Booting from USB stick works but not ext. SSD!

[AlexLup]

Hi,
Have been fighting with this for 2 days now. In order to get more free space for more hdds inside the whitebox cluster I have, I bought external disk caddies that I thought I'd boot from.

Booting from the Proxmox USB stick and installing it on the external USB drive, with the old drive disconnected works. But it just wont boot.

Things I tried that somewhat work:
* Remove the newly installed disk and start from SATA works, putting it back in the caddy doesn't
* Swapping places of the disks, new ssd in SATA and old hdd in the caddy boots on the old drive, in the caddy!
So I am thinking LVM volumes or GRUB issues

This does not work:
* Installing fresh install of Debian -> same result
* BIOS updates and magicary (have no UEFI)
* dd in all shapes and forms

Will keep trying but am grateful for ANY pointers.
A

 

[AlexLup]

An update: Renaming with vgsrename did nothing... still having to have the old HDD attached as an external USB drive as well as the SSD with the new OS installed, else it wont boot on the SSD..

 

[AlexLup]

Update: I managed to boot on the SSD by booting from rescue mode on the Proxmox 5.2 Boot ISO/USB Stick.

Any ideas how to boot directly into the drive without having the Boot ISO Rescue mode ?

 

[AlexLup]

So I am now guessing a dd of the boot partition on the Install USB and use gparted to copy that to the external USB caddie in order to get grub to boot on my computer?

 

[sebcbien]

Hello,
I know this is an old post ;-)
But, I have the same problem.

It's something strange that I don't understand, why so much people install proxmox/esxi etc on usb STICKS / SD cards that are unsafe rather than on a USB External drive (with or without an SSD inside)
It is safer and gives you free space on your internal server ( I have a HP Gen8)
However, like you, I struggled to boot on those external drives.
The installation works well, I boot from an usb stick with the iso and install on my USB SSD drive (just an usb to sata adapter).
But I didn't succes to boot from it after the install.
Why a HP Gen8 cannot boot a usb drive ?
Any help would be welcome !
Thanks !
Seb

 

[AlexLup]

Hi,
I tracked this down to be the fault of my HP Z400. Worked fine with HPZ420s tho, so replaced 400s with 420s

 

[dfurbay1]

I know I am a little late to the party but I found a solution for this:

Its most likely due to the proxmox default install setting up the partitions with GPT (which HP servers are not able to boot from). I found a support article to install Proxmox via Debian Buster (https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Install_Proxmox_VE_on_Debian_Buster) and it seems that should let you setup the drive with MBR, then install Proxmox from the repositories. I am attempting to test this now to be sure, but Debian boots fine from a USB SSD inside the case.