I have a fairly old HP Proliant server running ClearOS 6 (I know, not CentOS, but based on it, and I strongly suspect the underlying configuration for what I'm trying to do here is identical for a CentOS machine, hope posting this is okay).
The server has mdadm software RAID 1 on 2 disks in the server, plus a USB disk plugged in for backups.
Unfortunately, there is a known issue with HP Proliants whereby when they have a USB device plugged in they will always try to boot from that USB device. There do not seem to be any BIOS updates or anything else that can fix the issue. This is a real pain for me as I would like to be able to reboot the server remotely. At the moment it is always necessary to have a person on site to unplug the USB disk to allow the system to boot.
As a workaround for this I have seen some people install the system bootloader on to a USB disk so that the system can boot from the USB disk and everything comes up without human intervention.
I have built a dummy server to test this, but am having some trouble.
This is a clean install of ClearOS 6.7 (upgraded to 6.9 after running yum update).
At the moment /dev/sda is my USB disk
/dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdg1 contain the root file system in software RAID /dev/md0
Running:
Code: Select all
grub-install /dev/sdx
However installing grub on /dev/sda (the USB disk) does not make the device bootable.
When I try to boot from the USB I get the following:
Code: Select all
failed to read the image
Press any key to enter the menu
Booting Linux (2.6...etc. in 0 seconds)
Error 15: File not found
Press any key to continue
Is there something else I need to do to make the system bootable. Or can anyone think of any other approaches to accomplish what I'm trying to achieve?
Many thanks in advance.