Lenovo M90q gen 3 running PVE 8.4.1 hangs on splash screen after reboot

[BeantownEng]

Hello,
Somewhat new to the community and loving the product. I'm noticing a strange behavior on some of my Lenovo Tiny machines (could also be my Dell Optiplex but haven't noticed it there there). They're all M90q gen 3 systems with dual nvme ports and an additional sata ssd. Proxmox sees all of them with no issues. During installation, I choose to use a ZFS mirror with the dual nvme drives. The sata ssd disk gets chopped up into volumes as I need additional storage.

The problem I'm having is when these systems get rebooted, sometimes they come back right away and other times they hang on the Lenovo splash screen. I don't have access to the POST messages and haven't been able to figure out how to disable the splash screen so I can see them. It does seem to happen on multiple of the Lenovo nodes so I'm leaning more towards something I configured or did not configure vs. a hardware issue. All the disks and RAM are new and function perfectly fine once I'm booted into proxmox. The only issue I'm having is when there's a power outage and seemingly sometimes if I select the "reboot" button from the proxmox GUI/enter reboot in the proxmox CLI. It seems to be intermittent at best. All nodes are running vPro and are connected to MeshCommander but I've not yet been able to recover this condition via MeshCommander's remote desktop. I end up having to go to the machine and doing some combination of long pressing power buttons and unplugging power cables until the machine decides it's ready to boot again.

I'm not too sure where to take this one next. Has anyone else experienced this kind of thing? Any recommendations on where to take this next? Is it possible to get some meaningful log data from the hung POST or can I get rid of this splash screen somehow? Maybe I can then see what's happening.

Thank you in advance!

 

[MagicFab]

On Lenovo systems you usually can enter the BIOS/system settings by pressing Enter or F1 or Fn+F1 at boot time.
This is described in detail in the manual:
https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/thinkcentre_pdf/m70q_gen3_m80q_gen3_m90q_gen3_ug_linux_ug.pdf

Then you can look in the menus to disable the splash screen, I am not sure where this would be.
Also make sure you check the BIOS version and update it to the lasted and have the same on all you Lenovo Tiny machines.

---

Fabián Rodríguez | Le Goût du Libre Inc. | Montreal, Canada | Mastodon
Proxmox Silver Partner, server and desktop enterprise support in French, English and Spanish

 

[BeantownEng]

Dropping this note here in case it helps anyone else in the future. I'm also not certain it's 100% correct because I worked with Gemini to get here so please take it with a grain of salt!

I experienced another power outage and half my nodes did not come back online. I decided to again dig through all my BIOS settings to figure out what I was missing. I never paid much attention to the "hard disk password" BIOS settings because I don't set a password and one is not set by default so it shouldn't apply... I looked there today and noticed the "Block SID" security setting was enabled and decided to dig deeper to see if there was something preventing the drive from passing security checks on reboot. I ended up disabling it and the machines that were down came right online. I am running Lenovo Tiny m90q gen 3 and p360 all with dual Micron 7450 Pro nvme enterprise drives. Dropping all the information into Gemini, the response I got back is below. I disabled the setting which makes things less secure but that's acceptable risk for my home setup. The machines have come right back after repeated reboots now so I hope this is fully resolved, we will see!

Gemini response
------
2. The "Lenovo Tiny" + Enterprise Drive Power Dissipation Curve
If you look up Lenovo Tiny units (M90q, M720q, P360) on homelab forums, there is a known physical quirk: these motherboards are designed primarily for low-power consumer NVMe drives (which pull around 3\text{–}5\text{ W}).
Your Micron 7450 SSDs are high-performance enterprise enterprise drives that can spike up to 6\text{–}10\text{ W} during a cold boot or power-loss recovery sequence as they charge their physical power-loss protection (PLP) capacitors.
When the power first cuts back on, the Microns draw maximum current to initialize their safety capacitors.
Simultaneously, the Lenovo BIOS fires off the Block SID command.
This minor power-draw spike combined with a strict cryptographic timeout causes a firmware glitch, leading to the exact intermittent failure you saw.
3. TCG Opal Setup Documentation
In open-source storage circles (like GitHub issues for sedutil and Linux NVMe frameworks), it is universally documented that Block SID Authentication must be disabled if you are running anything other than a native Windows BitLocker environment. Linux system tools explicitly state that modern enterprise motherboards will aggressively lock the drive's cryptographic administration authority, completely masking the drive paths from open-source bootloaders on warm resets.
By turning it off, you cut out the motherboard's middleman security check, allowing the Lenovo UEFI to pass the Micron drives directly to Proxmox's ZFS layer completely unhindered.
------