Problem pinning kernel with proxmox-boot-tool

[jonathan.young]

I am trying set boot image with: proxmox-boot-tool kernel pin 6.5.13-5-pve This reports back:

Set kernel '6.5.13-5-pve' in /etc/kernel/proxmox-boot-pin.
Refresh the actual boot ESPs now? [yN] y
Running hook script 'proxmox-auto-removal'..
Running hook script 'zz-proxmox-boot'..
Re-executing '/etc/kernel/postinst.d/zz-proxmox-boot' in new private mount namespace..

However, when I reboot, Proxmox always wants to use kernel 6.8.4-3-pve.

proxmox-boot-tool statusreports:

Re-executing '/usr/sbin/proxmox-boot-tool' in new private mount namespace..
System currently booted with uefi

proxmox-boot-tool kernel listreports:

Manually selected kernels:
None.

Automatically selected kernels:
6.5.13-5-pve
6.8.4-3-pve

Pinned kernel:
6.5.13-5-pve

I have tried:
proxmox-boot-tool refresh
proxmox-boot-tool clean
proxmox-boot-tool reinit
and even proxmox-boot-tool init /dev/nvme0n1p2

all to no avail. Can anyone help me to get the right kernel booting. I can select the right kernel manually, but this machine is normally headless so it would b egreta if I can get this working.

Thanks

 

[demiurgo]

I think proxmox-boot-tool status should print your entries in the ESP partition if you boot via UEFI
The same entries that appear in the /etc/kernel/proxmox-boot-uuids file

¿Do you have folders for your boot options in the ESP?

 

[jonathan.young]

proxmox-boot-tool status just gives:

Re-executing '/usr/sbin/proxmox-boot-tool' in new private mount namespace..
System currently booted with uefi

My /etc/kernel/proxmox-boot-uuids file is present but empty. I think this is ok as I have another machine where proxmox-boot-tool does work as expected and the same file is empty on that machine.

My ESP partition (mounted at /boot/efi) looks like this:

ls -lr /boot/efi/*/*
/boot/efi/EFI/proxmox:
total 164
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 167936 Dec 10 14:11 grubx64.efi

/boot/efi/EFI/BOOT:
total 164
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 167936 Oct 25  2023 BOOTx64.EFI

 

[demiurgo]

According to Documentation, /etc/kernel/proxmox-boot-uuids must contain the uuids of the ESP partitions used. If not, your system will not be properly configured for using proxmox-boot-tool
proxmox-boot-tool init should add the ESP uuid to that file. If so, then do refresh

I do not use UEFI, but the tool modifies grub.cfg to achieve the same result.

 

[tsprox]

You can use apt info proxmox-default-kernel command to see the default booting kernel, it should look something like this:

Package: proxmox-default-kernel
Version: 1.0.1
Priority: optional
Section: admin
Source: proxmox-kernel-meta
Maintainer: Proxmox Support Team <support@proxmox.com>
Installed-Size: 8,192 B
Depends: proxmox-kernel-6.5
Download-Size: 1,796 B
APT-Manual-Installed: no
APT-Sources: http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pve bookworm/pve-no-subscription amd64 Packages
Description: Default Proxmox Kernel Image
 This is a metapackage which will install the kernel image for the default
 Proxmox kernel series.

If not, you can edit/create /etc/apt/preferences.d/proxmox-default-kernel with the following content to pin corresponding kernel version (1.0.1) :

Package: proxmox-default-kernel
Pin: version 1.0.1
Pin-Priority: 1001

 

[jonathan.young]

Hi, thanks for all your help tsprox. It's working now but I am not sure why. I have a 'standard' install with no zfs:

/dev/nvme0n1p1      34       2047       2014  1007K BIOS boot
/dev/nvme0n1p2    2048    2099199    2097152     1G EFI System
/dev/nvme0n1p3 2099200 1953525134 1951425935 930.5G Linux LVM

apt info proxmox-default-kernel gives:

Package: proxmox-default-kernel
Version: 1.1.0
Priority: optional
Section: admin
Source: proxmox-kernel-meta
Maintainer: Proxmox Support Team <support@proxmox.com>
Installed-Size: 10.2 kB
Depends: proxmox-kernel-6.8
Download-Size: 2,196 B
APT-Manual-Installed: no
APT-Sources: http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pve bookworm/pve-no-subscription amd64 Packages
Description: Default Proxmox Kernel Image
 This is a metapackage which will install the kernel image for the default
 Proxmox kernel series.

N: There are 2 additional records. Please use the '-a' switch to see them.

I have kernel 6.5.13-5-pve pinned and proxmox boots that even given the above (which is what I need).

I had to umount /boot/efi and then I did
proxmox-boot-tool init /dev/nvme0n1p2 and then a proxmox-boot-tool init /dev/nvme0n1p2 grub as I boot from grub.

ls -l /boot/efi/
total 129240
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root     4096 Oct 25  2023 EFI
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root     4096 May  8 16:54 grub
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 51866875 Apr 10 10:49 initrd.img-6.5.13-5-pve
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 52753662 May  7 12:12 initrd.img-6.8.4-3-pve
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 13560936 Apr  5 12:03 vmlinuz-6.5.13-5-pve
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 14146664 May  2 12:55 vmlinuz-6.8.4-3-pve

which doesn't look right to me as my other machine has initrd and vmlinuz in /boot/ directory. Should I remove these from /boot/efi?