Can't install on new hardware

[tripletrouble]

Been using untangle now for about 5 years and never had any real problems until now. I decided to upgrade my hardware as i'm currently using an old optiplex that i'm afraid will die any day now. So, I purchased an asrock j3455M motherboard, PS and 4gb of ram. Has anyone been able to install untangle on this board? I have tried the usb image and it will not boot from it. It can boot from other linux distros on usb. If i put the iso image on the usb stick it will boot, but takes about an hour to get to the partitioner and says "no root partition found". I even tried burning a cd and attached an external usb drive and it gets past the hardware detection but hangs at "detect and mount cdrom". Running out of ideas.

[sky-knight]

Congratulations, you've discovered that it's actually rather difficult to roll your own hardware. Things don't always "just work".

This is why there's a small industry of companies that specialize in these things, as well as why Untangle offers an appliance line.

As for your specific issue, I would suggest digging into the BIOS and looking for your SATA controller emulation, if it's AHCI, set it to IDE Emulation, if it's IDE set it to AHCI. Turn off any extra hardware you don't need, such as audio, and wasted IO ports.

How are you making your installation media? It sounds like the optical may be working, but people have had bad results with old optical drives. If you're pulling an optical from something ancient, that's probably part of the problem. So I'd focus on getting a working USB boot key. How are you making yours?

I prefer to use the ISO image, with Rufus to make mine: https://rufus.akeo.ie/

I also suggest you make sure you have the most recent BIOS, as a quick google search indicates plenty of Linux issues with that board with the release bios.

[tripletrouble]

Thanks for the quick reply.

The bios is up to date but the settings are very limited. I will see if there is anything in there to change.

I have tried 3 different usb sticks with rufus, win32diskimager and debian usb image writer.

This is for home use so i picked this board because it was low power and cost. I was going to get a BIOSTAR A68N-5545 instead, maybe that would be better. I can always return this board and get something different.

If anyone can recommend a comparable board that works with untangle that would be great. In case i give up on this one.

Thanks again for the help.

[sky-knight]

I'm looking at the manual, and I don't see a limited EFI here at all.

Advanced -> CPU Configuration -> CPU C States support, try turning this off. (if this solves your problem, there goes the power savings)
Advanced -> Storage Configuration -> SATA Mode selection (I'd try this at AHCI, but if you go to install and it cannot find a drive, swap it to IDE Emulation)

[tripletrouble]

Finally got this to work.

Thanks again for pointing me in the right direction. I had to set CSM (compatibility support module) to legacy, then it let me pick the usb stick without UEFI. After that everything went smooth.

[sky-knight]

That's great! That particular setting has been mentioned on the forums before, and I had forgotten it. I'm glad you found it and got yourself sorted out.