[TUTORIAL] [Boot] Troubleshooting - verbose output

[esi_y]

Unfortunately PVE ships with quiet booting, the screen goes blank and then turns into login prompt. It does not use e.g. Plymouth [1] that would allow you to optionally see the boot messages. While trivial, there does not seem to be dedicated Wiki page on this basic troubleshooting tip.



One-off verbose boot

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Instantly after power-on, when presented with GRUB [2] boot menu, press e to edit the commands of the selection boot option:



Navigate onto the linux line and note the 'quiet' keyword at the end:



Remove the quiet keyword leaving everything else intact:



Press F10 to proceed to boot verbosely.





Permanent verbose boot

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You may want to have verbose setup as your default, it only adds a couple of seconds to your boot-up time.

On a working booted-up system, edit /etc/default/grub and remove the quiet keyword, so that the top of your GRUB config looks like this:

# If you change this file, run 'update-grub' afterwards to update
# /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
# For full documentation of the options in this file, see:
#   info -f grub -n 'Simple configuration'

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

Save your changed file and use e.g. Proxmox boot tool [3] to apply the changes:
proxmox-boot-tool refresh

Alternatively, you may prefer to use regular Debian tooling [4] instead:
update-grub



Notes

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The above also applies to other options, e.g. the infamous blank screen (not only with NVIDIA) woes [5].

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[1] https://wiki.debian.org/plymouth
[2] https://wiki.debian.org/Grub
[3] https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Host_Bootloader
[4] https://manpages.debian.org/bookworm/grub-legacy/update-grub.8.en.html
[5] https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Installation#nomodeset_kernel_param

 

[esi_y]

Filed: https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=5767