Welcome to my third blog about HexOS! I’m buying, building and installing a HexOS NAS for my family home. I’m documenting my user journey as my small contribution to this amazing project. You can read my previous post about building my NAS hardware here. I’m now trying to install HexOS – and through no fault of the software and many faults of mine, this ends up taking a while!

⁉️ Random peculiarities Between this blog and the last one I had to reopen the case trying to work out why the computer wasn’t booting into the old Windows install like it did before. I suspected something had come unplugged, however, I eventually worked out that the motherboard doesn’t like the keyboard and mouse plugged into particular sockets, once I moved them to another one it was fine.

Here we go. I’m ready to install.

The first thing I did was plug a network cable into the server from my router, I didn’t think it had wifi and I thought it might need a network connection for the install to work.

The first instruction in the tldr list is Boot your server from the flash device and install the OS to preferably an SSD. I know from installing Linux many times that I will need to boot the computer, go into bios, put USB at the top of the boot order list and then reboot.

The BIOS is slightly more exciting than what I’m used to, as this is an old gaming motherboard. It took me a few beats to realise I could use my mouse and not just arrow keys! Cool!

I saw the Boot Priority section right away but I didn’t understand why the disks all looked the same and had the same label. Once I worked out I could click them, however, I noticed the name appeared underneath

I drag and dropped the SanDisk icon to the front of the queue then clicked Exit/Advanced Mode top right, then Save Changes and Reset. I saw a brief creepy looking error message when booting down but wasn’t sure what it said. I powered on again.

I got an error “Verifying shim SBAT data failed. Security policy violation. Something has gone seriously wrong: SBAT self check failed: security policy violation.”

So then I went to get coffee and snacks!

Security policy violation drama

The first thing I did was type out the error message. I was pretty sure that this is windows nonsense, though I couldn’t remember the specifics I do remember other Linux users discussing things like this over the years. I was slightly worried this would be an unresolvable issue, however the peanut butter on sourdough toast kept my anxiety at bay.

This was the error:

Verifying shim SBAT data failed. Security policy violation. Something has gone seriously wrong: SBAT self check failed: security policy violation.

I then checked the comments in the original HexOS early access guide to see if anyone else had the same problem. It was from checking the comments on the original guide for this error I found there is a new graphical guide to installing HexOS.

In the new guide I quickly found that other people had had the same issue and the solution was to “turn off secure boot”. Nether of the linked posts there actually descried how to do this, but I assumed this would be in the BIOS.

So, I rebooted again and pressed delete to get back into BIOS. I looked at boot menu, and saw nothing about secure boot there. I tapped advanced mode and found a sub menu for security, but that was about passwords, so I went back.

I then quickly went through all the tabs on the advanced mode and couldn’t see anything. Then noticed that the section called Boot Menu has a scroll bar on the side. I tapped down a few times and found a section called Secure Boot.

I could see how to specify windows or other OS but not how to turn off secure boot completely. There was a section about boot keys but that didn’t seem right either. So, I just tried changing from Windows to other OS for now. I tapped Exit, then save changes and reset

HexOS just started installing while I was saying “yay” and dancing…

… so I pressed cancel and rebooted so I could record and document the process!

Actually I was still too excited and didn’t really record the process that well so this next bit is a vague!

I noted that to choose a password after putting in the username you need to tap the down arrow which I found a little confusing.

I shut down system so I could remove the USB and boot up.

My only comment here was “it’s running!”. I was pretty excited to finish the install!

Set-up: attempt 1

So the original tldr instruction was

“From another device (mobile, tablet, desktop) that is on the same LAN as your server, login to https://deck.hexos.com using your HexOS credentials”

The new illustrated guide said:

“If you you made it here, CONGRATS! Your install is complete! Head to https://deck.hexos.com/ to configure your server!”

I wasn’t sure if the LAN bit just isn’t relevant any more or if it had been skipped from the docs. So I went to https://deck.hexos.com/

I was prompted for a username and password. This was not the password from the server, but for my HexOS website login that I needed to download the software initially. I wasn’t confused but I think this is potentially confusing for others.

