Proxmox 4 Won't Boot Automatically

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NerdUno

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Sep 13, 2009
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Proxmox 4 running on Intel NUC D54250WYK1 with Crucial CT250MX200SSD3 drive. When you try to boot, it says “no boot device found.” However, you can manually choose the drive with F10, and it boots fine. Any ideas?
 
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Not an expert of boot problem, but I would do:
a) in the bios, is the HD present in the boot order?
b) is UEFI boot disabled and enable CSM, Compatibily Support Module
c) has the Proxmox disk the "bootable" flag? Check with systemrescuecd, startx then gparted (if is not set, flag it with that tool AFAIR)
best regards
 
Using a lmgtfy link is usually associated with trying to look "smart". Doing that in an environment where you request help is idi^H^H^H rude.
- The first link in your search shows a Dell PERC that hadn't its volume set as bootable. I assume that you don't have a PERC controller in NUC. I also assume that you have an UEFI boot environment, unlinke that old Dell server.
- The second is an old BIOS issue. Do you have an old BIOS issue?
- 3rd is an old BIOS, again.

.... and so on...

So at least you should read your own suggested searches.
 
Using a lmgtfy link is usually associated with trying to look "smart". Doing that in an environment where you request help is idi^H^H^H rude.
- The first link in your search shows a Dell PERC that hadn't its volume set as bootable. I assume that you don't have a PERC controller in NUC. I also assume that you have an UEFI boot environment, unlinke that old Dell server.
- The second is an old BIOS issue. Do you have an old BIOS issue?
- 3rd is an old BIOS, again.

.... and so on...

So at least you should read your own suggested searches.

Thanks for your advice. I think you're reading an awful lot into a Google search link. We've been fans and supporters of Proxmox since the very early days. When things come unglued, we typically start with a Google search. When "Proxmox won't boot" yields over 20,000 search results, that's problematic. This is a third generation Intel motherboard with a Core i5 and state of the art everything. As you have observed, that leads to all sorts of operator errors. That doesn't happen to be true in this case. As I noted, three other operating systems install and boot just fine on the identical hardware with the identical setup, the latest BIOS, and UEFI disabled. Those include CentOS 6.7, Ubuntu 14.4, and Windows 8. I've also tried two older BIOS images just to rule out a BIOS problem. Same results. That tells me this is at least partially a Proxmox problem. And it is.

The reason Proxmox can be booted manually but not automatically at power on is probably because Intel applies an algorithm to determine whether a particular device qualifies as a boot device for automatic startup. In the Proxmox case, at least using a 250GB mSATA SSD drive, the boot partition isn't identified by Linux as one of its known types. This could be because of the way it's sized or something else during creation. All of that is handled under the covers by the Proxmox installer so I don't really know what was done. If one tries to manually boot the device, it works. I suspect that's because Intel doesn't perform the boot device check and just attempts to launch the device which happens to work. This unknown partition type causes other problems as well. For example, Clonezilla will go through the motions of backing up the Proxmox drive. But, when it's restored, Clonezilla can't recognize the partition type either so it can't restore the boot partition. That means the restored backup can't be used at all, automatically or manually.
 
I didn't deny that you have a real issue. I consider lmgtfy links rude. They are used for putting someone to shame, so not clever choosing it here.
Even more, a search like "proxmox won't boot" is in the same league as "we will die" (778k results here). Useless, until you ask yourself "who is we?" and "when?". I took top links in the search just to prove you that they have nothing to do with your issue, so you cannot extend it to "proxmox won't boot". It is not a general problem, but some user-specific issues.
You say that X and Y cannot recognize partition type, but you don't present a fdisk output, so we are in the same spot as "we will die".

Ranting about a non-existent problem (a generic Proxmox boot issue), providing rude links and no useful information about your specific setup is the right way to ask for help, for sure. You should get a subscription. At least, people will not feel bad helping you. They will do it for the money.
 
When we troubleshoot issues for folks, we basically want enough information to reproduce the problem so that we can draw our own conclusions and decide whether there is a problem and whether it should be addressed. That information was provided in my first two posts. CentOS, Ubuntu, and Windows install and boot fine with this mSATA drive and industry-standard Intel hardware. Proxmox 4 fails. So does 3.4 by the way which suggests that this is probably legacy code that was moved to 4.0. That's about as non-generic as a bug report could be. If the Proxmox development team chooses not to address the issue, that's their call to make.

Your idea of what's rude and what's not really doesn't matter to me, and it has nothing to do with this thread. So kindly keep your personal attacks to yourself. I've tried to document how we troubleshoot problems. You obviously believe you have a better way, but I don't see a single bit of technical analysis in either of your posts so troll elsewhere.
 
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Sigh...

So you consider easier to reproduce the issue (expect somebody with a NUC and maybe your drive type, or better, somebody from Proxmox or their community should buy a NUC to reproduce YOUR issue) than to paste a simple fdisk output that may or may not help, but is more valuable than "I have a NUC with SSD".

For example, NUC may want a non-GPT partitioned drive when booting in legacy (BIOS) mode. So an fdisk output could've shown that you drive is GPT partitioned. You can use this link for more information: http://bfy.tw/2Jns

BTW, my idea on LMGTFY being rude is shared by others, too. You can Google it or I can help you with some links. Also, the whole point of LMGTFY is to point somebody that asks a trivial or general question to use Google for the answer instead of wasting somebody else's time. Here you are the one asking the question, so LMGTFY does not apply. If you can't understand this simple logic, that' it.
 
