[SOLVED] Dell R340 - not booting on kernels 6.8+

[dafydd]

I have a Dell R340 running Proxmox VE 8. It is fully up-to-date but is running kernel 6.5.13. A couple of years ago there was an update to kernel 6.8 but it didn't boot up, so I reverted.

I'm now trying to see if I get it running on 6.8 or 6.14 in preparation for upgrading to Proxmox 9. I have updated the server BIOS, iDRAC and all firmware to the latest available versions, but still no luck.

When booting up with 6.8, it hangs soon after grub loads and shows "Timed out for waiting the udev queue being empty." It then says
"Gave up waiting for root file system device.. ALERT /dev/mapper/pve-root does not exist" before falling into BusyBox.

It's the same with 6.14.

I assume this may be an LVM issue, but I don't know what to look for. Without fixing this issue I'm not confident that I can upgrade to version 9 (even if I tried a fresh install).

Can anyone help?

 

[anna_pve_berlin]

That error usually means the initramfs for the newer kernel cannot see the root storage yet, not that LVM itself changed. I would boot the working 6.5 kernel and compare the storage driver path first: `lspci -nnk` for the RAID/SATA controller, then check whether that driver is in the 6.8/6.14 initramfs. If it is missing, add it under `/etc/initramfs-tools/modules` and run `update-initramfs -u -k all`. Also check the boot entry's root= value against `pve-root`/the current VG name, just in case an old grub/initramfs config is being reused.

 

[dafydd]

Thanks. the RAID controller is:

Broadcom / LSI MegaRAID SAS-3 3008 [Fury] [1000:005f] (rev 02)
Subsystem: Dell PERC H330 Adapter

grub.cfg looks ok and has the corrrect VG/LV. The megaraid driver is in the initramfs as I would expect

I've now found this thread, which implies a bug with the driver. So that doesn't sound promising but I'll try a few suggestions from there.

 

[dafydd]

Ok so the answer as seen in a few places is

Amend /etc/default/grub

amend this to turn off iommu

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet intel_iommu=off"