NASLite Network Attached Storage

I have just downloaded version 2.10 so that I can boot from a USB stick. The documentation suggests that I ought to be able to choose between configuring the USB stick as either a superfloppy or as a fixed disk with a bootable partition. However, I do not seem to be offered the option of the two formats on either of the machines which I have booted with the installation CD. Am I missing something that ought to be very obvious? I expected to see some sort of menu option.

I think that I need to configure as a superfloppy as the server motherboard (MSI KT6 Delta) detects the configured USB stick only as a "USB RMD-FDD" and not as a hard disk drive. Booting the same configured stick in another machine works okay.

Any advice would be most welcome.

The new installer no longer offers superfloppy format since it was essentially a hack to accommodate older, less capable machines. You still have a number of boot options that are offered such as booting from a CD-ROM or a Hard Drive.

Thanks Tony, but I would prefer to boot from a USB stick. How about reinstating the option for the formatting of the USB stick? My guess is that if I could format it as a superfloppy then the server would boot from it.

I might alternatively try adding in a USB card into a PCI slot and insert the USB stick into one of its sockets. Others have claimed success with that approach. Might have something to do with differences with the USB chipsets.

Well, it is probably not likely that we'll be adding superfloppy support back into the installer, however, you can plug the v2.06 USB stick in a windows machine and copy/overwrite the naslite.01 and naslite.02 files using the new ones from the v2.10 CD. That will give you a bootable superfloppy of v2.10.

Hope that helps...

Your suggestion would help, except that I purchased the CDD version of v2.06 and so cannot create a v2.06 USB stick. Is there any way that I can download the v2.06 USB version?

Many thanks.

What are you running now leicray? Just do the same thing.

I originally bought the CDD version of v2.06 because the motherboard that I had in my server at that time did not support booting from a USB device. I rebuilt the server during the summer with an old motherboard that does support USB boot devices and decided to upgrade to v2.10 because it has a unified installer that would allow me to boot from a USB stick. Things have not worked out as smoothly as I thought they might. Although the motherboard does support booting from USB devices, it does not like the three different USB sticks that I have tried.

Ideally, I'd like to get rid of the CD drive to allow me to have up to four IDE hard drives installed. I could also then get rid of the floppy drive and lose another cable inside the case.

I have also tried adding a USB expansion card and trying to boot from that, to no avail. I also created a bootable Compact Flash card connected via an IDE adaptor, but the motherboard would not boot from that either.

Perhaps Tony will allow me to download v2.06 USB or maybe he will relent and reinstate superfloppy formatting in a later release. To do so would be consistent with the ethos of Naslite in that I'd be able to squeeze more life out of otherwise outdated hardware.