota.user,grpjquota=aquota.group,jqfmt=vfsv0 0 2

but
root@OMV:~# cat /boot/grub/grub.conf|grep "/boot"
cat: /boot/grub/grub.conf: Aucun fichier ou dossier de ce type

which means "unknown file or folder of this type"

Zen

update

Me stupid... grub.conf is in fact grub.cfg. Sorry for this total lack of brain

root@OMV:/boot/grub# cat grub.cfg|grep "/boot"
set locale_dir=($root)/boot/grub/locale
linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-5-486 root=UUID=5b015bbf-9a1f-4543-9526-e27bdb8847e2 ro quiet
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-5-486
linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-5-486 root=UUID=5b015bbf-9a1f-4543-9526-e27bdb8847e2 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-5-486
linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-5-486 root=UUID=e50b203d-78f8-4603-af4f-c90061eaeddc ro quiet
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-5-486
linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-5-486 root=UUID=e50b203d-78f8-4603-af4f-c90061eaeddc ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-5-486

better like that

Zen

just updated my former message...

Same results for both commands

Zitat von "ryecoaaron"

Did you make sure the sde drive is the boot drive in the bios as well?

definitively yes

I should precise it is not the first time I saw this " : File name too long" following several pages of "ÿ" or diamonds . The first one was when I asked clonezilla to move the boot partition from the usb key to the hard drive /dev/sde. The utility tried an "alternative method" without beeing more specific

Zen

ps : re-installing OMV could be an option, but I will never understand the "why" and the "how" of this story

Ok ryecoaaron
And tnk agn for your help. I'll keep a copy of my openmediavault "config.xml" before that. Anyhow, I'll keep you informed

Zen