Import EFI-based Linux VMs from ESXi to Proxmox

[z4ri0n]

Hello,
I'm migrating my homelab from ESXi 6.7 to Proxmox 7 using the ofvtool.
I didn't have any issues with bios based VMs, but I hade some appliances deployed that has efi bios by default and I'm getting this error from ovftool
when i launch the copy:
- Line -1: Unsupported value 'firmware' for attribute 'key' on element 'ExtraConfig'.

I tried again with "--allowExtraConfig" parameter, and after the import in proxmox I changed the bios from SeaBIOS to OVMF but still can't boot from the disk.

I searched for other parameters for ovftool to allow the EFI config to pass, but there is nothing on VMware KB.
Also a more general research on the web didn't produced useful results.

Thanks in advance for the help

 

[nk1]

When you boot up the VM, hit escape during the proxmox booting process. You’ll enter the BIOS setting. In there, turn off secure boot. Save (F10) and restart. Keep your bios as OVMF.

I am not familiar with ofvtool (I use am to convert the disks) But I hope the above will work for you.

 

[z4ri0n]

When you boot up the VM, hit escape during the proxmox booting process. You’ll enter the BIOS setting. In there, turn off secure boot. Save (F10) and restart. Keep your bios as OVMF.

I am not familiar with ofvtool (I use am to convert the disks) But I hope the above will work for you.

Thanks nk1, I had one Debian vm with secure boot enabled indeed, and your solution fixed the boot, so thank you very much for the hint
But I'm still having issues with a couple of PhotonOS VMs, where the secure boot is disabled,
they seems to boot because I can see the bootscreen but after that the screen become all black with no way to interact and the cpu is running over 100%.
It may be OS related, I'll continue to search for a solution for that.

Thanks again

 

[nk1]

Thanks nk1, I had one Debian vm with secure boot enabled indeed, and your solution fixed the boot, so thank you very much for the hint
But I'm still having issues with a couple of PhotonOS VMs, where the secure boot is disabled,
they seems to boot because I can see the bootscreen but after that the screen become all black with no way to interact and the cpu is running over 100%.
It may be OS related, I'll continue to search for a solution for that.

Thanks again

The VM boots but the screen is black and CPU at 100% is typically a driver issue in the guest OS. You may have VMware specific drivers that just don't work (or there's no equivalent in proxmox).

if you don't even have an IP address (use wakemeonlan to see if the guest VM can get an IP) then it's a guessing game. You may want to go back to ESXI and uninstall as much as VMware drivers and tools before moving the VM to Proxmox again.

If you have an IP, see if you can SSH to it and troubleshoot from there.

 

[z4ri0n]

The VM boots but the screen is black and CPU at 100% is typically a driver issue in the guest OS. You may have VMware specific drivers that just don't work (or there's no equivalent in proxmox).

if you don't even have an IP address (use wakemeonlan to see if the guest VM can get an IP) then it's a guessing game. You may want to go back to ESXI and uninstall as much as VMware drivers and tools before moving the VM to Proxmox again.

If you have an IP, see if you can SSH to it and troubleshoot from there.

Honestly for the stuff hosted on that nodes is not worth the time for troubleshoot.
I rather prefer to save the containers data and deploy a new cluster, and I think that VMware optimized (ofc they did) Photon OS for vSphere and Tanzu, for me is not worth the hassle to make it work with other hypervisors.
At this point I'm going to consider alternatives like Rancher OS or a straight Docker cluster with Portainer or k4s.
But thank you very much again for your help, much appreciated.

 

[docprocey]

Honestly for the stuff hosted on that nodes is not worth the time for troubleshoot.
I rather prefer to save the containers data and deploy a new cluster, and I think that VMware optimized (ofc they did) Photon OS for vSphere and Tanzu, for me is not worth the hassle to make it work with other hypervisors.
At this point I'm going to consider alternatives like Rancher OS or a straight Docker cluster with Portainer or k4s.
But thank you very much again for your help, much appreciated.

I too had problems migrating a PhotonOS VM from ESXi to Proxmox, with a blank screen after the PhotonOS grub2 splash screen. I eventually found that all I had to do was install the generic linux kernel, so it used that rather than the ESXi optimised one. When I originally installed PhotonOS on ESXi, I used the OVA, which has an optimised ESXi kernel. So when I imported the VM into Proxmox, it wouldn't boot with that kernel.
So I downloaded the systemrescue ISO and added it to the VM as a CD ROM. Then booted into that and choose the "Boot a linux operating system installed on the disk (findroot)", it found the PhotonOS root partition and was able to boot into it. Once booted, I then installed the generic kernel with the command:
tdnf install linux
The VM was able to boot PhotonOS without any issue after that. I hope this helps anyone else who finds themselves in the same situation.