Hi all, I am looking for some help moving to proxmox-boot-tool now finally, after upgrading my system from 6 to 7 and now 8 over the past week (oops). The system is using root on ZFS (mirrored pair of SSDs) and booting via legacy BIOS (I am pretty sure I have the motherboard set to BIOS boot only, and I won't be able access the BIOS right now to modify it, long story).
I was smart enough when installing my system to leave a 2GiB gap after the BIOS boot partition, which seems to be the hard part:
Based on the wiki page, I *think* my next steps should be:
1) Create a new partition #2 on each disk for ESP: `sgdisk --new=2:10240:+1G --typecode=2:EF00 /dev/disk/by-id/DISKID`
2) Use `proxmox-boot-tool format` on each of these new partitions (`proxmox-boot-tool format /dev/disk/by-id/DISKID-part2`)
3) Use `proxmox-boot-tool init` on each of these partitions
4) Run `proxmox-boot-tool clean`
5) Run `proxmox-boot-tool status`
Some questions I have:
1) Is my `sgdisk` command correct? Is starting at sector `10240` correct? (I am assuming the end sector of 10239 is inclusive.) Will my end sector be on a physical sector boundary properly (yes it's important to me)? It's been a while since I've touched any of these commands and I am quite rusty, a 2nd (and 3rd) set of eyes is much appreciated!
2)How big of an ESP partition should I use? Edit: I think I'll be happy with 1GiB as above, I read this. I've seen 500MB recommended, the Proxmox tutorial uses 512M as the example (and says it is the minimum for `proxmox-boot-tool`), the `sgdisk` command recommends 550 MiB, but I also have almost 2GiB to work with. What are pros/cons of going too small or too big? Is there a max size?
3) Are there any extra steps I am missing, or any steps unnecessary?
4) Any particular pitfalls or problems I may run into that I should be prepared for?
4.a) For example, when I might I end up in the grub rescue shell as described in the wiki page?
5) Once I complete these steps, am I safe to `zpool upgrade` yet, or do I need to do further work to move to UEFI first? Are the steps to move to UEFI different or do I need to move to proxmox-boot-tool first / either way?
I was smart enough when installing my system to leave a 2GiB gap after the BIOS boot partition, which seems to be the hard part:
Code:
root@thor01:~# sgdisk --print /dev/disk/by-id/ata-INTEL_SSDSC2XXX_A<snip>
Disk /dev/disk/by-id/ata-INTEL_SSDSC2XXX_A: 1875385008 sectors, 894.3 GiB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512/4096 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): <snip>
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 1875384974
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 5071052 sectors (2.4 GiB)
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 2048 10239 4.0 MiB EF02
4 4194304 1874500000 891.8 GiB BF01
root@thor01:~# sgdisk --print /dev/disk/by-id/ata-INTEL_SSDSC2XXX_B<snip>
Disk /dev/disk/by-id/ata-INTEL_SSDSC2XXX_B: 1875385008 sectors, 894.3 GiB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512/4096 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): <snip>
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 1875384974
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 5071052 sectors (2.4 GiB)
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 2048 10239 4.0 MiB EF02
4 4194304 1874500000 891.8 GiB BF01Based on the wiki page, I *think* my next steps should be:
1) Create a new partition #2 on each disk for ESP: `sgdisk --new=2:10240:+1G --typecode=2:EF00 /dev/disk/by-id/DISKID`
2) Use `proxmox-boot-tool format` on each of these new partitions (`proxmox-boot-tool format /dev/disk/by-id/DISKID-part2`)
3) Use `proxmox-boot-tool init` on each of these partitions
4) Run `proxmox-boot-tool clean`
5) Run `proxmox-boot-tool status`
Some questions I have:
1) Is my `sgdisk` command correct? Is starting at sector `10240` correct? (I am assuming the end sector of 10239 is inclusive.) Will my end sector be on a physical sector boundary properly (yes it's important to me)? It's been a while since I've touched any of these commands and I am quite rusty, a 2nd (and 3rd) set of eyes is much appreciated!
2)
3) Are there any extra steps I am missing, or any steps unnecessary?
4) Any particular pitfalls or problems I may run into that I should be prepared for?
4.a) For example, when I might I end up in the grub rescue shell as described in the wiki page?
5) Once I complete these steps, am I safe to `zpool upgrade` yet, or do I need to do further work to move to UEFI first? Are the steps to move to UEFI different or do I need to move to proxmox-boot-tool first / either way?
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