Hi to all, need help with Rockstor installation on HP Microserver g8.
The server has 4 front bays and one CD SATA port.
What I’m trying to do is use front bays for storage drives and attach SSD to CDROM port and use it as a boot disk. The problem is even after a complete installation system not booting from SATA port 5.
If I use SD card onboard or USB system boot with no problem, but it is too slow. Are there any workaround to make SATA port 5 a booting drive? I researched it and see some suggestions about keeping grab boot loader on SD/USB and os on SSD, but not sure how to do it. Can anyone help or provide step by step instruction as I’m still new to Linux? Any help would be appreciated…
@Alex_K Hello again.
This is an interesting project, and I hope you manage to sort this issue out. Could it be, rather than messing around with grub (Grand Unified Bootloader) that there is a firmware update available to allow this boot capability. It sounds like you would have already found it if so thought.
This does sound very much like a hardware limitation. But if you are to experiment you might want to start out with our newer Rockstor 4 variant, currently only available as a DIY installer build recepie:
It will likely have no effect on your situation except that any fix/workaround you find here will be more or use going forwared.
Hopefully there will be some more folks here with generation 8’s that can chip in with more knowledge.
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Thank you for your reply.
After some research, I found 2 solutions for HP Microserver g8. By default, hardware was designed to boot from Bay1/ SATA port1 and it is no way to change it to SATA port 5 where is my SSD attached.
That port was dedicated to CDROM drive.
Two options to make it works:
- Change mode for an internal RAID controller to RAID and create RAID0 for SSD drive ONLY, then you can select it as a boot drive. (Not working for me as I prefer to keep the controller in ACHI mode)
- Use a small SD card and install just a boot loader on it, that what I did and it works with no problem.
Steps I took to make it happen:
Remove all HD from 4 bays
Install Rockstor to SSD attached to SATA port 5
install SD card (in my case 128mb micro SD) on board
Boot system from SSD drive (it boot fine when it is no HD in the bays)
Login as root and run: fdisk -l it will show drives attached, in my case SD card mounted as /dev/sdb
Then issue the command:
grub2-install /dev/sdb
After it complete power off system, install all drives in bays and make sure first boot devise is USB
All Done 
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