Bootloader Setup Errors

[cpillitteri]

Hello:

I am new to this forum and to Proxmox.

I am attempting to install Proxmox VE 9.0.1 on an HP Z840 Workstation with new SATA drives (no previous O/S installed). I booted with a Windows Server 2019 DVD and ran 'diskpart' to convert a 2TB target disk to GPT, create a 512k EFI partition and format it for FAT32. I also created a Primary partition on the disk with NTFS format. The HP Z840 is configured in BIOS with Secure Boot and Legacy Boot Support disabled.

I attempted a basic installation on target disk /dev/sda with ext4 filesystem. The install gets to 99% then fails with the below error.

bootloader setup errors:
failed to prepare EFI boot using Grub on '/dev/sda2': unbale to install the EFI boot loader on '/dev/sda'

At this point the only option is to reboot.

Any guidance in completing this installation successfully is appreciated.

Thanks,

Chris

 

[UdoB]

with new SATA drives (no previous O/S installed). I booted with a Windows Server 2019

Why did you do this? What's your intention?

The new disks were empty and clean. The PVE installer will handle partitioning very well; if you wanted to give only a fraction of the physical space to PVE: the installer can do this too...

(Usually I do "zap" used disks to reach that exact clean state before I run a PVE (or any other OS) installation, to get rid of old residue...)

 

[cpillitteri]

Actually, I misspoke. I've had this HP Z840 sitting in my lab for 2 years collecting dust. I did install some new drives, but it also had a few used drives when I purchased it on ebay. Finally got around to installing PVE and was struggling with EFI boot loader errors. Windows diskpart did not clean the used drives completely so my struggles continued. I figured out how to completely clean the drives with wipefs from the PVE debug shell and the install finally worked.