TS-453D boot directly to internal drives

[mconstable]

I've heard of a few possible methods to be able to boot directly from the internal drives...

a) remove or disconnect the internal DOM and then the BIOS may show bootable partitions on an internal drive

b) as above but get to a UEFI prompt and then select an internal drive

c) add a QM2 card with a pair of NVMe SSDs and boot from them

d) add a /boot kernel to the DOM that then boots to an internal drive

Has anyone used any of these (or other) methods to boot directly to the internal drives or can add any useful comments please?

[Moogle Stiltzkin]

what do you mean? if you plan to remove the DOM, do you want to replace qts with an alternative?

i posted a truenas project here
viewtopic.php?f=191&t=161170


in the guide, rather than outright remove dom (which you can, instead i simply not use it even if truenas detects the dom as an available drive), i instead installed truenas onto an external m.2 ssd connected via the usb port. I also hear it's possible to install via an internal drive instead if you prefer, presumably that method works also.

one other guy, he replaced the dom with another for that same slot, and installed truenas onto it, and that method seems to work as well.

[mconstable]

Thanks for your reply. I read in a post somewhere that someone found they could boot, via UEFI, onto one of their internal drives AFTER they removed the DOM. I presume simply disabling the leads to the DOM would do the same thing. I would just like to get some confirmation that this might work before I mess with my hardware, again.

I am currently booting to an external USB3 SSD using Proxmox with Raidz-1 (ZFS) across that external 500 GB SSD plus 2 x internal 500 GB SSDs. This works fine, but I REALLY want to get rid of the dependency on that external SSD.

[Moogle Stiltzkin]

you have to connect your monitor to the qnap.

also have a keyboard and a mouse connected via usb to your nas.

Then boot up your nas, and hit the button i forget, f2, f8 or something, and eventually the bios will pop out.

If you note the boot order list, the DOM is listed there. thats why when booting qnap QTS/QUTS, it boots, cause it's in the boot order list.

So what i did was, remove the DOM from the boot list, so it is no longer used when the qnap boots up. This disables qts/quts. So i added another drive to that boot order.

In order to setup that new drive (whether internal or external, i opted for the later), i had a usb flash stick with truenas on it, which i booted into, to then install truenas to the targeted drive. Once you finish this, and reboot, it will then boot up the OS from that drive u install the nas into.

If after testing this does not work (which i doubt it won't), you can undo, and make sure the dom is added back into the active boot drive order, and everything all the same. If you can't recall, maybe clicking bios defaults may work? but i am unsure. Seems better to undo the steps you did and set it back to the original boot order in bios, probably log what was there originally first, so later you can set it back like that if when trying to setup the other way, it didn't work for some reason.

obviously backup all your important data from the nas before attempting any of this of course.

[jaysona]

I can not speak specifically to the TS-x53D series, however for other models I have tinkered with, removing the DOM was the only way to get the NAS to boot from an internal HDD.

In other cases, I just replaced the QNAP provide USB DOM with an 8GB DOM to boot OMV from.



For TrueNAS Scale, I opted to use a tiny 32GB SanDisk Flash Drive connected one of the rear USB ports next to the LAN connector.


Here is what the SanDisk Flash Drive looks like when plugged in to the USB port. I used the front port during the build-out of the mahcine and OS, but moved it to the rear once the system was configured properly. The USB Flash Drive will not be noticeable at all from the rear.

[mconstable]

I can not speak specifically to the TS-x53D series, however for other models I have tinkered with, removing the DOM was the only way to get the NAS to boot from an internal HDD.

Great, thank you for your reply. This is enough of a positive suggestion for me to have a go at removing my DOM and see if the internal drives become visible when installing another OS. I will report back if it works, or not.

Yes, I could use a smaller USB stick, but there is still the problem of a constant 1% CPU usage penalty when the USB3 device is being used, even when idle. Aside from that, I want to use Proxmox with ZFS and its unique ability to install the Linux kernel (and maybe the OS) across ALL drives in whatever Raid config is chosen. That means if one of the drives fail then it will still boot up, albeit in degraded mode, without needing a separate boot device just for the OS. That's too good of a boot technique not to take advantage of. Neither TrueNAS Scale nor OpenMediaVault offer this ability, otherwise I'd be using the upcoming Debian based stable TrueNAS release, so I can easily take advantage of Gluster file system clustering. Next best is to use TrueNAS via a LXC container under Proxmox and let it have total control of its own ZFS pool.

If this "remove-the-dom" test fails, then I will invest in a QM2 PCIe adaptor and use 2 x NVMe SSDs that apparently can be booted from. I've invested quite a lot in this TS-453D, including 32 GB ram, but I would never buy another QNAP device because I absolutely loathe QTS and not being able to boot to the internal drives is just insane for what is otherwise quite good valued hardware.

[capoli]

I can not speak specifically to the TS-x53D series, however for other models I have tinkered with, removing the DOM was the only way to get the NAS to boot from an internal HDD.
In other cases, I just replaced the QNAP provide USB DOM with an 8GB DOM to boot OMV from.

I simply could not locate this DOM on my 253d. Maybe it is on the other side of the motherboard? I looked all over it, beneath the RAM, under the PCIe, booting from USB does not work whatever I do in the BIOS.

[OneCD]

I simply could not locate this DOM on my 253d. Maybe it is on the other side of the motherboard? I looked all over it, beneath the RAM, under the PCIe, booting from USB does not work whatever I do in the BIOS.

It should be noted: that image is not from a TS-453D (the silk-screen printing shows it to be a TS-670 Pro). @jaysona included it as an example of what a DOM can look like, but the TS-453D was later found to not contain a removable DOM. More info here: viewtopic.php?f=50&t=165366

My guess is the TS-253D is built in a similar manner.

[OneCD]

My guess is the TS-253D is built in a similar manner.

Yep, from the image fragments I can see on the Internet of the TS-253D mainboard, it looks identical to the TS-453D.

[ll5k698dfg]

I'm currently researching how QNAP uses DOM and ability to boot directly from internal drives. I remembered reading this post a few days ago when I came across (possibly) another solution tested on a TS-473A. I'm not a LINUX guy, so not sure if this is an option but thought I'd post just in case. See section 6. Disable the on-board 5GB USB Stick

[Ichijoe]

I've heard of a few possible methods to be able to boot directly from the internal drives...

a) remove or disconnect the internal DOM and then the BIOS may show bootable partitions on an internal drive

b) as above but get to a UEFI prompt and then select an internal drive

c) add a QM2 card with a pair of NVMe SSDs and boot from them

d) add a /boot kernel to the DOM that then boots to an internal drive

Has anyone used any of these (or other) methods to boot directly to the internal drives or can add any useful comments please?

Forget it the TS-453D DOES NOT have a removable DOM. The Software lives on a non-removable Chip. This said, you plug in a HDMI connection, a Keyboard, and a Mouse, and slam the F2 / Del key (as one does), you can get into the UFEI (BIOS), Screen, where you can alter the boot device from there So be mindfull not to write to any strange USB Devices.

Since this Information might be actually prove to be uesful here. I'll point you in the direction of the DOM Recovery Images Wiki
https://wiki.qnap.com/wiki/Firmware_Rec ... -based_NAS

[mustard]

Is it possible to boot into QTS from a USB stick or if the boot order is changed and QTS is flashed to the stick?

[dolbyman]

forum search says

viewtopic.php?t=133899