first install flawless, second and third boot into grub bash shell

G

grottoguy

New Member
Jun 7, 2025
10
0
1
Hello-

Recent proxmox adoptee. Did my first mini pc install a week ago using Rufus to cut a usb drive with iso image.
Worked flawlessly.
Ordered 2 more of the very same mini pc.
Received today. Both exhibit the same behavior:
-boot off the thumb drive, did the PVE install, go to reboot, pull the thumb drive, and end up at the grub bash shell with no errors.

When I look at the boot order, there are 3 options.
Option 1 is the pve, option 2 is called UEFI but references the same object it appears, and the third references a Windows reset button.
The third option indicates this had a windows OS preinstalled although I had thought all 3 were baremetal.
There is actually an arrow pointing at the Windows option in the boot sequence, and trying to select one of the others seems to throw me back into grub shell.
It seems that perhaps there is a remnant of the original Windows boot left, and I'm being prevented from choosing the other boot option perhaps?

I am able to boot off the PVE rescue option, which if I read correctly is off the installation somehow (true?).

With the first box, I never had to go anywhere near the bios settings and all was well and flawless.

I don't think I did anything different.
I've tried doing the install repeatedly, even tried with a new Ventnoy image. All the installs seem to finish happily and reboot.
I've also tried the initramfs and grub install / update options I found in a related thread.
No luck.

I feel like it's very simple but eluding me - I don't have a screen capture of the bios showing the arrow, would need to take a picture with my phone, but it shows 3 boot options, starting with proxmox, then UEFI, then windows reset button with an arrow pointing at that option from the left side.

So it feels like it's still stuck on trying to boot from a now non-existent windows boot device...

Any feedback is welcome, thank you.
 
Do you see two options when you boot your installer? UEFI and non? If so, it’ll sound weird but boot off the other one and install from that. If not, ignore this. :)
 
I see 3 options- the first labeled proxmox, the seccond labeled UEFI, and the third labeled Windows... I've tried to choose all 3, but the behavior doesn't change. I also haven't managed to move the arrow indicator, which is always pointed at the 3rd line, the Windows option. I suppose it could be that I'm confused about how to change that selection, but geez... :) And the proxmox is listed 'first' (at the top of the 3 options, though they aren't numbered).

Thank you for your response.
 
By starting the install, you mean when I first boot off the usb drive and choose among the PVE install options? I don't remember seeing anything about that at that point but I'll take a look. Thanks!
 
I had intended to purchase bare metal boxes all 3 times, and didn't see any hint of windows in the first one (or the third), but that's probably because I only mistakenly started to boot in windows with the 2nd... But it does seem like wiping any remnant of windows out couldn't hurt.
 
I’m probably not explaining well. I mean when choosing to boot your usb stick. In my specific situation on that older hardware the boot menu had two options, UEFI or not. As I recall booting and installing from the latter was the one that completed the install but the result wasn’t bootable.

This may be a red herring/meaningless on newer hardware.
 
Thanks, anything is potentially helpful. I'll take another look. It's a mystery to me that it worked flawlessly with what is supposed to be the very same exact hardware a week or so later...
 
I've tried every option I could find (normal vs grub2, uefi vs proxmox (see below), etc) related to booting.

I've now done 1 perfect install on the first box, but now about 7 on the other two (identical) boxes and keep landing in grub.
I've used etcher, rufus and ventnoy.
I've used gparted to see what I think are normal partitions on the box (a proxmox boot, an lvm, and a tiny sliver unallocated).
I have deleted the 3 partitions and then installed again.

I also tried to do the 'repair grub' in case that somehow was problematic.
I also used the 'normal' or 'grub2' option and no difference in the outcome.

I get the same stop inside grub with no errors that I can see.

What am I missing??
See my bios settings where the proxmox shows up as a boot option (along with the same thing labeled as UEFI), and I've tried to boot each as the #1 choice, same result.

The one weird thing I see is on the second image, at the bottom, there is some sort of boot override which shouldn't be relevant anymore as I fully deleted all the partitions, and therefore there should be no remnant of windows left- but I guess this was not a baremetal box and so it originally came with windows. I guess it's possible my first box also had windows but I didn't even notice because I immediately booted off the proxmox install iso.

So I managed the first box completely flawlessly, and now have been unable to get either of the next 2 boxes to boot, both stop in grub, despite wiping partitions, redoing the iso with multiple tools, changing every related boot option I could find, etc...