Having logged in, the system spent a long time “detecting”. I didn’t take a screenshot but this is what I saw for many minutes.

I thought I was on the same network: my laptop was on wifi and my server had a cable into the router …. but I wasn’t sure this counts as “on the same LAN” (if I needed to be anyway).

I tapped Having problems? and got this info:

☎️ Phone a friend I asked my brother does wifi for one machine and cable for another meet definition of “on the same LAN”. He said yes it counts.

So why can’t HexOS find my server? I looked at the server connection in more detail first. The laptop seemed to be connected to the wifi fine, so I figured the server was the issue not the laptop.

I noticed I had plugged my server into the red socket on my router, because it was the only one that was free.

☎️ Phone a friend I asked my brother if that was likely to be an issue, be said it’s probably not good idea because often coloured sockets have some specific function.

Next I needed to figure out why I had no spare sockets on my router. I thought I should have had at least one free socket based of my number of smart devices and sockets.

Cable management hell

Me and my brother cable managed my router and smart devices about a year ago. They live on top of a tiny antique cabinet I inherited from my granddad which is next to the phone line socket.

Stuff kept falling off the top of the cabinet when my kids jumped up and down too hard nearby, so we attached everything to the cupboard with clips and ties. However we didn’t leave any slack in the cables and so it’s really difficult to access, rotate or examine any of the stuff up there now. In order to access them I have to actually move the dresser forwards and stand behind it. Total nightmare!

Having moved the dresser and looked at all the cables it turned out that I had two cables running from the router into my Deco hotspot when I only need one, so that was where my spare socket had gone!

I plugged the cable into my NAS and I felt I should be ready to go.

Still not working!

The deck page still couldn’t find the server on the network. I didn’t think it was a network issue any more as I could now see lights near the network cable in the back of the NAS flashing which weren’t flashing before I had fixed the cable issue.

I wasn’t really getting any response from the NAS, it just seemed to be asleep, the screen was dark and tapping keyboard and mouse didn’t change that.  So I just mashed the power button and the PC switched on, so maybe it was literally just switched off somehow.

I then had the login prompt again, really loving this fuchsia-purple gradient!

A new server has been detected

I finally got a server showing up at https://deck.hexos.com/ and I tapped Claim.

I got asked for a password, which is now the server admin password that I put in on the machine when setting up there (rather than my HexOS website login!)

Everything looks okay at this point, I feel like I am being guided thorough a process with the steps and dots on the left.

I am a bit unsure about what I am supposed to be “taking” from the information on the right, about the drives etc. I don’t know if I need to interact with them at all. My main worry is that the drives have issues, as I don’t get the impression there has been enough time to really “check them” (whatever checking a drive requires, I am sure it will take time).

Set-up attempt 1

Then I ran into another problem.

🔮 Current self relizes size of drives is very important! As I mentioned in building my HexOS NAS post, I had ended up with two 3TB drives and one 2TB drive though a mix of inatenivness and false assumptions. This it became clear this isn’t going to work.

The current HexOS set-up process won’t make a pool with mixed size drives, and can’t make pools that will be expandable later with only two drives. I just didn’t want to start on this footing, even for a first try at the setup, so I decided to halt the process until I had sourced another 3TB drive.

Ewaste Amzon?

I currently had a 2TB from Amazon which was already the second one I had bought as the first came from ebay with inadequate packaging. Amazon’s return policy was pretty good and I was told I could just drop it off at the parcel shop without any packaging. So I put it back in the shiny plastic protector thing and took it to the shop.

My assumption was the driver would provide packaging (like with label free drop off, the driver prints a label) however according to the shop that doesn’t happen. Stuff just goes “in the van” as is, they told me they’ve had glass lamps and all sorts returned this way!

I find this pretty frustrating, had I known this before the drive was scanned in for return at the shop I would have taken it home and packaged it properly. I don’t think a drive will be fit to use having been bashed about like that. I felt like I was throwing the drive in the bin rather than returning it.

