Grub hangs when loading initramfs

[detrainnerd]

Had an older workstation tower that I installed Proxmox onto, but recently it stopped booting due to grub running out of memory only upon loading initramfs. I have tried older kernels but none of them seem to work. Used memtest86 and it did seven passes without failing any of them. The node was in a cluster and had a few vms and an lxc container on it. The node was also running Proxmox 8.4 I believe and unfortunately I did not make any backups, so that is out of the question. All I would really care about is the vms and lxc container to be restored to a new instance of Proxmox. I haven't found much else online other than something relating to nvidia drivers bloating the initramfs file to over 100mb. All the initramfs files are around the 50mb point in size which led me to check more issues with initramfs but all the ones i found did not have any symptoms other than 'grub does not work'. I am not sure what all would be needed in terms of logs or screenshots, but I would be able to send them if needed. Many thanks to anyone who helps!


I think this is tangentially related, but this tower did have an issue where the integrated nic would just randomly cut out and drop the ethernet link.

 

[Impact]

Can you try pressing e at the grub menu and boot with the debug arg and share what you see? Also try the (installer's) rescue mode or booting a older kernel.

 

[JohnnieKF]

The NIC dropping out is probably unrelated.

For the boot issue, what's the exact error from GRUB? initramfs lives on disk as a file in /boot, so a drive developing bad sectors under it could produce this. If you boot into a live USB you can check with smartctl -a /dev/sdX

 

[detrainnerd]

Can you try pressing e at the grub menu and boot with the debug arg and share what you see?

I am not entirely sure what youre asking me to do here, would you mind elaborating a little more? sharing the grub boot command? When I tried just booting manually I still got the same error.

Also try the (installer's) rescue mode or booting a older kernel.

I had the same issue with rescue mode as well.

For the boot issue, what's the exact error from GRUB?

"error: out of memory"

I can run the smartctl command here shortly.

 

[detrainnerd]

I should also note that when grub gives that error and says "press any key to continue" it completely hangs the system and i have to hard reset it.

 

[Impact]

I am not entirely sure what youre asking me to do here, would you mind elaborating a little more?

Press e at this screen

Then add the debug flag similar to this

Show what you see during that process. I don't expect this to be useful here but this is what I'd try.

 

[detrainnerd]

root@ubuntu:~# smartctl -a /dev/sda
smartctl 7.4 2023-08-01 r5530 [x86_64-linux-6.14.0-15-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-23, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Samsung based SSDs
Device Model:     Samsung SSD 860 EVO 500GB
Serial Number:    S598NE0M934581H
LU WWN Device Id: 5 002538 e0991d945
Firmware Version: RVT03B6Q
User Capacity:    500,107,862,016 bytes [500 GB]
Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
Rotation Rate:    Solid State Device
Form Factor:      2.5 inches
TRIM Command:     Available, deterministic, zeroed
Device is:        In smartctl database 7.3/5528
ATA Version is:   ACS-4 T13/BSR INCITS 529 revision 5
SATA Version is:  SATA 3.2, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is:    Fri Aug 21 17:47:43 2026 UTC
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x00)    Offline data collection activity
                    was never started.
                    Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0)    The previous self-test routine completed
                    without error or no self-test has ever
                    been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection:         (    0) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:              (0x53) SMART execute Offline immediate.
                    Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
                    Suspend Offline collection upon new
                    command.
                    No Offline surface scan supported.
                    Self-test supported.
                    No Conveyance Self-test supported.
                    Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003)    Saves SMART data before entering
                    power-saving mode.
                    Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01)    Error logging supported.
                    General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time:      (   2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:      (  85) minutes.
SCT capabilities:            (0x003d)    SCT Status supported.
                    SCT Error Recovery Control supported.
                    SCT Feature Control supported.
                    SCT Data Table supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 1
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   091   091   000    Old_age   Always       -       43043
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   095   095   000    Old_age   Always       -       4718
177 Wear_Leveling_Count     0x0013   092   092   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       140
179 Used_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Tot   0x0013   100   100   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
181 Program_Fail_Cnt_Total  0x0032   100   100   010    Old_age   Always       -       0
182 Erase_Fail_Count_Total  0x0032   100   100   010    Old_age   Always       -       0
183 Runtime_Bad_Block       0x0013   100   100   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
187 Uncorrectable_Error_Cnt 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0032   079   058   000    Old_age   Always       -       21
195 ECC_Error_Rate          0x001a   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
199 CRC_Error_Count         0x003e   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
235 POR_Recovery_Count      0x0012   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       292
241 Total_LBAs_Written      0x0032   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       71680646389

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
No self-tests have been logged.  [To run self-tests, use: smartctl -t]

SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
 SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
    1        0        0  Not_testing
    2        0        0  Not_testing
    3        0        0  Not_testing
    4        0        0  Not_testing
    5        0        0  Not_testing
  256        0    65535  Read_scanning was never started
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
  After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.

The above only provides legacy SMART information - try 'smartctl -x' for more

This is what i got from running the smartctl command you asked.

And please give me a moment while I convert the pictures to upload. Still errored the same and it didnt change much.