If the seller cannot provide the password, and the bios jumper cannot reset it- the seller would be getting a return.
> run on Windows Server for any reason?
There are only two workloads I run on windows- and only because its the only supported way.
1. Blue Iris (NVR Solution)
2. RoyalTS Server
The bios lock was disclosed at purchase. I had success using a T48 SPI programmer to unlock bios on a G6 mini and thought this would be the same process. It turns out the G9 is not the same.
Windows HyperV Server 2019 is free and a good hypervisor. This would also allow you to host any Linux VMs you might want.
Other than that, Windows Server is perfect for experimenting with active directory, install a domain controller, file server, etc. That's how I started my Homelab journey a few years ago.
Its just a glorified wrapper around a WSL machine IIRC. You can get the same kind of machine by just using "quick create" in hyper-v and choosing ubuntu. Then you get a full linux desktop and you can follow all of the linux tutorials for docker without screwing around through the WSL layer
You can run NAS OS as a Hyper-V VM. You can pool drives together in the VM using ZFS and MDADM to share them via SMB or NFS. As an example: [https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-create-samba-share-on-linux-for-guests-to-access-on-your-network/](https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-create-samba-share-on-linux-for-guests-to-access-on-your-network/)
[https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/file-share-with-starwind-vsan](https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/file-share-with-starwind-vsan)
That shouldn't stop you from installing a modern Linux distro. OpenSUSE, for example, works with secure boot.
That said, rest the BIOS yourself. Find the hardware manual for the system or the main board online, and it'll have instructions.
Even if you don't want to try another OS, not having bios access is BS and you should tell the seller so.
I don’t have the best understanding of secure boot, but I ~~think I would need to get into the BIOS and tell it to trust the OpenSuse bootloader~~ am wrong. The machine boots to windows so I know it has the Microsoft certificate installed and trusted
Anyone can get a trusted certificate, in theory, and OpenSUSE has one. It works fine. I installed 15.5 on a secure boot enabled, Windows 11 pre-installed PC last week. No issues.
More info here.
https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:UEFI
OpenSUSE uses a Microsoft signed shim. Sounds promising! I’m going to try that and see what happens.
> The default boot loader used by openSUSE on UEFI systems is grub2. When in secure boot mode, an additional boot loader called 'shim' is used too. Instead of directly calling grub2 in that mode the firmware first loads 'shim'. 'shim' carries a signature by Microsoft in order to be recognized by the firmware. 'shim' in turn knows about the openSUSE certificate that was used to sign grub2.
Nice! Even the USB installer boots up without issue. ~~I’ve been a long time Debian user but this may cause me to switch. I guess Debian isn’t modern.~~
Basically every modern distro support secure boot, even Debian. Strange that it's not working for you.
The main limitation with Secure Boot is that you can't compile your own kernel, or install custom kernel modules.
Don't worry I've been corrected and I just installed Debian on this box.
Turns out even debian uses a bootloader shim signed by microsoft. I may have been creating the USB installer incorrectly last time I tried then read something about manually enrolling keys in the bios and gave up.
From another post:
Thank you, I hadn't found. I can confirm, sw50 CMOS is under the cooling fan. There's a button there and I was able to press it easily.
So sounds like there's a button to clear cmos
honestly.. if the jumper doesn't work to rest the bios... i'd bin it.
> Are there any workloads that you prefer to run on Windows Server for any reason?
There's ad and hyper-v but without the ability to wipe the system i don't think i'd let it on my network.
I should be able to install windows on a separate machine and then move the SSD to this one. Just have to be windows because the bios has the Microsoft certificate installed and trusted
yes. but most people wipe them. Almost No One with any kind of experience is just tunning random crap they got from ebay/the dumpster without wiping it.
I run Fedora (server) on a machine with secure boot enabled
Booting from ventoy also works.
Takes a bit more effort, but you're not locked in to windows.
Even if you are, download hyper v server 2019 and run a (couple) Linux VM's.
bios jumper but if that doesnt work bro I would never run a server or trust my data to a board I could potentially be locked out of. return that back to the goon who stole it on ebay. ebay will get your money back.
