Can't boot from RAID1 installation on NVME disks: No systemd-boot entries

[tumleren]

Hi,
I'm having issues booting Proxmox in a RAID1 install configuration


What I'm trying to do:
Use Proxmox in a RAID1 configuration using two NVME drives, each on its own PCIE -> M.2 riser card


The setup:
Dell T130 with two PCIE -> M.2 riser cards. 1 disk on each card.
The Dell can't boot from NVME on its own, so a Clover USB is used to select which NVME drive to boot from. Clover is pointing to \EFI\systemd\systemd-bootx64.efi on each drive using their respective PARTUUIDs. Setup using this tutorial: https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/b...made-easy-with-pcie-adapter-and-clover.78120/


The situation:
Clover boots and shows the two drives as eligible to boot from. When one is selected, the systemd-boot bootloader appears, but no entries are listed:


The timer stays at 3 seconds and does not tick down. If interrupted by CTRL+D or pressing enter, the following screen appears:




If Proxmox is installed on only 1 drive, it boots fine. Though when I tried this, it showed the blue bootload screen of GRUB instead of systemd-boot I was expecting, even though Clover pointed to systemd-bootx64.efi


What I've tried:

• Checked that Clover is pointing at the right bootloader (systemd as opposed to GRUB) and PARTUUIDs. Using efibootmgr -v on the host I get the following, which matches how Clover is setup:

Boot0008* Linux Boot Manager    HD(2,GPT,e1888039-124f-437f-abc3-1bd5a3fc6a65,0x800,0x200000)/File(\EFI\systemd\systemd-bootx64.efi)
Boot0009* Linux Boot Manager    HD(2,GPT,1d76c644-4d1b-4da5-8ba9-8bd0b8631d89,0x800,0x200000)/File(\EFI\systemd\systemd-bootx64.efi)

• Checked that Proxmox exists in /loader/loader.conf. File looks like this:

timeout 3
default proxmox-*

• Checked that a proxmox image exists on the EFI partition. Partition looks like this:

/EFI
/EFI/proxmox
/EFI/proxmox/6.2.16-3-pve
/EFI/proxmox/6.2.16-3-pve/vmlinuz-6.2.16-3-pve
/EFI/proxmox/6.2.16-3-pve/initrd.img-6.2.16-3-pve
/EFI/systemd
/EFI/systemd/systemd-bootx64.efi
/EFI/BOOT
/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI
/EFI/Linux
/EFI/Dell
/EFI/Dell/BootOptionCache
/EFI/Dell/BootOptionCache/BootOptionCache.dat
/loader
/loader/entries
/loader/entries/proxmox-6.2.16-3-pve.conf
/loader/loader.conf
/loader/random-seed
/loader/entries.srel

I'm not particularly experienced or skilled in Linux and have never messed with configuration of bootloaders before, so so far I've been fumbling my way through. But from what i can glean from other threads, all the bits are there to make it work. It just doesn't.

Since it works when installed on just 1 drive, I figure it must have something to do with being installed in RAID1. But I've got no idea where to go from here.

Any help is appreciated

 

[Oppy]

Hello, I'm facing the exact issue right now. Were you able to resolve this?

 

[tumleren]

Hello, I'm facing the exact issue right now. Were you able to resolve this?

Yes, for me the issue was that I had another disk connected that also had a rpool with the same rpool name. So as it's trying to import the rpool, it doesn't know which one to pick.
Running 'zpool import' will give you a list of pools - import the correct one by using its numerical ID instead of its name. So 'zpool import 12345678'. To avoid it happening on every boot, you'll need to remove the one you don't want. For me it was just disconnecting the offending disk

 

[Oppy]

Thanks for the reply. My problem was with ZFS. I'm guessing my Clover installation didn't like ZFS at all. (I did read something about it)

I converted to BTRFS, as it still suits my needs, mainly the significant amount of small files and it all works now.

To be honest, I probably had the same issue as you did. But basically overwrote everything.