Harddisk requirements

[thany]

I'm trying to install PVE, but it keeps telling me the "harddisk" (more about that later) is too small. I tried 1GB, then 4GB (reported as 3GB for some reason). And all this *after* asking me for all other information. Why not right away when selecting the volume to install to? Why even *after* building the partition table? Why try installing when you [the installer] knows it's not going to work?

I'm trying to install PVE on a USB stick. I want internal SATA ports to be as available as possible, and I would guess that PVE by itself isn't very big. The download is only a few hundred MB, so I would never expect it to blow up to several GB. So i figured a 4GB USB stick would be plenty. Allthewhile, the requirements at the official website (listing recommended hardware, oddly enough?) doesn't say one word about minimum storage required.

@anyone: what's the actual minimum amount of storage required to install PVE?
@developers: please make the installer a little bit more intelligent about this. It's a bit frustrating, to be perfectly honest.
@webteam: please update the requirements page to show requirements, including everything the software requires. Recommended stuff are not requirements.

Thanks

 

[mo_]

I would suggest using 8GB flash drives as the bare minimum to store a linux OS. 16 or 32 would be better (most 2.5" disks you can stuff into internal slots of servers come with 32-64GB capacity).

Also you should be aware that flash drives aren't exactly known for being durable. Even name branded ones can just fail after a week or month if you got one from a bad batch. Tread carefully

 

[thany]

Once running, they're barely used. Except when updating the system. Besides, the server won't run in a business-critical environment.

I just tried a 32GB stick, but at the end of the install it says "unable to install bootloader".
At the console, I can see one error that may be relevant:
/usr/sbin/grub-setup: error: unable to identify a filesystem in hd0; safety check can't be performed.
unable to install bootloader

And then it unmounts everything.

What does this indicate? Surely, 32GB oughta be enough?

 

[jora]

I don't recommend using USB thumb drives. They don't wear level the writes. And in my world, small logwrites are far more dangerous than the once in a while dist-upgrade.

Nevertheless, you said it's a testing environment. Then right after the installation loads, type:
linux ext4 swapsize=1 maxroot=5
and if it fails, increase swap to 2.

Hope this helps, good luck.

EDIT: Or grab one of those 2.5" laptop drives off of ebay for 15$. Faster, doesn't brake, installer passes through.

 

[thany]

Well, I decided to go and buy a proper SSD that proxmox is going to be running on, and connect that via USB.

And you know what? Same error.


I kinda sorta expected this. I mean, a USB stick is really not that different from a USB SSD, is it? Surely, I'm not required to use a spinning harddisk, am I?
Also note, the SSD is absolutely brand new, completely virgin, untouched. How can that not work?

Further, I can install proxmox perfectly fine on the internal HDD. But the internal HDD is not where I want proxmox to go.

So yeah, what should I do?

 

[thany]

Okay, tried one more time after wiping absolutely everything I could find.

Now at the end of the installation there's no more error about being unable to install the bootloader. So again, there are *some* requirements for that to succeed (or "some" conditions under which it will fail... I assume someone in the world knows or can find out what they are). Users are going to need to know those requirements whichever they are.

But we're not there yet. The thing doesn't boot at all. When I let the laptop boot, it goes straight into network boot, which is at the bottom in the BIOS, which means none of the devices are bootable. So the bootloader has been installed, only not? In any case, the SSD hasn't been made bootable. Whether the bootloader has *actually* been installed, I don't know. But boot it does not.

And of course I've tried to go into the "select boot device" menu from my BIOS and select the SSD explicitly. Doesn't work either. Would be weird if it did, actually.

What on earth is happenning?...