Tadaen_Sylvermane
May 7th, 2020, 09:47 PM
I recently picked up an older model Intel server with a Xeon E3 1225. The machine works great. But I didn't know some things about how servers handle boot processes. Today I decided to reboot because no one was here, and while everything was working just fine I didn't know if it would come right up like it was supposed to. Suffice it to say it did not. I spent an hour chasing the issue, at first thinking network issues, changed cables, all sorts of things. What made this odd was it worked fine when I brought it to my living room tv and tested there. As soon as I put back in the guest room headless though, nothing.
Ultimately I landed on boot order and it wanting to boot from usb. As I have 2 usb 3.0 drives for my snapraid parity it seems that it was getting stuck on trying to boot from them, and never finishing the boot process. I disabled all usb boot options, cleared the boot priority list of all but the drive i have for my os and network booting. A couple full reboot tests later and all is well. I've never seen an issue deciding which device to boot when usb is concerned. I'm guessing something is different about server specific gear, in this case the way it boots itself. This problem may or may not happen to you.
TLDR: If you are new to actual server hardware, make sure to read up on it before assuming you know what it's gonna do. I did not, and it cost me over an hour of chasing this issue when it could have been solved in less than a minute when I first set this machine up.
Ultimately I landed on boot order and it wanting to boot from usb. As I have 2 usb 3.0 drives for my snapraid parity it seems that it was getting stuck on trying to boot from them, and never finishing the boot process. I disabled all usb boot options, cleared the boot priority list of all but the drive i have for my os and network booting. A couple full reboot tests later and all is well. I've never seen an issue deciding which device to boot when usb is concerned. I'm guessing something is different about server specific gear, in this case the way it boots itself. This problem may or may not happen to you.
TLDR: If you are new to actual server hardware, make sure to read up on it before assuming you know what it's gonna do. I did not, and it cost me over an hour of chasing this issue when it could have been solved in less than a minute when I first set this machine up.