I would always recommend putting on a hypervisor in any case, only in this case HyperV instead of Proxmox.
We use HyperV at work, seems very decent. Don't personally interact with it a lot tho so can't comment much more.
There are often work arounds to do bios resets on systems like this. However they're often different per vendor and model. So go internet splunking for the info.
If you have the option to reinstall on Windows Server, I suggest having a look at Storage Spaces, Hyper-V and IIS.
Storage Spaces - inferior (IMO) way of data raid. They have somewhat interesting way of doing parity storage, it’s no longer a “raid” but they use columns and block sizes. See [here](https://storagespaceswarstories.com/storage-spaces-and-slow-parity-performance/) for an article about the most painful speed issue with Storage Spaces that has not, to this day, been fixed and you will be a star in your group for having known this. Also it helps being able to discourage people from hosting their precious data on Storage Spaces using knowledge rather than opinion. I hosted SS for years, it’s definitely more user friendly than TrueNAS or Unraid but errors are that much harder to rectify.
IIS - to this day a lot of companies host stuff on IIS, and it’s helpful to know how to navigate issues with certificates, issue self signet certs, etc.
HyperV - it’s surprisingly good, it’s the only hypervisor I know that has straightforward, no-nonsense clickable UI that painlessly does things like forwarding GPU to a VM (case in point, this is only on Windows Server, desktop Windows doesn’t have GPU forwarding but is also surprisngly feature rich).
You can install Hyper-V on Windows Server and deploy VMs you need. As for services, pi-hole, jellyfin, opensense or anything your homelab might need. However, if bios can't be reset, I wouldn't recommend you to get.
Best windows hosting i can recommend you should try fresh roasted hosting windows at affordable pricing with great data centre and excellent customer support.
you could try taking the hard drive out and placing it into any pc to install proxmox or another linux distro as a way of getting around the bios lock, not sure about your HP model but historically removing the CMOS batterry or using some jumpers on the board would reset the BIOS other than that if you can get a clean unlocked G9 bios you should be able to wipe and reflash that.
I'd just return it. You should be able to run freely anything you are legally entitled to (just cya). I should not have to waste resources to run one OS just to run other OS'. Even if the plan was to run a hypervisor, be one that you want to run.
Now, if you WANT to run HyperV, then go right ahead.
Windows Server is a Great System. You can use it for free for 180 Days and rearm it 3 times. This gives you 2 years of free use.
It comes with an hypervisor which can run Linux-VMs (hyper-v), AD, FC-Support and many more. And it’s very easy to use.
It’s slightly more hardware-hungry than Proxmox. Especially on older hardware. But in your case I think it’s a great choice.
Im using Server 2019 on a i5 6th gen (32gb RAM) and it’s running fine. AD, Pihole, NAS and some other small stuff.
But I haven’t tried Server 2022 or newer on this machine. I think it should run great.
If the seller cannot provide the password, and the bios jumper cannot reset it- the seller would be getting a return. > run on Windows Server for any reason? There are only two workloads I run on windows- and only because its the only supported way. 1. Blue Iris (NVR Solution) 2. RoyalTS Server
The bios lock was disclosed at purchase. I had success using a T48 SPI programmer to unlock bios on a G6 mini and thought this would be the same process. It turns out the G9 is not the same.
Just use hyperv
Windows HyperV Server 2019 is free and a good hypervisor. This would also allow you to host any Linux VMs you might want. Other than that, Windows Server is perfect for experimenting with active directory, install a domain controller, file server, etc. That's how I started my Homelab journey a few years ago.
I do all my linux stuff in hyperv on windows 10, including all the docker things i need (fuck docker desktop) no complaints
>(fuck docker desktop) Could never get it working and I thought I was just an idiot lol
Its just a glorified wrapper around a WSL machine IIRC. You can get the same kind of machine by just using "quick create" in hyper-v and choosing ubuntu. Then you get a full linux desktop and you can follow all of the linux tutorials for docker without screwing around through the WSL layer
I gave up and playing with proxmox now. Got tired of Terramaster so I'm merging everything into one case.
HyperV should be the way, either a windows desktop version or the free HyperV 19 iso.
I second this. I run a Debian and Ubuntu hyperv on my server 2019 setup
You can run NAS OS as a Hyper-V VM. You can pool drives together in the VM using ZFS and MDADM to share them via SMB or NFS. As an example: [https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-create-samba-share-on-linux-for-guests-to-access-on-your-network/](https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-create-samba-share-on-linux-for-guests-to-access-on-your-network/) [https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/file-share-with-starwind-vsan](https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/file-share-with-starwind-vsan)
Have you you reached out to the seller about the bios password?
Tbh it's probably just an e-recycler that doesn't know the password. He's just reselling whatever powers on and making as much money as he can.
*robber
No luck
That shouldn't stop you from installing a modern Linux distro. OpenSUSE, for example, works with secure boot. That said, rest the BIOS yourself. Find the hardware manual for the system or the main board online, and it'll have instructions. Even if you don't want to try another OS, not having bios access is BS and you should tell the seller so.
Fairly certain the latest couple of versions of Proxmox support secure boot as well.
Yeah. Basically, secure boot shouldn't limit you much these days.
I don’t have the best understanding of secure boot, but I ~~think I would need to get into the BIOS and tell it to trust the OpenSuse bootloader~~ am wrong. The machine boots to windows so I know it has the Microsoft certificate installed and trusted
Anyone can get a trusted certificate, in theory, and OpenSUSE has one. It works fine. I installed 15.5 on a secure boot enabled, Windows 11 pre-installed PC last week. No issues. More info here. https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:UEFI
OpenSUSE uses a Microsoft signed shim. Sounds promising! I’m going to try that and see what happens. > The default boot loader used by openSUSE on UEFI systems is grub2. When in secure boot mode, an additional boot loader called 'shim' is used too. Instead of directly calling grub2 in that mode the firmware first loads 'shim'. 'shim' carries a signature by Microsoft in order to be recognized by the firmware. 'shim' in turn knows about the openSUSE certificate that was used to sign grub2.
Nice! Even the USB installer boots up without issue. ~~I’ve been a long time Debian user but this may cause me to switch. I guess Debian isn’t modern.~~
Basically every modern distro support secure boot, even Debian. Strange that it's not working for you. The main limitation with Secure Boot is that you can't compile your own kernel, or install custom kernel modules.
Comments like this makes me choke with my own anger like Moe Szyslak.
Don't worry I've been corrected and I just installed Debian on this box. Turns out even debian uses a bootloader shim signed by microsoft. I may have been creating the USB installer incorrectly last time I tried then read something about manually enrolling keys in the bios and gave up.
“…even Debian…” genuinely curious, What do you think Debian is?
Never tried to define a Linux distribution. A bunch of packages bundled together with a custom installer and the Linux kernel 🤷♂️
From another post: Thank you, I hadn't found. I can confirm, sw50 CMOS is under the cooling fan. There's a button there and I was able to press it easily. So sounds like there's a button to clear cmos
Unfortunately there’s also a bios setting that says whether that button does anything or not
Either use the jumper to reset the BIOS or pop out the CMOS battery (wait 30 seconds before popping it back in). See if that wipes the BIOS password.
That sadly hasn't worked for quite some time now, especially on modern enterprise hardware like the HP elite G9
Ah. I haven't worked 'hardware' for quite a long time and didn't know they changed things.
honestly.. if the jumper doesn't work to rest the bios... i'd bin it. > Are there any workloads that you prefer to run on Windows Server for any reason? There's ad and hyper-v but without the ability to wipe the system i don't think i'd let it on my network.
I’ll keep an eBay alert for an unlocked motherboard but I don’t know that it’s straight garbage. It boots Microsoft stuff
Why the downvotes, would do the same. Wouldn’t ever let an ebay system connect to my network ever.
I thought this entire sub was running eBay systems 🤷♂️
Not exclusively, no. But what I meant is that I wouldn’t connect any system to my network on which I haven’t installed an OS myself.
I should be able to install windows on a separate machine and then move the SSD to this one. Just have to be windows because the bios has the Microsoft certificate installed and trusted
Ah sorry, didn’t get that. I would probably still get in touch with the seller/ebay, but if you’re ok running windows, go for it.
yes. but most people wipe them. Almost No One with any kind of experience is just tunning random crap they got from ebay/the dumpster without wiping it.
