UEFI boot manager: can't install OVM from a USB-stick on Apollo Lake mini-pc

  • I'm trying to install OMV on a Intel Celeron N3450-based mini-pc from Beelink. The system comes preinstalled with Windows 10 and boots using UEFI and the Windows bootmanager.


    I've followed the instructions on this site and used Etcher to created a USB stick from the openmediavault_3.0.94-amd64.iso.


    However, I've found to way to actually boot from this usb stick. Even manually changing the boot devices in the bios to all sorts of usb-devices didn't work.

  • Not really. This is my first time I've come into contact with OMV. Judging by the green download-button "Download Latest Version - openmediavault_3.0.94-amd64.iso (403.7 MB)" I was under the impression that OMV3 was the last "official" release and OMV4 is still under development.


    Are there any performance/power consumption differences between the Debian8/OMV3 and Debian9/OMV4 combinations on lower powered devices like mine?

  • OMV ISO doesn’t support uefi, use a minimal Debian 9 netinst iso toinstall plain Debian first (select just ssh server, no desktop) then
    install OMV on top.
    Install OMV4 on Debian 9 (Stretch)

    That's simply not true. I installed the latest OMV 4 ISO just fine on a Z270 motherboard with a 6700K CPU.



    However, I've found to way to actually boot from this usb stick. Even manually changing the boot devices in the bios to all sorts of usb-devices didn't work.

    Try the latest build here - https://sourceforge.net/projects/openmediavault/
    That's what I used and it worked just fine as mentioned above. It is OMV 4 though, so maybe something changed compared to OMV 3.


    You might need to change UEFI/BIOS boot mode from UEFI to Legacy though. Note that this setting might be called something different.


    It is entirely possible that the UEFI in your system doesn't allow for USB boot, but that seems highly unlikely. That said, I'm not familiar with your specific system and the Chinese board makers tend to be lazy and might not have done a good job with their UEFI implementation.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    OMV ISO doesn’t support uefi


    That's simply not true. I installed the latest OMV 4 ISO just fine on a Z270 motherboard with a 6700K CPU.


    You might need to change UEFI/BIOS boot mode from UEFI to Legacy though.

    So you agree that OMV ISO does not support UEFI?

  • No, I don't not agree. Obviously it supports UEFI, just not UEFI boot, two quite different things.
    If UEFI wasn't supported, then you couldn't install it on a system with a UEFI rather than a BIOS.
    Legacy boot simply tricks the OS into thinking that it's using a non UEFI system.


    And if you'd wanted to help in this case, it might have been more useful to point out how to solve the problem, than stating it won't work.

    OMV 6.x, Gigabyte Z270N-WiFi, i7-6700K@3GHz, 16GB DDR4-3000, 4x 4TB Toshiba N300, 1x 60GB Corsair GT SSD (OS drive), 10Gbps Aquantia Ethernet

  • Try UNetBootIn for OMV 3.0.94 instead of etcher. You'll need 2 sticks, one temporarily for installation itself and to keep as the OMV boot media.

    Thanks, going to give that a try. But what happens when I try to permanently install OMV? Do I still need the usb stick to boot from?


    I've come across a blog post about booting Ubuntu on a basically identical Apollo-Lake-based mini-pc. Apparently booting linux only works on those devices, when using the rEFInd Boot Manager.


    Is there a way to manually included the rEFInd boot manager with the OMV or Debian iso so that I can boot the install medium, clean swipe Windows 10 of the HDD and get OMV to boot from the eMMC storage?

  • OMV 4.1.4-1 Arrakis on intel platform
    OMV 3.0.99 Erasmus on ARM platform

  • I've tried going the described UNetBootIn route. Unfortunately, this won't boot the OMV also. The system just kicks me back to the UEFI boot select menu over and over again.


    The only Linux system I've been able to get to boot on this system is the AltLinux Rescue and the rEFInd boot loader iso AltLinux uses.


    So at least it shows that it should be possible to boot Linux on the device. Any idea on how I might combine the rEFInd boot loader with the OMV iso instead?

  • I would try Rufus it's a free program to make usb sticks bootable.
    If that don't work you might need to be sure your pc bios is set to boot from a usb drive.

    I've already tried using Rufus as well and I can manually select the usb drive that the Debian installer is on. So that doesn't seem to be the problem...

    I had similar problems (however with Apollo Lake) and for me the solution mentioned in post 2 worked flawlessly.

    You mean installing the official Debian 9 netinst iso first?

  • Alright, I've done some more test but the outcome is still the same.


    The system just freezes instantly to a non-blinking cursor the second I select the usb drive from the UEFI boot menu.


    I've already tried both the regular Debian )debian-9.4.0-amd64-netinst.iso) as well as the multi-arch (debian-9.4.0-amd64-i386-netinst.iso) images.


    The iso were copied to a usb stick using Rufus (Fat32/GPT/4096 Bytes/iso & dd image modes). But I also gave Unetbootin and Etcher a try.


    Also, I can boot the Debian installer from the very same usb stick on my Mac and NUC without any issues.

  • Are you able to boot anything else from USB? Maybe a Windows or Fedora or openSUSE. If that works I'd try the debian mailinglist or a debian forum.
    If nothing else boots, I'd strip down the computer to the absolute minimum and retry. Other USB ports, disabling UEFI settings like secure boot or similar. Trying to boot from a CD, DVD is also a step you should consider.

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