Help! :)
1749319516039.png
 

Attachments

  • 1749319236386.png
    1749319236386.png
    1 MB · Views: 0
No new ideas eh?
I guess I'll look at formal support but as a brand new user, it seems like I have stumbled over a pretty low bar / hurdle.... Confusing ...
 
what exactly does the grub shell say/look like? (there's more than one)
 
Hey, thanks for your poke- I confess I forgot to take a picture of that just now when I found a difference between my 1st and the 2nd/3rd boxes.
The NVME disk in the first one that works shows up as AirDisk.
The NVME disk in the 3rd (and presumably 2nd) shows up as a TWSC.
So somehow the grub config must be a little off.
I'm going to have to boot off the usb and see if I can find something off in the config again- I did the basic grub reinstall / update but there must be something about this disk that it doesn't like.
I'm very confident that the actual installation of proxmox on both the 2nd and 3rd worked- I could see the partitions and mount drives and everything looked ok... And I did the same thing with multiple tools and even gparted cleared everything, etc.
Here is the specific disk information (attached image).
1749909929022.png

Thanks for the reply, sorry for the delayed response, I don't have good access to the physical location but am there now.
 
Copying my post from a Reddit thread that had a similar problem.

I recently purchased GMKtec G3 Plus mini pc that was running into this exact same issue. I have managed to succeed in getting it to boot into Proxmox after many difficulties.

I'm not 100% sure of which exact combination of these BIOS settings got me over the line, but here are the things I did:
  • Made sure the boot order was correct
  • Ensured that Secure Boot was disabled
  • Additionally ensured that all the keys were deleted, some were still there even after it was disabled?
  • The pre-installed SSD came with a master password set by default, I deleted this by creating a new password and just hitting enter
  • Disabled the TPM
After I had done the above, it still wasn't booting, so I messed around with countless grub settings by booting to the install USB and booting in rescue mode, to no avail. Out of ideas, I decided to do a fresh reinstall of Proxmox and now it boots.

I don't know enough about Grub to know if the settings I changed made any difference, however since I did full re-install I figure it was something in the BIOS settings that prevented the install from working the first time around.
Click to expand...
 
OK everybody. I've dug into GRUB more than I ever thought I'd need, ha!
Here are some relevant facts on the 2nd and 3rd install attempts after a lot of grub inspection.
When grub boots (and fails), it starts with a root variable that's clearly wrong (hd0,gpt2)/boot/grub (see the photo down below)
I say that because only the lvm/pve-root has a filesystem when ls'd.
See below-
none of the other partitions has a filesystem.
lvm/pve-root has a filesystem and I can find the boot dir with the kernel and grub directory with config and such.
1750294992965.png

So I think I need to manually boot and then fix the grub.cfg when I have the system booted (see the link I've been reading from below).

My problems are
I can find the boot dir, the grub dir, and the linux kernel in the lvm/pve-root filesystem.
However, I see no partition indicator, and no matching to a device as described below (hd vs /dev/sd and partition #'s, etc)
So while I can set the root to be the lvm/pve-root, I have no partition # to add...
I also have no logical root=X to add to the linux kernel boot command below (/dev/sda1 as an example)

What am I missing?

The pve system is clearly on the disk, along with grub and kernel, but the disk layout doesn't seem to match the documentation.
I have to go back and check /dev again but I don't think I saw how to correlate any of that back to the /lvm/pve-root disk, and I see no partitions on that disk.

Thanks for any help!

(BELOW IS THE GUIDE I'M USING TO TRY TO BOOT)
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blo...n-how-to-rescue-a-non-booting-grub-2-on-linux

Booting From grub>​

This is how to set the boot files and boot the system from the grub> prompt. We know from running the ls command that there is a Linux root filesystem on (hd0,1), and you can keep searching until you verify where /boot/grub is. Then run these commands, using your own root partition, kernel, and initrd image:

grub> set root=(hd0,1)
grub> linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-29-generic root=/dev/sda1
grub> initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-29-generic
grub> boot
The first line sets the partition that the root filesystem is on. The second line tells GRUB the location of the kernel you want to use. Start typing /boot/vmli, and then use tab-completion to fill in the rest. Type root=/dev/sd<em>X</em> to set the location of the root filesystem. Yes, this seems redundant, but if you leave this out you’ll get a kernel panic. How do you know the correct partition? hd0,1 = /dev/sda1. hd1,1 = /dev/sdb1. hd3,2 = /dev/sdd2. I think you can extrapolate the rest.

The third line sets the initrd file, which must be the same version number as the kernel.

The fourth line boots your system.

On some Linux systems the current kernels and initrds are symlinked into the top level of the root filesystem:

$ ls -l /
vmlinuz -> boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-29-generic
initrd.img -> boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-29-generic
So you could boot from grub&gt; like this:

grub> set root=(hd0,1)
grub> linux /vmlinuz root=/dev/sda1
grub> initrd /initrd.img
grub> boot
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom