[SOLVED] Booting from Hard Disk missing in SeaBIOS

[alexgoaga]

Hello,

Long story short
I'm trying to learn new things and i found out about proxmox. My level in linux for the rest of the conversation can be considerated 3/10 (still learning)

Problem in hand :
I installed an Windows XP (sp3) on a node and booted up correctly with no problems using the recommended promox info from the forum (sea bios , ide harware etc) (After switching from IDE to virtio thing it doesnt show in the bios anymore.)
I wanted a little more performance / the balloting ram thing and i followed the exact instructions found here https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Windows_XP_Guest_Notes (drivers / network on virtio)

I tried to follow the fix from a post from 2012 : https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/virtio-disk-boot-problem.8557/ but i dont understand what was the fix.

While searching for informations on forum i noted that some info is always required so in order to save time :

root@proxmox:~# qm start 100 -> does not return any problem and the machine starts

root@proxmox:~# pveversion -v gives the following output :

proxmox-ve: 6.3-1 (running kernel: 5.4.73-1-pve)
pve-manager: 6.3-2 (running version: 6.3-2/22f57405)
pve-kernel-5.4: 6.3-1
pve-kernel-helper: 6.3-1
pve-kernel-5.4.73-1-pve: 5.4.73-1
ceph-fuse: 12.2.11+dfsg1-2.1+b1
corosync: 3.0.4-pve1
criu: 3.11-3
glusterfs-client: 5.5-3
ifupdown: 0.8.35+pve1
ksm-control-daemon: 1.3-1
libjs-extjs: 6.0.1-10
libknet1: 1.16-pve1
libproxmox-acme-perl: 1.0.5
libproxmox-backup-qemu0: 1.0.2-1
libpve-access-control: 6.1-3
libpve-apiclient-perl: 3.0-3
libpve-common-perl: 6.2-6
libpve-guest-common-perl: 3.1-3
libpve-http-server-perl: 3.0-6
libpve-storage-perl: 6.3-1
libqb0: 1.0.5-1
libspice-server1: 0.14.2-4~pve6+1
lvm2: 2.03.02-pve4
lxc-pve: 4.0.3-1
lxcfs: 4.0.3-pve3
novnc-pve: 1.1.0-1
proxmox-backup-client: 1.0.5-1
proxmox-mini-journalreader: 1.1-1
proxmox-widget-toolkit: 2.4-3
pve-cluster: 6.2-1
pve-container: 3.3-1
pve-docs: 6.3-1
pve-edk2-firmware: 2.20200531-1
pve-firewall: 4.1-3
pve-firmware: 3.1-3
pve-ha-manager: 3.1-1
pve-i18n: 2.2-2
pve-qemu-kvm: 5.1.0-7
pve-xtermjs: 4.7.0-3
qemu-server: 6.3-1
smartmontools: 7.1-pve2
spiceterm: 3.1-1
vncterm: 1.6-2
zfsutils-linux: 0.8.5-pve1

root@proxmox:~# dpkg -l | grep qemu outputs :

ii  libproxmox-backup-qemu0              1.0.2-1                      amd64        Proxmox Backup Server client library for QEMU
ii  pve-qemu-kvm                         5.1.0-7                      amd64        Full virtualization on x86 hardware
ii  qemu-server                          6.3-1                        amd64        Qemu Server Tools

Configuration machine after tutorial :



Physical machine specs :
CPU- Intel® Xeon® Processor E3-1220L v2
RAM - 16GB (8GB + 8GB)
Disk - WD 3TB x 4 raid 10 and i selected the ZFS type as recommended in the tutorial
Network- 3 x Gigabit (2 + 1 from PCIe card)


Thank you for your time,
Alex

 

[Stefan_R]

So, uhm, what's the problem now exactly? "booted up correctly with no problems using the recommended promox info" doesn't sound like an issue to me AFAICT you switched the drive interface of your Windows XP install from ide to virtio, and now it's not booting - i.e. the BIOS splash screen shows up in VNC, but you never get to Windows?

Some general tips:

• Check the "boot order" setting in the VM Options, make sure your 'virtio0' disk is selected
• Don't bother with RAM bollooning if you give your VM 256 MiB RAM... especially if you have 16 GiB available
• Try switching back to ide to see if it still works?
• Use something other than Windows XP

 

[alexgoaga]

So, uhm, what's the problem now exactly? "booted up correctly with no problems using the recommended promox info" doesn't sound like an issue to me AFAICT you switched the drive interface of your Windows XP install from ide to virtio, and now it's not booting - i.e. the BIOS splash screen shows up in VNC, but you never get to Windows?

Some general tips:

• Check the "boot order" setting in the VM Options, make sure your 'virtio0' disk is selected
• Don't bother with RAM bollooning if you give your VM 256 MiB RAM... especially if you have 16 GiB available
• Try switching back to ide to see if it still works?
• Use something other than Windows XP

I never thought that changing the HDD type would result in a unchecked mark in the option menu for the new hdd type.
Yes i switched back to ide to see if it still works and worked every time so i was battling myself what was the issue.
" Use something other than Windows XP " -> i know i know , but i had some old apps that run only in Windows XP so i wanted to give it a try

"Don't bother with RAM bollooning if you give your VM 256 MiB RAM... especially if you have 16 GiB available"
I still quite don't fully understand how the ram management works on proxmox and i was trying on a low consumption machine to see what are the results.

For example a new container, you give it 2gb ram and play with it a little, on the node you can see like ~ 3gb consumption (therefore maybe 1gb proxmox on a fresh start + 2 for the container) , 5 minutes later playing you can see 5gb ram consumption . You stop the container , the 5 gb consumption is still there but with with no other VMs /containers running.

 

[Stefan_R]

For example a new container, you give it 2gb ram and play with it a little, on the node you can see like ~ 3gb consumption (therefore maybe 1gb proxmox on a fresh start + 2 for the container) , 5 minutes later playing you can see 5gb ram consumption . You stop the container , the 5 gb consumption is still there but with with no other VMs /containers running.

What you're looking at is file system caches. A fresh container, as well as PVE itself, use almost no memory at all. If you're using ZFS it will also be used by the ARC. In general, more memory usage on a Linux system is a good thing - empty memory means unused, and that means less cached data, hence worse performance. Check 'free -h' or 'top' on the CLI for a bit more detailed information.

VMs by default allocate the entire memory you give them (containers don't do that! they only ever "use" as much as necessary, and never more than what you assign). Using ballooning allows a VM to return some of that memory to the hypervisor, *if it is asked to do so* - i.e. if PVE experiences memory shortages. But since even Win XP is going to use most of it's 256 MB RAM, it won't really be able to return any, so the ballooning will most likely fail and do nothing anyway.

 

[alexgoaga]

Thank you for the information

 

[thebox]

So, uhm, what's the problem now exactly? "booted up correctly with no problems using the recommended promox info" doesn't sound like an issue to me AFAICT you switched the drive interface of your Windows XP install from ide to virtio, and now it's not booting - i.e. the BIOS splash screen shows up in VNC, but you never get to Windows?

Some general tips:

• Check the "boot order" setting in the VM Options, make sure your 'virtio0' disk is selected
• Don't bother with RAM bollooning if you give your VM 256 MiB RAM... especially if you have 16 GiB available
• Try switching back to ide to see if it still works?
• Use something other than Windows XP

I dont know how the boot order got messed up for me i don't rember changing the settings however this did it for me , i changed the boot oder from disk to ide and it work. Thanks