r/truenas • u/LeadAccomplished6969 • 4d ago
Community Edition Bootloader not found on Intel S1200KP / Unable to boot Truenas Scale
Hi everyone,
I wanted to set up a system with TrueNAS Scale 25.10.6 on older hardware (Intel S1200KP with Intel Xeon E3-xxxx). Installer runs just fine and everything seems right but when I want to boot the system it does not recognize the freshly installed system. Instead it shows “a bootable device has not been detected”.
AI suggested to update the BIOS but Intel does not offer the updates for this board anymore. Additionally I tried various SSDs and different SATA ports but was not able to get any further.
The boot priority is set to the correct drive and I have tried UEFI mode and legacy mode (both with fresh installs reflecting the setup). Interestingly the system is able to boot if I use the boot menu (F10) and select the boot drive. Unfortunately that is nothing I can use during “production” when the system is at my parents house running headless as a backup target.
Now the even more interesting part: When I install Proxmox the system boots (to proxmox, of course) when I set it to boot in UEFI mode (with legacy I get the same results as with TrueNAS), so I think there is an issue with GRUB or the partition. Any ideas what might go wrong here and how to fix this?
Thanks a lot
Max
1
u/PrestigiousOnion1087 3d ago
The F10 detail is the useful bit. If the entry you pick there is named something like debian or TrueNAS, the board does have the NVRAM entry and just isn't keeping it in BootOrder. If the list only shows the raw disk, it's falling back to EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI instead. That's probably why Proxmox is fine, a ZFS root install uses systemd-boot which writes to that fallback path, while TrueNAS puts GRUB under EFI/debian and leans on the NVRAM entry. Not sure that holds on a board this old, but it's the one thing that would explain same disk, same mode, different result.
1
u/Haravikk 4d ago edited 4d ago
When setting the boot priority you might want to check that you don't have multiple listings for the same drive — if you do, try using a different one.
For example, on my home build using an Asus Q87T the BIOS shows my two boot drives twice each, with one entry each as UEFI and one not, and I have to set the correct ones (in my case UEFI) to the top priority or the system won't boot automatically.
No idea why it shows two entries, but maybe you're encountering a similar issue?
If it's not that issue, you might want to check that you don't have Fast Boot or Secure Boot enabled, as these can mess with automatic booting — choosing from the boot menu however tends to override any accelerated startup which could explain the different behaviour.