Legacy PC (ASUS X99-Deluxe) can't install Proxmox in UEFI mode

[ihr]

Hi,

I've at home 4 PCs running proxmox and a couple of virtual machines for testing purposes. One of them is based on an ASUS X99-Deluxe motherboard with an i7 processor, 12 CPUs and 64 Gb of RAM but the problem is that I've been unable to install proxmox if I enable UEFI. Here is where the process freezes:



This happens when booting from the USB after burning the latest installer. In BIOS I've set:

Secure boot: Disabled
OS Type: Windows UEFI mode (there are no other alternatives for UEFI)


Additional information:

When booting from grub, everything works fine
when booting from grub, efibootmgr -v says EFI variables are not supported on this system. I don't know if this is due to a bad implementation of UEFI in the motherboard or anything else.

Any help will be appreciated!

Regards
Ignacio

 

[ihr]

Hmm... trying to start Rescue Mode from the installer USB raises error: compression algorithm 44 not supportedI wonder why it is not supported? I just burned the latest installer for Proxmox version 8.3

 

[ihr]

I finally managed to solve the problem. I'm answering my own questions here in order to help others move forward. I've learned a lot of things during the process.

1. when setting the BIOS to boot in UEFI mode only the USB drive was recognised. This is correct as it was the only one with everything set as expected by the BIOS
2. Booting from the proxmox installer was not helpful as indicated in the previous message. There was no way to obtain access to an UEFI shell nor a booted proxmox to move forward from there.
3. So I decided to manually change the USB stick from proxmox installer and replace the file efi/boot/bootx64.efi with the file shellx64.efi downloaded from here: https://github.com/pbatard/UEFI-Shell/releases/tag/24H2 and boot again, in UEFI mode from the USB
4. At this point I could see an UEFI prompt. I discover my disk was fs2: (and fs3: because I've them installed as a mirror of fs2 so I managed to execute in the UEFI shell fs2: and then use the dir command to see what was there. I found several vmlinuz-XXX and initrd.img-XXXX files
5. So trying to launch vmlinuz-XXX almost start the system. I just had to figure out the right parameters to start proxmox manually from UEFI and that was vmlinuz-XXX initrd=initrd.img-XXX root=ZFS=rpool/ROOT/pve-1
6. I saw proxmox starting up! so great!
7. Once proxmox started I managed to continue with instructions from here: https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/fixing-uefi-boot.87719/
8. and problem solved! Now the system boots in UEFI.

Note, the command proxmox-boot-tool is a shell script. I discovered that script creates a systemd-bootx64.efi only when the directory /sys/firmware/efi/ exist. When booting from grub that was not the case, only when booting from UEFI proxmox-boot-tool is able to prepare the system to boot in UEFI mode. That's why it is required to start proxmox manually in UEFI mode first.

 

[raidenflight]

Hello ihr!

I ran into the exact same problem just now, but managed to solve it in a different way.
From the looks of it, it got stuck on loading drivers. My best guess is Nvidia-related...

My solution:
Boot into the USB as normal with UEFI.
When you get to the "Welcome to Proxmox Virtual Environment"-screen, arrow down to "Install Proxmox VE (Terminal UI)" and press "e".
This will open up the boot editor.
On the line that starts with "linux /boot/linux............." just add a space and "nomodeset" at the end of that line. Press Ctrl + x and off you go.
You can do the same in "Install Proxmox VE (Graphical)", but the resolution might be wrong for your monitor.