2 problems with boot up - pls help

[cedrictang]

Hello,
I hope I can seek some help with the following. Thanks in advance.

My system is a minipc 2 nvme slots. It came with Windows in the original nvme (which I presume might be slot 0 ie the first slot). I installed a second blank nvme into the remaining slot. Install proxmox on that disk with aim of primarily I am running proxmox (99% of the time) and might use the original windows for something in the future. Subsequently I have installed a Windows VM with gpu/keyboard/mouse passthrough and which I aim to boot into directly on each boot. And here is where the problem starts:

1) So when the system managed to boot up normally, the windows nvme is nvme0n1 and the proxmox disk is nvme0n2. But sometimes it is the reverse. I have a lxc container which mounts the main ntfs partition in the windows disk (because it is 1tb and I want to use it for some storage) in fstab automatically but of course when the disk devices alternates, this fails. Why is the disk sequence changing?

2) when the virtual Windows 10 boots up, it always fails. It will show the "Start boot option" and then it will always tried to boot off the PXE4 and then PXE6. I always have to keep pressing esc to get to the boot menu and boot off the option called UEFI Misc Device to boot into the Windows 10 VM. I tried to remove those PXE options but they never stick.

Appreciate any advice!

 

[cheiss]

Hi,

1) So when the system managed to boot up normally, the windows nvme is nvme0n1 and the proxmox disk is nvme0n2. But sometimes it is the reverse. I have a lxc container which mounts the main ntfs partition in the windows disk (because it is 1tb and I want to use it for some storage) in fstab automatically but of course when the disk devices alternates, this fails. Why is the disk sequence changing?

The order is normally determined by the (UEFI) firmware, which esp. for consumer hardware can sometimes unfortunately be somewhat shoddy.
In any case, you should never rely on the enumeration order, i.e. the way the devices are presented in /dev. Instead, you'd normally the id-based reference/path in /dev/disk/by-id/*, esp. the WWN-identifiers will always be stable. These are guaranteed to be independent on the enumeration order.

For this, I can recommended Identify Disk section from our wiki, which describes that in more detail.

2) when the virtual Windows 10 boots up, it always fails. It will show the "Start boot option" and then it will always tried to boot off the PXE4 and then PXE6. I always have to keep pressing esc to get to the boot menu and boot off the option called UEFI Misc Device to boot into the Windows 10 VM. I tried to remove those PXE options but they never stick.

Have you tried adjusting the boot order under Options > Boot Order?

 

[cedrictang]

Hi,


The order is normally determined by the (UEFI) firmware, which esp. for consumer hardware can sometimes unfortunately be somewhat shoddy.
In any case, you should never rely on the enumeration order, i.e. the way the devices are presented in /dev. Instead, you'd normally the id-based reference/path in /dev/disk/by-id/*, esp. the WWN-identifiers will always be stable. These are guaranteed to be independent on the enumeration order.

For this, I can recommended Identify Disk section from our wiki, which describes that in more detail.


Have you tried adjusting the boot order under Options > Boot Order?

Thanks for your reply!

1) ok i will take a look, presumably I can use by-id on the actual partition too and not the whole disk?

2) Yes tried. I removed the 4 PXE options. Then move the UEFI Misc Device (not sure why it is named that way) to above the EFI Internal Shell. Save and rebooted. But every time it reverts back and it keeps trying to boot off the network.