Difference in legacy boot with Debian 8 and ProxMox default install?

[mailinglists]

Hi,

on a Quanta sever with DA0S2MMB8B0 and 1TB disk I wanted to install PM 4 with legacy boot mode (BIOS).
If I install Debian 8 it boots in legacy mode, no problem. If I install PM, it doest not boot at all in legacy mode.

Does anyone know what is the difference in how grub is installed (to MBR) between Debian 8 and PM4?
Maybe it's the partition table. I will install PM again and check, if it maybe created GPT partition table and that's the reason why it does not boot.
If that is the case, can we force PM installer to create MBR partition table, or must I install Debian and just add PM repository to it?

 

[mailinglists]

I've also noticed that PM usb key will only boot with UEFI, while Debian 8 USB key will boot in both modes.

 

[fabian]

The PVE installer only supports GPT formatted disks. If you are able to install using the Debian installer, you can install PVE on top: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Install_Proxmox_VE_on_Debian_Jessie

 

[mailinglists]

I still was not able to work on this further to check, but shouldn't BIOS (legacy) be able to boot PM installs even with GPT table?
I believe we can create a bios boot partition or something. It's strange that it did not work even on disks with less than 2TB.

 

[fabian]

I still was not able to work on this further to check, but shouldn't BIOS (legacy) be able to boot PM installs even with GPT table?
I believe we can create a bios boot partition or something. It's strange that it did not work even on disks with less than 2TB.

the PVE installer does create a bios boot partition.

 

[mailinglists]

I've checked other working server installs and you are obviously correct:

Device          Start        End    Sectors  Size Type
/dev/sda1          34       2047       2014 1007K BIOS boot
/dev/sda2        2048 1000198797 1000196750  477G Solaris /usr & Apple ZFS
/dev/sda9  1000198798 1000215182      16385    8M Solaris reserved 1

That's why it's strange that it did not boot. I guess the BIOS we have on DA0S2MMB8B0 is buggy, because on other servers PM booted with legacy/BIOS option just fine. It's just on this mobo, that it fails. There are no BIOS updates or documentation, because this is a Quanta build server only for Amazon.

If you have any ideas to debug this failed legacy boot process once PM is installed, please do let me know. (I can still boot PM from disk, if I go and manually select it - F11).

 

[fabian]

in that case, you probably need to set the boot device or the boot device priorities correctly in the BIOS.

 

[mailinglists]

Thank you for your suggestion Fabian, however that's the first thing I did. I can even post a screen shot.

Any other ideas on how to debug?

If I change to (U)EFI and install LVM PM 4 (which in turn installs EFI partition) it even boots automatically - with same / correct boot order. However due to lack of software RAID support with EFI partition, I'm trying legacy boot)