Install/Boot Issues on Supermicro Server

[azae]

Hardware:
-sys-5029p-wtr
-LSI MegaRAID 9265-8i PCI card
-Intel cpu


Initially could not even get the installer to run, it would freeze on "loading initial ramdisk" but after some changes to the UEFI/BIOS boot options eventually got it installed. Now on boot it still freezes at the same "loading initial ramdisk" message. Recovery mode doesn't have any other details, freezes at the same message.

Tried pve 9.1/9.0/8.4/8.1/7.4 and all have the same effect. Tried installing debian on it's own and then installed pve, but the install of debian freezes as well. All the firmware on the RAID controller and the mb are at their latest release.

 

[Onslow]

Welcome, @azae

Can be various reasons. While booting, try adding nomodeset in the kernel command line.
If it doesn't help, remove quiet from the kernel command line to see possible hints.
If still no success, you can try adding acpi=off there.
Then make sure that SR-IOV is enabled in the BIOS.
Then... search for "loading initial ramdisk" in this forum (or other sites)
Good luck!

 

[azae]

Welcome, @azae

Can be various reasons. While booting, try adding nomodeset in the kernel command line.
If it doesn't help, remove quiet from the kernel command line to see possible hints.
If still no success, you can try adding acpi=off there.
Then make sure that SR-IOV is enabled in the BIOS.
Then... search for "loading initial ramdisk" in this forum (or other sites)
Good luck!

Thanks - I've tried all of that already, been searching online for a couple weeks and have found some threads with similar issues/setups but none of the fixes or actions from those have really helped. Hoping someone has maybe the same setup and has worked through this and can point in the right direction.

 

[Deerom]

Hi, @azae

We've had a couple of 'odd' installations with SMC systems as well, we had everything from ISOs not being able to boot to even physical USB mediums not being able to get past RAMDISK.

Maybe you'll have some luck with the steps that we've tried below:
1. Disable secure boot, enable CSM support & enable legacy-to-efi support.
2. Enroll the Proxmox ISO signature into the 'Supermicro key-management platform', enroll both the grub64.efi & install64.efi image onto the key-database. Read carefully each time you get prompted, usually it asks you to reboot after each screen (Usually the answer should be "No").

One other thing which **ALWAYS** seems to work for us if everything above fails is the following:
- Install the OLD 'ipmiview' tool from Supermicro (Yes the one that looks like we're back in 2006), connect your machine to this dashboard and use the 'mount virtual media' option within this IPMIview (either by mounting a virtual media via a NFS / SMB server or using the java applet with a directly mounted ISO from your own FS). Then just use the regular HTML5 iKVM and install as you would normally. Magically this always seems to work for us if everything else fails.

We had multiple support tickets with SMC regarding issues like these, varying from purposefully 'breaking' the BMC firmware in order to install, to the above mentioned key-management database.

Good luck!

 

[alh]

I also have troubles frequently. However, using the text based installer always works for me.

 

[azae]

Hi, @azae

We've had a couple of 'odd' installations with SMC systems as well, we had everything from ISOs not being able to boot to even physical USB mediums not being able to get past RAMDISK.

Maybe you'll have some luck with the steps that we've tried below:
1. Disable secure boot, enable CSM support & enable legacy-to-efi support.
2. Enroll the Proxmox ISO signature into the 'Supermicro key-management platform', enroll both the grub64.efi & install64.efi image onto the key-database. Read carefully each time you get prompted, usually it asks you to reboot after each screen (Usually the answer should be "No").

One other thing which **ALWAYS** seems to work for us if everything above fails is the following:
- Install the OLD 'ipmiview' tool from Supermicro (Yes the one that looks like we're back in 2006), connect your machine to this dashboard and use the 'mount virtual media' option within this IPMIview (either by mounting a virtual media via a NFS / SMB server or using the java applet with a directly mounted ISO from your own FS). Then just use the regular HTML5 iKVM and install as you would normally. Magically this always seems to work for us if everything else fails.

We had multiple support tickets with SMC regarding issues like these, varying from purposefully 'breaking' the BMC firmware in order to install, to the above mentioned key-management database.

Good luck!

I appreciate the feedback, I will try these as soon as I can.

Unfortunately, the IPMI on this specific server is dead at the moment until someone comes to troubleshoot it, but I like that idea. Generally, that's what we have done in the past with these servers since they are geographical dispersed and it's worked with other hypervisors.