Proxmox installation via PXE: solution

[morph027]

You can try to boot with debug mode enabled and then try to install grub manually from the rescue shell.

 

[powerox]

any particular idea when and how to do it?
just install grub and update-grub?

 

[morph027]

Jip...when it's not working, it should throw some errors...probably do a zpool import first and chroot into the pool

https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/wiki/Ubuntu-16.04-Root-on-ZFS#rescuing-using-a-live-cd

 

[powerox]

the pxe-boot into the debug mode doesn't offer me any way to operate the keyboard :-(
strange - but i think i am trapped with the debug mode

 

[powerox]

update - this seems to be related to the UEFI and Secure Boot settings ...
strangely enough, those do not have any effect if install the box from USB instead of doing it through PXE
i will play around with those options to get it sorted out more

 

[David Herselman]

We are successfully able to rebuild Proxmox 4.2 images which we can boot on physical systems (Intel Wildcat Pass) or a KVM virtual. Repeating the process on 4.4 yields a 'no cdrom found' error as it's not able to mount the ISO file.

We injected some additional commands in to the 'init' script, to assist with troubleshooting this and welcome any feedback or recommendations:

    cdrom=

    initrdisoimage="/proxmox.iso"

    if [ -f $initrdisoimage ]; then
        # this is useful for PXE boot
        echo "found proxmox cdrom image inside initrd image"
ls -l /dev/loop*
modprobe loop
lsmod | grep loop
mount -t iso9660 -o loop,ro $initrdisoimage /mnt
echo $?
        if mount -t iso9660 -o loop,ro $initrdisoimage /mnt >/dev/null 2>&1; then
            cdrom=$initrdisoimage
        fi
    else
        echo "searching for cdrom"

Output when we boot the virtual:

found proxmox cdrom image inside initrd image
brw-rw----    1 0        6           7,   0 May  9 10:01 /dev/loop0
brw-rw----    1 0        6           7,   1 May  9 10:01 /dev/loop1
brw-rw----    1 0        6           7,   2 May  9 10:01 /dev/loop2
brw-rw----    1 0        6           7,   3 May  9 10:01 /dev/loop3
brw-rw----    1 0        6           7,   4 May  9 10:01 /dev/loop4
brw-rw----    1 0        6           7,   5 May  9 10:01 /dev/loop5
brw-rw----    1 0        6           7,   6 May  9 10:01 /dev/loop6
brw-rw----    1 0        6           7,   7 May  9 10:01 /dev/loop7
modprobe: ERROR: ../libkmod/libkmod.x:557 kmod_search_moddep() could not open moddep file '/lib/modules/4.4.6-1-pve/modules.dep.bin'
mount: mounting /dev/loop0 on /mnt failed: No such device
255
no cdrom found

Our TFTP menu entry:

LABEL proxmox-4.4
        MENU LABEL Proxmox 4.4 Install
        KERNEL images/proxmox/4.4/linux26
        APPEND initrd=images/proxmox/4.4/initrd.img splash=verbose vga=791 video=vesafb:ywrap,mtrr ramdisk_size=16777216 rw

Navigating the extracted image shows 'lib/modules/4.4.35-1-pve' instead of 'lib/modules/4.4.6-1-pve'. I've validated that the MD5 checksum of our ISO matches that available on the Proxmox website.

 

[MACscr]

To me, its not worth the hassle. Simply install debian with pxe and then proxmox.

 

[LnxBil]

To me, its not worth the hassle. Simply install debian with pxe and then proxmox.

Yes. It is even possible to do this via preseed and post-install script of a ordinary jessie netboot. Just install the pve packages after jessie installation.

 

[fireon]

Tested, an does not work with PVE5.0. Not yet

 

[morph027]

Read about a lot of changes in the installer...i'm back from vacation right now, will have a look at it this week

 

[morph027]

Tried it and it works...

 

[fireon]

Strange... can you upload the files? Will test it here. Checksum?

a710458c9217608a9de4c6b7d92089ce proxmox-ve_5.0-af4267bf-4.iso
1d3bdb24335c04615b40dba457a5ed6e  initrd.iso.img
56b2e4f54dd0133c7e6d4d619b9f5f1e  linux26

 

[morph027]

228dd53e34c3d224e3505554696c3b9d  initrd.iso.img
56b2e4f54dd0133c7e6d4d619b9f5f1e  linux26

 

[fireon]

How can this be? Same Script, same ISO....

 

[fireon]

Ok, everytime i generate the files, there are other checksum's.

 

[morph027]

I've uploaded the files at https://github.com/morph027/pve-iso-2-pxe/issues/2

 

[fireon]

Yes your images was working fine. So i've done some tests:

1. Build the file's as always on the storage (Proxmox ZFS): does not work
2. Build the file's from my computer over the mounted storagefilesystem (ZFS on NFS): does not work
3. Copy the whole folder from ZFS to my computer (KDE-Neon 16.04 with EXT4) and execute the script there works all the time.

So this build works since PVE 4.3 no more on ZFS. Really strange, don't know why.

 

[morph027]

Weird, will have a look at it. Built it on my Laptop which runs on ZFS too.

Edit: Nope, built it on another machine, will try to confirm the ZFS thingy...

 

[morph027]

Ok, also works with files created on my ZFS notebook (using Docker for lazyness and cause im used to do everything with Docker *g*)

mkdir /tmp/docker /tmp/docker/iso
# put iso into iso folder
curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/morph027/pve-iso-2-pxe/master/pve-iso-2-pxe.sh -o /tmp/docker/pve-iso-2-pxe.sh
docker run --rm -it --privileged -v /tmp/docker:/build -w /build debian:stretch /bin/bash
apt-get update && apt-get -y install cpio
bash pve-iso-2-pxe.sh iso

Will test with files being created on PVE host directly....

 

[morph027]

Ok, also works with files created on a PVE host using ZFS ...

Did you run the script as root?