I couldn’t find any new 3TB drives for reasonable money either, they were all the same price as larger drives which seemed wrong. So I again ordered a used drive on ebay, this time from a more specialist company. I paid £33.99.

Set-up attempt 2

The drive arrived quickly and well packaged this time. I plugged it in, booted the NAS and it made a noise like a road drill!

I contacted the ebay seller who asked could I try running the drive for a while and see if it quietened down, if not, they would refund me.

To be fair, it did go quiet after a while, so I decided to try the set-up again.

Wont boot

So now with my three drives in, ready to try set up, the machine won’t boot into HexOS and I get this error.

I wondered if it was an issue with secure boot as I remembered people mentioning turning it off permanently (which I couldn’t see an option for). However the BIOS settings were the same as before, when I checked them.

Next I decided that maybe HexOS doesn’t “like” sitting installed but not set-up for long periods and this was causing my error somehow. I know from WordPress remote management plugins that leaving some types of software sitting half installed can be a big security issue.

So I decided to just reinstall from my USB again.

However when I got into the install I noticed there were only two drives showing.

🤯 Brain fail: so at this point I react like I only have one issue, my new hard drive isn’t working. I keep troubleshooting only this issue. I don’t notice that my SSD is also not showing in the list of drives. It occurs to me later, out of the blue, that HexOS was installed on that SSD and this would be where I would install it the OS if I was reinstalling, not on one of the mechanical drives. I just assumed for now that the SSD was somehow unplugged though, and hoped it wouldn’t be faulty too!

The process I went through to check the new drive really wasn’t working was to unplug the other two dries and reboot using the USB. That gave me this screen.

I then swapped the power supply cable and SATA cable from one of those drives to this new drive, rebooted again and that gave me this screen.

I was satisfied the new drive was broken and so I started the return process. The ebay seller was helpful throughout. I had to buy a new one, which I did before receiving my refund because I was keen to get this working. I felt pretty confident I would get my money back for the first drive and I did get it back no issue.

Set-up attempt 3

The replacement drive arrived promptly but sat unboxed for about 5 days till I had some child free time to work. When the day finally came I felt really rubbish with some flu symptoms and also my nice sourdough bread had inexplicably gone mouldy, so I wasn’t really in the mood.

However, I thought if I could just get the drive in and the computer booting it would be a quick process to get the set-up finished. I also just desperately wanted to get the NAS building stuff tidied away, we have been eating our meals for ages with an open case and cables everywhere because I got sick of constantly opening and closing the case to sort out the drives issues.

I managed to install the new drive okay. I also found that, indeed, the SSD power cable was unplugged somehow, which is why it wouldn’t boot last time (I was right then, if not rather slow to notice!).

I then quickly finished the set-up: I opened my laptop wile at home (“on the same LAN”) and headed to https://deck.hexos.com/ in my browser (which actually is firefox btw 🦊 meme).

I tapped Claim (and miraculously remembered my password!!).

Then I could see all three drives were visible – finally, 4th time lucky baby! I went ahead by tapping the Continue button.

The only option was 1 drive can fail without data loss which isn’t ideal for me because I’m using second hand drives right now, but I don’t think this will be my final install anyway so I tapped Continue again.

I also found clicking/tapping on other things doesn’t really do much right now, this definitely feels a little beta (though very gorgeous purple beta!!)

Then here we are, the set-up process is running!

I didn’t understand the text “Any public shares should become visible on your network”. I also felt “once this is finished you can start using your server right way” rather upbeat for my particular mood! My plan was to NOT use it right away, to just shut up the NAS case finally and go for a nice long walk!

Even in my dour mood though, I did get a prettey excited to tap that last button Go to the dashboard. And here we are! The dash!

I didn’t get started configuring etc, excited as I was, I really needed that walk before doing anything else!! When did I get so healthy? Where did the goblin go?!

See you in the next post lovelies.