Proxmox VE 6 to 7 upgrade trouble...

[LupoSol]

Hello friends,

I am new to Proxmox, of which I heard very good reports.

I have a dedicated server at Soyoustart/OVH, which has a ready made template with Debian 10 and Proxmox VE 6.

When I run the upgrade from VE 6 to VE 7 as explained here

https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Upgrade_from_6.x_to_7.0

upon reboot my server refuses to boot...

I have no idea if before rebooting perhaps I am supposed to modify any grub entry... but it appears that the upgrade changes something for which my server cannot boot anymore.

Should I be stuck with using VE 6 (not really ideal), would not running apt-get dist-upgrade manually protect me from the system updating automatically?

I would appreciate it loads if you could please answer the question above and help me to troubleshoot this issue.

Many thanks!

 

[harmonyp]

I had this problem with an OVH server. Luckily it has IPMI access so I changed the boot order to skip the issue I had https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/grub_is_lockdown-after-upgrade-to-7.96819/

Someone else told me they done the following via rescue mode "I booted in rescue @ ovh, reinstalled grub to the main disk, fiddled with efimgr… and it finally worked…"

Let us know what you do if you fix this, seems to be a common issue with OVH/SYS/Kimsufi

 

[LupoSol]

I had this problem with an OVH server. Luckily it has IPMI access so I changed the boot order to skip the issue I had https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/grub_is_lockdown-after-upgrade-to-7.96819/

Someone else told me they done the following via rescue mode "I booted in rescue @ ovh, reinstalled grub to the main disk, fiddled with efimgr… and it finally worked…"

Let us know what you do if you fix this, seems to be a common issue with OVH/SYS/Kimsufi

Thanks so much for your reply @harmonyp !!! I will definitely look into it.

I'm pleased that there is a solution. I'm not too familiar with fiddling with rescue at OVH (last time I tried it was refusing to mount any of the partitions as they are "Linux RAID" and not Linux Filesystem).

I'll speak to my system analyst to ensure that we can tackle this and fix it, and, as you request, I will update this same thread.

 

[LupoSol]

@harmonyp I'm finding it a bit confusing to tackle this. As you said, I would like to share with the forum users what is done eventually to fix my issue.

Would you mind, please, sharing the exact steps you took to fix it in your case via IPMI?

Many thanks!

 

[harmonyp]

@harmonyp I'm finding it a bit confusing to tackle this. As you said, I would like to share with the forum users what is done eventually to fix my issue.

Would you mind, please, sharing the exact steps you took to fix it in your case via IPMI?

Many thanks!

I just set up another node and it worked fine now. The only thing I did different was installed console-setup (apt install console-setup) and afterwards ran

update-grub
update-initramfs -u -k all

Maybe you can try do that in chroot

Can't remember exactly what I done in but I went into BIOS and changed whatever was the 2nd boot order to first. I think it was to skip network something.

 

[pschonmann]

And whats proper upgrade path ? Of course https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Upgrade_from_6.x_to_7.0 but is needed some actions for machines with installed with proxmox 6.4 or lower ?
I got some grub errors for some machines that has no zfs, just ext4. Fixed with debian netinst and grub-install /dev/sdX

 

[Dunuin]

I'm not using OVH but while upgrading PVE6.4 to 7.0 and debian 10 to 11 the apt dist-upgrade updated grub-pc and wanted to write the new bootloader to my boot disks. But the new grub version wasn't able to recognize my old grub partition. I needed to remove the "boot" flag and add the "bios_grub" flag to my old 1 MB grub partition (sda1) using...

parted /dev/sda
set 1 boot off
set 1 bios_grub on
q
update-grub

...or otherwise update-grub failed with this error:

grub-install.real: warning: this GPT partition label contains no BIOS Boot Partition; embedding won't be possible.
grub-install.real: error: embedding is not possible, but this is required for RAID and LVM install.

 

[emunt6]

I'm not using OVH but while upgrading PVE6.4 to 7.0 and debian 10 to 11 the apt dist-upgrade updated grub-pc and wanted to write the new bootloader to my boot disks. But the new grub version wasn't able to recognize my old grub partition. I needed to remove the "boot" flag and add the "bios_grub" flag to my old 1 MB grub partition (sda1) using...

parted /dev/sda
set 1 boot off
set 1 bios_grub on
q
update-grub

...or otherwise update-grub failed with this error:

grub-install.real: warning: this GPT partition label contains no BIOS Boot Partition; embedding won't be possible.
grub-install.real: error: embedding is not possible, but this is required for RAID and LVM install.

Hi!

I did upgrade an old system, I tried this fix but the boot is not working:
The GRUB> command line comes up, but cannot enter anything, if hit enter, then throws error:

No Bootable Devices Found

As it seems grub2 not installed properly/missing something. The disk is GPT format and "Legacy Boot".
Did you solved this problem?
I'm thinking about switching to Syslinux boot.

 

[emunt6]

Update:
- Managed to fix the problem: GRUB2 is replaced with "Syslinux"
Setup is BIOS-boot with GPT disks ( using CSM/Legacy boot, no EFI/UEFI )

Here is a little howto:

$> apt-get install syslinux syslinux-utils extlinux

Format the Boot partition (example /dev/sda , prefer ext2 filesystem), mount under the /boot directory.
( raid1 (/dev/md0) consist of /dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb1 )
( /dev/md0 is mounted to /boot )

$> extlinux --install /boot
$> cd /usr/lib/syslinux/modules/bios/
$> cp -a * /boot/

# Here is the magic, GPT formatted disk, adding MBR boot #
$> cd /usr/lib/syslinux/mbr/
$> dd if=gptmbr.bin of=/dev/sda bs=440 count=1
$> dd if=gptmbr.bin of=/dev/sdb bs=440 count=1

# Adding , legacy boot mode flag to the disks #
$> sgdisk /dev/sda --attributes=1:set:2
$> sgdisk /dev/sdb --attributes=1:set:2

# Check if the options is applied correctly
$> sgdisk /dev/sda --attributes=1:show
$> sgdisk /dev/sdb --attributes=1:show

# Create the following file, with the contents #

/boot/syslinux.cfg
---------------------------------------------------------------
DEFAULT vesamenu.c32
PROMPT 1
NOESCAPE 1
ALLOWOPTIONS 1
TIMEOUT 10

LABEL PROXMOX-VE
KERNEL /vmlinuz-xxx
INITRD /initrd-xxx
APPEND root=/dev/mapper/pve-root ro nomodeset vga=normal quiet ro md=0,/dev/sda1,/dev/sdb1 md=1,/dev/sda2,/dev/sdb2
---------------------------------------------------------------

The "/vmlinuz-xxx" and "/initrd-xxx" need to replace what kernel are you using,
just install some kernel you want, edit the "/boot/syslinux.cfg" accordingly.

$> apt-get install pve-kernel-xxx
$> update-initramfs -c -d -u

DONE

GRUB2 is gone :D