Help - How do I install on HP N54L Microserver?

[BigLeo]

I am new to Proxmox and have found the process unbelivably frustrating so far. After downloading the ISO I tried to copy it to a USB stick. Nothing seems to work. I have tried all of the recommended ways of creating the USB install. Sometimes the N54L does not recognise the USB stick at all. Other times I get a display that says "GRUB" and then it hangs. One time I got a Grub Rescue prompt. At no time did I get further than this.

Could someone please tell me what is going on? I expected I might hit problems during the install but I have never had a problem where I can't even seem to get a USB stick that works. I read in the documentation that Rufus does not work but nothing says why?

I've tried using dd on the Linux machine. I've tried Etcher which just trashes the USB sticks. OSForensics - ImageUSB seems to be much better but I still can't boot.

What I don't understand is why it is so hard to create a USB install for Proxmox. Why does Rufus not work? Why does nothing boot? I have never had anything like this before. When I was looking for a new server platform for the N54L someone on another forum recommended Proxmox and says it runs fine on their N54L so it must be possible.

Any help much appreciated.

 

[Stoiko Ivanov]

Have you tried a different USB Stick? (for me such problems usually are related to a broken USB Stick)

 

[BigLeo]

At least 8 different ones. It is definitely not the USB stick as I then reformatted them and flashed them with another system which booted straight away. Etcher did something really strange to all of them.

 

[Stoiko Ivanov]

For me:

dd if=proxmox-ve_5.2-1.iso of=/dev/sdz bs=64M
sync

usually works well and results in a bootable usb-stick (/dev/sdz is the name of the USB Stick)

 

[BigLeo]

That is one of the things I tried. It was when doing that that GRUB appeared on the screen but then no more. I assume that meant that GRUB was trying to boot Proxmox but failing. The question is was it failing because it was not finding what it was looking for or does version 5.2-1 not boot on a HP N54L?

 

[Stoiko Ivanov]

Hm - sometimes server-hardware does create problems when booting from USB - you could try to actually burn the iso to CD an boot via CD (or an USB CD drive)

Sadly I don't have access to an HP N54L, so cannot reproduce the problem

As an alternative you can install PVE on top of a plain debian installation:
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Install_Proxmox_VE_on_Debian_Stretch

 

[BigLeo]

Everything else I try boots fine on the N54L and it is widely used hardware. So, I feel the issue is with Proxmox rather than the hardware. Every version of Linux I tried booted as did FreeNAS and Windows. So I think it is time to give up on Proxmox. I've also never seen software that would not create a bootable USB stick using Rufus before. I don't know what is going on but if I can't even boot the system I don't have much confidence in the rest of it. It is a shame as it looked promising.