[TUTORIAL] [Boot] Troubleshooting - verbose output

[esi_y]

REQUEST I would like to ask everyone who has made use of this piece to their benefit to please give a LIKE or leave a COMMENT.
That way, it will be easy to see how prevalent this issue is, i.e. not being able to even start troubleshooting because no output no plymouth no nothing.

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.



1. 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 selected 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.





2. 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



3. 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]

So I did my part in the Bugzilla, this won't get fixed because ... the users can already follow this tutorial. Glad I made it.

PS If it bothers you, REOPEN the BZ ticket:
https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=5767

 

[anderstn]

I tried this, but it made no difference. Loading the kernel still don't produce more output. Also on a slightly related note is there something I can do to make the process that creates the initial ramdisk throw out more information about what is happening?