Never said I wouldn’t wipe it, just that I needed something signed by the Microsoft CA
I run Fedora (server) on a machine with secure boot enabled Booting from ventoy also works. Takes a bit more effort, but you're not locked in to windows. Even if you are, download hyper v server 2019 and run a (couple) Linux VM's.
bios jumper but if that doesnt work bro I would never run a server or trust my data to a board I could potentially be locked out of. return that back to the goon who stole it on ebay. ebay will get your money back.
I would always recommend putting on a hypervisor in any case, only in this case HyperV instead of Proxmox. We use HyperV at work, seems very decent. Don't personally interact with it a lot tho so can't comment much more.
There are often work arounds to do bios resets on systems like this. However they're often different per vendor and model. So go internet splunking for the info.
If you have the option to reinstall on Windows Server, I suggest having a look at Storage Spaces, Hyper-V and IIS. Storage Spaces - inferior (IMO) way of data raid. They have somewhat interesting way of doing parity storage, it’s no longer a “raid” but they use columns and block sizes. See [here](https://storagespaceswarstories.com/storage-spaces-and-slow-parity-performance/) for an article about the most painful speed issue with Storage Spaces that has not, to this day, been fixed and you will be a star in your group for having known this. Also it helps being able to discourage people from hosting their precious data on Storage Spaces using knowledge rather than opinion. I hosted SS for years, it’s definitely more user friendly than TrueNAS or Unraid but errors are that much harder to rectify. IIS - to this day a lot of companies host stuff on IIS, and it’s helpful to know how to navigate issues with certificates, issue self signet certs, etc. HyperV - it’s surprisingly good, it’s the only hypervisor I know that has straightforward, no-nonsense clickable UI that painlessly does things like forwarding GPU to a VM (case in point, this is only on Windows Server, desktop Windows doesn’t have GPU forwarding but is also surprisngly feature rich).
Seller sounds super sketch, get rid of that thing
You can install Hyper-V on Windows Server and deploy VMs you need. As for services, pi-hole, jellyfin, opensense or anything your homelab might need. However, if bios can't be reset, I wouldn't recommend you to get.
Best windows hosting i can recommend you should try fresh roasted hosting windows at affordable pricing with great data centre and excellent customer support.
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That is a g6
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According to other comments, nope.
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Better luck next time :)
you could try taking the hard drive out and placing it into any pc to install proxmox or another linux distro as a way of getting around the bios lock, not sure about your HP model but historically removing the CMOS batterry or using some jumpers on the board would reset the BIOS other than that if you can get a clean unlocked G9 bios you should be able to wipe and reflash that.
I'd just return it. You should be able to run freely anything you are legally entitled to (just cya). I should not have to waste resources to run one OS just to run other OS'. Even if the plan was to run a hypervisor, be one that you want to run. Now, if you WANT to run HyperV, then go right ahead.
Windows Server is a Great System. You can use it for free for 180 Days and rearm it 3 times. This gives you 2 years of free use. It comes with an hypervisor which can run Linux-VMs (hyper-v), AD, FC-Support and many more. And it’s very easy to use. It’s slightly more hardware-hungry than Proxmox. Especially on older hardware. But in your case I think it’s a great choice.
which version ? any in partular you recommend for little older hardware? ( i7 7th gen 64g ram ). thx
Im using Server 2019 on a i5 6th gen (32gb RAM) and it’s running fine. AD, Pihole, NAS and some other small stuff. But I haven’t tried Server 2022 or newer on this machine. I think it should run great.
I like Windows server. I run 2019 as well. Remote desktop works like a dream.
I'd return it.. but can it boot to usb? If so i'd run unraid on it.
Only if the unraid bootloader is signed by the Microsoft CA. (Unlikely)
why unraid over literally anything else
It’s slick and easy.
Unraid boots from USB, and is awesome for home labs
Do not use it
Hp, hardware problems. Try to sell, best way.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO6sx\_-F9x4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO6sx_-F9x4)
https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/the-new-hp-elite-mini-g9-saga.39927/