How to install Proxmox VE 6.4 in an old HPE MicroServer G8 on SATA 5 (ODD) using iLo and boot from the microSD card in 2021

Using a microSD Card to boot and installing grub on it from your Proxmox installation

You first need to partition the card, format it to ext2 or ext4 and make it bootable. You can use a Linux Live CD for this. I used Lubuntu Live Cd and KPartition.

The tricky part is to find the right disk and the right options for the grub.cfg to work. I got many Red Screens while testing. In the end I didn’t try anymore and solved it as follows:

1. Remove all the hard drives (and only leave the one in SATA 5 (ODD).

2. Boot into your Proxmox system and login as root. You added a password as part of the installation.

3. Mount the SD Card. In my case, with only a HD in SATA 5 and a microSD and create a boot folder there, I used

   mkdir /mnt/microsd
   mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/microsd
   mkdir /mnt/sdcard/boot
   

4. Now install grub in the microsd

   grub-install --booot-directory=/mnt/sdcard/boot /dev/sdb
   

5. Here is where the trick is. Instead of creating grub.cfg by hand, and because be booted in our running system, we can use update-grub to create the config file already configured for our system.

   update-grub -o /mnt/sdcard/boot/grub/grub.cfg
   

And that’s all. We can now boot from the microSD directly into our Proxmox 6.4 system. Now power-off your server, plug your hard drives again and power it on. It should boot right to Proxmox :)

Solution

Use fdisk -l to list all partitions. I recognized my device (microSd card) because of the size.

Solution

My problem was the network, as I was installing Proxmox over the net with iLo and my Mac was on WiFi (yes, I should not have done that). I connected a LAN cable and it worked. I had to restart the installation though.

Solution

There was an option in the installation process to customize how the hard drive was going to be used. I added a swap that was to big (and I would have known that if I had read the Proxmox Installation Documentation before attempting to install it… but who does that. Anyway you have to know that you can set a maximum of 8gb for the swap partition.

How to find the /dev name of my USB device

See https://superuser.com/questions/352598/how-to-find-the-dev-name-of-my-usb-device.

As quick reference use lsblk in the command line.

HPE Microserver G8 does not boot from my usb stick

You can read more here https://serverfault.com/a/820467/539133 but in summary the server need a USB stick with an MBR partition and not and GPT. You can read more about the differences at https://www.howtogeek.com/193669/whats-the-difference-between-gpt-and-mbr-when-partitioning-a-drive/

Solution

Use MBR Partitions.

Solution

Read https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Prepare_Installation_Media

• In Linux use dd bs=1M conv=fdatasync if=./proxmox-ve_*.iso of=/dev/XYZ

• In Windows use https://etcher.io/ or https://rufus.ie/ as indicated in the documentation.

• In Mac use hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o proxmox-ve_*.dmg proxmox-ve_*.iso