IronDuke
Dabbler
- Joined
- Jan 23, 2023
- Messages
- 18
An update, spent some time playing with my ex-CORE box today (specs in signature).
I struggled like hell to get it to boot into SCALE. Installation was simple, but it simply would not boot from the 512GB USB MVMe. Internal or external ports, nothing. Always dropped to GRUB Rescue prompt with “Unrecognized filesystem”. None of the partitions responded to “ls” on them. It truly couldn’t read the filesystem.
When I was using the DL360’s original P440ar RAID controller, I found that the system wouldn’t initially detect the NVMe, so my workaround for that was to boot the installer USB with the NVMe disconnected and no SAS disks, have it say ”no disks”, then insert the NVMe and redetect, and it worked. Well, not today.
Earlier in the week, having put the HP 220 HBA adapter in place of the P440ar, I had to move from UEFI to Legacy BIOS in the DL360 to get to the LSI utility to set the boot disk to boot into Ubuntu on Disk 1. I wanted to do that to test the 20 SAS disks I have. That seemed to be at the root of today’s issue. I needed to be in UEFI mode to boot from the USB NVMe in SCALE.
I’d read about maybe install CORE, then upgrade to SCALE, and that might fix the NVMe. No it didn’t, while I was in Legacy BIOS mode. That said, CORE worked just fine.
Having put the DL360 back into UEFI boot mode, SCALE booted no problem from the NVMe.
It’s all facets of HP DL360s not really being the right hardware in the first place, although I would imagine considerably nicer than some platforms.
With only 8x SFF drive bays to begin with, I really did not want to sacrifice one for a boot disk, which I am sure would have worked, but would have compromised the capacity of the system.
So I think there are two learning points here. One for me: If I’m trying to do this on the cheap, using 7-10 yr old hardware, expect some issues. One for the developers: If CORE installs to a USB NVMe and boots fine on a DL360 Gen 9 in Legacy BIOS mode and SCALE does not, requiring UEFI mode, then there is something different between the installers. The SCALE installation instructions say to make sure the boot mode is the same between the physical setting and the choice you make in the installation process (Legacy BIOS or UEFI). While the CORE installer does ask that, the SCALE one did not ask the question (having booted to the USB installer in Legacy mode). I think that’s at the heart of my issue, it probably expected UEFI, but to access the LSI config utility, I had to put the system in Legacy BIOS mode. Once I’d put it back to UEFI, all was good.
A third learning point perhaps, if anyone lands on this post searching for this stuff: If you “degrade“ an HP Proliant Gen 9 from its P440ar hardware RAID card to a P220 HBA, you will need to a) put it into Legacy BIOS mode to access the LSI config utility, should you need it (eg to boot the system into Linux) and b) then put the system into UEFI boot to have it boot from a USB NVMe.
As I learned today :)
I struggled like hell to get it to boot into SCALE. Installation was simple, but it simply would not boot from the 512GB USB MVMe. Internal or external ports, nothing. Always dropped to GRUB Rescue prompt with “Unrecognized filesystem”. None of the partitions responded to “ls” on them. It truly couldn’t read the filesystem.
When I was using the DL360’s original P440ar RAID controller, I found that the system wouldn’t initially detect the NVMe, so my workaround for that was to boot the installer USB with the NVMe disconnected and no SAS disks, have it say ”no disks”, then insert the NVMe and redetect, and it worked. Well, not today.
Earlier in the week, having put the HP 220 HBA adapter in place of the P440ar, I had to move from UEFI to Legacy BIOS in the DL360 to get to the LSI utility to set the boot disk to boot into Ubuntu on Disk 1. I wanted to do that to test the 20 SAS disks I have. That seemed to be at the root of today’s issue. I needed to be in UEFI mode to boot from the USB NVMe in SCALE.
I’d read about maybe install CORE, then upgrade to SCALE, and that might fix the NVMe. No it didn’t, while I was in Legacy BIOS mode. That said, CORE worked just fine.
Having put the DL360 back into UEFI boot mode, SCALE booted no problem from the NVMe.
It’s all facets of HP DL360s not really being the right hardware in the first place, although I would imagine considerably nicer than some platforms.
With only 8x SFF drive bays to begin with, I really did not want to sacrifice one for a boot disk, which I am sure would have worked, but would have compromised the capacity of the system.
So I think there are two learning points here. One for me: If I’m trying to do this on the cheap, using 7-10 yr old hardware, expect some issues. One for the developers: If CORE installs to a USB NVMe and boots fine on a DL360 Gen 9 in Legacy BIOS mode and SCALE does not, requiring UEFI mode, then there is something different between the installers. The SCALE installation instructions say to make sure the boot mode is the same between the physical setting and the choice you make in the installation process (Legacy BIOS or UEFI). While the CORE installer does ask that, the SCALE one did not ask the question (having booted to the USB installer in Legacy mode). I think that’s at the heart of my issue, it probably expected UEFI, but to access the LSI config utility, I had to put the system in Legacy BIOS mode. Once I’d put it back to UEFI, all was good.
A third learning point perhaps, if anyone lands on this post searching for this stuff: If you “degrade“ an HP Proliant Gen 9 from its P440ar hardware RAID card to a P220 HBA, you will need to a) put it into Legacy BIOS mode to access the LSI config utility, should you need it (eg to boot the system into Linux) and b) then put the system into UEFI boot to have it boot from a USB NVMe.
As I learned today :)
.
