Unraid in VirtualBox not working, please help!

[Camerons343]

@Jarsky I created the virtual drive from windows disk management as a master boot, the drive is labeled as UNRAID because running the make-bootable.bat will not run unless it is. At some point I did something which caused no ip to be given at all. Are you yourself running an actual USB drive? 

[Jarsky]

1 minute ago, Camerons343 said:

@Jarsky I created the virtual drive from windows disk management as a master boot, the drive is labeled as UNRAID because running the make-bootable.bat will not run unless it is. At some point I did something which caused no ip to be given at all. Are you yourself running an actual USB drive? 

So thats a VHD, not a Virtual USB device. You need an actual UMS device mounted. 

You can rename the VHD e.g UNRAID-VHD.vhd but you will still need an actual USB key named UNRAID for the licence and libmodules for it to start properly. 

 

This is how I made it run

 

 

 

[Camerons343]

@Jarsky I just went out and purchased a USB flash drive to further test, I ran the command to link the physical drive to a .vmdk file and now virtual box is telling me its not a bootable drive. Could you by chance explain your steps when you were testing to see where I'm going wrong?

[Camerons343]

When trying to boot from USB I can hear windows dismount it then remount it after I close the virtual machine but it tells me this.

[Camerons343]

[Jarsky]

2 hours ago, Camerons343 said:

Make sure you install VirtualBox Guest Additions if you havent already. I assume this is a USB 3.0 stick in a USB 3.0 port, so in your VM change the USB controller mode to USB 3.0 (xHCI) Controller. 

[Camerons343]

How do i install the guest additions if it wont even boot up?

[Jarsky]

2 minutes ago, Camerons343 said:

How do i install the guest additions if it wont even boot up?

 

Sorry i mean the Extension Pack https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

[Camerons343]

I already had that installed and just reinstalled it, I'm running the most up to date version of VirtualBox as well. Still though I get unable to read boot medium.

[Jarsky]

4 minutes ago, Camerons343 said:

I already had that installed and just reinstalled it, I'm running the most up to date version of VirtualBox as well. Still though I get unable to read boot medium.

 

Did you change the USB controller in your VM configuration?

 

1 hour ago, Jarsky said:

I assume this is a USB 3.0 stick in a USB 3.0 port, so in your VM change the USB controller mode to USB 3.0 (xHCI) Controller. 

 

[Camerons343]

So in the first image thats a vmdk file I made that points to the physical drive itself, when I did some research online it said to boot from a physical drive you had to point to it. I then attached the USB drive to the VM because when its not attached it says whats in the third image.

[Jarsky]

Heres my VM configuration

 

 

 

[Camerons343]

What exactly is on your VHD? would yo by chance be willing to remote on to look at it. I know thats probably a strange request.

[Jarsky]

Heres the steps

Made a VHD in Disk Management called UNRAID-USB-VHD.vhd (this can be small, even just 1GB)

I downloaded UnRAID Flash Creator and created a bootable usb of the latest UnRAID 6.9.2

I ran the make-bootable.bat script just to be sure it was bootable. 

I copied all the files from the USB key to UNRAID-USB-VHD.vhd. Ejected the Virtual disk. 

Created the VM as type Linux / Other Linux (64-bit)

Attached the .VHD as the primary disk and attached the USB, changed the USB controller and started UnRAID.  

 

If youre using USB 2.0 ports on your computer, then you need to set the USB Controller to 2.0

 

Edit: I think i also renamed the virtual disk to UNRAID temporarily to run the make-bootable script on that also, and renamed it back

[Camerons343]

@Jarsky That worked I love you lol

[Camerons343]

Did you by chance run into this?

[Jarsky]

24 minutes ago, Camerons343 said:

Did you by chance run into this?

 

Nope haven't had that

[Joe Bozo]

On 11/11/2021 at 3:10 AM, Jarsky said:

Heres the steps

Made a VHD in Disk Management called UNRAID-USB-VHD.vhd (this can be small, even just 1GB)

I downloaded UnRAID Flash Creator and created a bootable usb of the latest UnRAID 6.9.2

I ran the make-bootable.bat script just to be sure it was bootable. 

I copied all the files from the USB key to UNRAID-USB-VHD.vhd. Ejected the Virtual disk. 

Created the VM as type Linux / Other Linux (64-bit)

Attached the .VHD as the primary disk and attached the USB, changed the USB controller and started UnRAID.  

 

If youre using USB 2.0 ports on your computer, then you need to set the USB Controller to 2.0

 

Edit: I think i also renamed the virtual disk to UNRAID temporarily to run the make-bootable script on that also, and renamed it back

Any more specifics you could give? Followed everything but when I start the vm just get a flashing cursor, ( _ ). Can't type or do anything.   

[Joe Bozo]

The problem was when formatting the VHD it needs to be FAT32. I did get the same "Error accessing your physical USB Flash boot device" but it seems to be running normally.  

[Joe Bozo]

I should note I could not figure around the "Error accessing your physical USB Flash boot device" witch means you can't get a 30 day or payed license so you can't start the array. Without an array you can't really do anything un unraid. Had to switch to testing with an old pc since I want the machine I want to deploy unraid on to be up and accessible in the mean time. I did try asking on the unraid forms and discord but they don't seem to like running unraid in a vm.

[Jarsky]

3 hours ago, Joe Bozo said:

I should note I could not figure around the "Error accessing your physical USB Flash boot device" witch means you can't get a 30 day or payed license so you can't start the array. Without an array you can't really do anything un unraid. Had to switch to testing with an old pc since I want the machine I want to deploy unraid on to be up and accessible in the mean time. I did try asking on the unraid forms and discord but they don't seem to like running unraid in a vm.

 

You won't get support on that as its not a supported configuration to run it in a VM. But above we discussed how to do a hybrid deployment. The configuration above loads the base files off the VHD, but you are still required to have a USB stick with the Label "UNRAID" to load some of the required files including the license. 

 

Make sure if you're doing this setup you're using an actual USB key and not say a USB SD card reader, as the vast majority of those are have banned UIDs. 

 

You'll see Cameron had that error as well, where I did not have that error, not sure ultimately what the difference was if he followed my steps. 

I can't give any more specifics than whats in the above post you quoted, as I only set that up to help with getting this working. Thats not a configuration I personally run day to day. I do have virtualised hypervisors, but not UnRAID.