USB install halts at a black screen with 'GRUB'

[RichardHIll]

I am installing proxmox via USB key following the instructions at https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Install_from_USB_Stick/. The target devices were Dell r710 and Lenevo Thinkpad

dd if=proxmox-ve_*.iso of=/dev/XYZ bs=1M

After changing BIOS to boot from USB , the USB device is detected but install halts at a black screen with 'GRUB' . This is grub stage 1. The keyboard is unresponsive. To get to GRUB stage 2 a /boot partition needed to be located before 1024 cylinders so it can be copied. All this should be done on the iso downloaded and written to the drive.

I have tried file formats ext4 and fat32 and all ISO images available at https://www.proxmox.com/en/downloads/category/iso-images-pve.

My expectation was that after copying the iso to a usb key installation would be easy. Many people use these USB keys. What am i missing here?

 

[Alwin]

Clear your usb key (dd) or use a different one. There might be something leftover.

 

[RichardHIll]

Thanks Alwin.

I got this working. I was duplicating to /dev/sdb1 instead of /dev/sdb and not synching afterwards. This meant there was GRUB2 files missing in the expected place. I believe I didnt get to stage 2 because menu.lst was not read.

Fix:

Zero the drive (is this needed with dd later?)

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sbd

Remove the existing partition

    parted /dev/sdb
    print
    rm 1

Get checksum of the iso being installed.

     md5sum proxmox-ve_4.4-eb2d6f1e-2.iso

Compare with https://www.proxmox.com/en/downloads/item/proxmox-ve-4-4-iso-installer. Use DD , copy to the drive sdb , not the partition sdb1, use synch to ensure all data is copied.

     dd if=proxmox-ve_4.4-eb2d6f1e-2.iso  of=/dev/sdb bs=1M oflag=sync status=progress conv=fdatasync

Look at what we have.

    parted /dev/sdb
    print

output had 3 partitions.

Model: Generic Flash Disk (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 4027MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name                Flags
 1      32,8kB  248kB   215kB                Gap0                hidden, msftdata
 2      248kB   3197kB  2949kB               EFI boot partition  boot, hidden, esp
 3      3197kB  547MB   544MB   hfs+         Gap1                hidden, msftdata
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