Re: Can't install Debian to CF card in SATA adapter

[songbird <songbird@anthive.com>]

Mike wrote:
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> Folks,
>
> I'm building a new NAS box which has five HDDs in a RAID 5
> configuration, using Linux software RAID.  Historically this has caused
> some challenges when dealing with /boot.  Some time back I set upon the
> idea of using an IDE > CF adapter and putting a small CF card in there
> for /boot, with the logic that one could dd an image of the drive and
> store it in a safe place, should the CF card die.
>
> As time progressed I moved on to SATA > CF adapters.
>
> For my latest incarnation, I find myself with a UEFI machine.  I've
> follwoed my usual practice.  Debian seemed to install just fine and I
> rebooted at the end of the installation but the Debian was not listed as
> a boot option in the EFI NVRAM.  Further, booting to the EFI Shell, I
> can access the EFI parition, cd to EFI/debian and manaully call
> shimx64.efi, giving the following output:
>
> Reloc 0 block size 0 is invalid
> Relocation failed: Unsupported
> Failed to load imagE: Unsupported
> start_image() returned Unsupported
>
> I have tried changing the CF card twice, as well as changing the CF
> adapter but no dice.  I tried swapping out the adaper with a spare SSD I
> had to hand and everything worked just fine this time.
>
> I do have a near identitcal motherboard in another server, where I have
> successfully used the SATA > CF trick, so I'm a bit perplexed as to what
> may be going on here.
>
> Please could anyone suggest any words of wisdom?

  "near identical" is perhaps not identical enough.  :(

  to be practical IMO the SSD works, go with that.
the cost of time and effort to figure out the problem
is probably already larger than the cost of the SSD.


  songbird