Sorry that my link did not meet your standards of political correctness. Wasn't aware that LMGTFY should only be used to insult people. But since you're apparently the resident expert on insults, I'll take your word for it.

As for the real issue, here's the solution:

1) Press F2 on boot. In VisualBIOS - check that "Internal UEFI Shell" is checked/enabled and that "UEFI: Built-in EFI Shell" is an option in the list of UEFI bootable devices. Turn OFF legacy boot option. F10 to SAVE your settings.
2) Boot the NUC and allow it to drop into the EFI shell prompt.
...assuming fs0: is the FAT32 EFI partition that Proxmox made...
3) type => fs0:
4) type => echo "fs0:\EFI\proxmox\grubx64.efi" > fs0:\startup.nsh
5) type => startup.nsh and you should boot into Proxmox

When you reboot the server, it will boot up automatically after a 5 second delay at the UEFI shell.
 
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For those that are interested, here's the partition layout when the Proxmox installer finishes:
root@proxmox4:~# parted /dev/sda print
Model: ATA Crucial_CT250MX2 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 250GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:


Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 17.4kB 1049kB 1031kB bios_grub
2 1049kB 134MB 133MB fat32 boot, esp
3 134MB 250GB 250GB lvm

This causes all sorts of problems for backup software such as Clonezilla because it doesn't expect to find a bios_grub partition on a GPT-partitioned server. So... it skips /dev/sda1 during backup, and I'm assuming the restore will fail. Details here.
 
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So... to document the BUG...

Proxmox 4.0 and 3.x incorrectly determine that servers are UEFI devices even when UEFI is turned off and legacy mode (only) is enabled in the BIOS. Whether this is due to incorrect information being passed from Intel's BIOS or whether it is a misinterpretation of the BIOS information by Proxmox is open to question. However, we suspect this is purely a Proxmox bug since other operating systems (CentOS 6.7 and Ubuntu 14.04) correctly read the BIOS information, honor the legacy mode setting, and set the drive's partition table correctly rather than to GPT as Proxmox does.
 
Proxmox 4.0 and 3.x incorrectly determine that servers are UEFI devices even when UEFI is turned off and legacy mode (only) is enabled in the BIOS.

We alway install both boot loader, so that you can easily switch between both modes. This is by intention, and not a bug.
 
The problem with the design (as documented above) is that you end up with servers that won't boot automatically and a cryptic message that "no boot device was found." Since we're talking about Intel motherboards with Intel BIOS, this isn't a rare occurrence and will become more prevalent as more and more new hardware gets deployed. Normally, if an administrator is smart enough to disable UEFI and enable Legacy Boot Mode in the BIOS of a computer BEFORE installing Proxmox, it would be fair to assume that the change was intentional and treat it as such, i.e. don't configure the drive with a GPT partition table.
 
The problem with the design (as documented above) is that you end up with servers that won't boot automatically and a cryptic message that "no boot device was found."

If so, I would consider this is a BIOS bug - did you already report that to Intel?
 
Same problem with a Intel DQ67SW Motherboard - latest BIOS
Proxmox 3.x worked fine
Re-installation of Promox 4 same problem - automatic boot fails, only booting via BIOS boot menu is possible.
Tried everything - enable or disable UEFI support - automatic boot fails

This is a test machine - other OS have no problem to boot.
 
If so, I would consider this is a BIOS bug - did you already report that to Intel?

That was my first thought as well. But the problem is that this only happens with the Proxmox installer. CentOS 6.7 and Ubuntu 14.04 install fine, and system boots properly. To repeat, the Proxmox installer is NOT honoring the BIOS settings for UEFI and Legacy boot. If UEFI is set OFF and Legacy Boot is set ON, Proxmox should not be creating a GPT partition table that only UEFI knows how to deal with. Since the server is not properly configured to boot from UEFI, the boot fails. That's not an Intel bug IMHO.

The patch I posted fixes the problem, but administrators shouldn't have to do that to get a bootable server. Even Clonezilla can't make a backup until this patch is applied because of the non-standard partition setup, i.e. a GPT partition and BIOS/Grub partition on the same Linux machine.

3.4 and 4.0 both fail on the Intel NUC with Core i5 and latest Intel BIOS.
 
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That was my first thought as well. But the problem is that this only happens with the Proxmox installer.

Again, I do not consider this a Proxmox bug. We want to be able to boot with both modes, and so far all known BIOS can deal with that.
If you find a BIOS which cannot do that, please report a bug to the BIOS vendor and POST a link here, so that we can follow the discussion.
 
Installation history: Installation of promox 3.x last year using this proxmox instance as server for different OS/databases. No problems with booting

Clean installion of proxmox 3.4 and 4 today - same problem:
UEFI boot enabled: No proper boot device
UEFI boot disabled: blinking cursor - systems hangs
Only a explicit boot via boot device selection works.

Ubuntu server 15.04 and Windows 7 not problem to boot

I necessary we can provide SSH access to this test maschine.

with best regards
Peter
 
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