Proxmox VE: Stuck in loading Initial Ramdisk

[morphexe]

I have 8 fresh PVE installs in the last 5 days trying different combinations.
I started by installing with Ventoy, setup up the whole environment, reboot. and voila stuck loading ram disk, rebooted 9 times forcefully, it booted up. Rebooted and back at it again.
Tried to fresh install 3 more times the same scenario happens - with or without configuration.

Then looked around and saw that ventoy was a "Known" problem (even though there were no weird lines in my grub).

Formatted a new pen drive with Balena with proxmox iso from website - booted up fine.
Setup the whole LXC and vms.
Rebooted.
Back at the same thing.

Right now there is 90/10 chance that the machine boots up after a reboot/shutdown.

Things I have tried:
- Installed with Ventoy
- Installed without Ventoy
- added nomodeset
-removed quiet
-removed quiet and added nomodeset

All of them get stuck in the same part without any extra info on screen.

What can I do, what am I missing? - this seems to start happening with the latest version.

Hardware:
3950x
1080GTX
1050GTX
1 SDD
1 NVME drive
5 HDDs
64GB of ram.

I can boot to any live cd that I tried, and even windows without a issue. So this is 100% a proxmox issue.

 

[alex-fl]

I have the same issue, but my Proxmox installation is an older one. I believe an electrical blackout caused the problem, and now Proxmox won’t restart.

Here’s what worked for me:

1. Start Proxmox and go to the Grub Menu.
2. Select Advanced Options for Proxmox.
3. Choose Proxmox VE ... (Recovery Mode).

When you start Proxmox in recovery mode, it provides more detailed information about the issue.

---

This is the "error" output I’m seeing on my system:

configfs.service Load Kernel Module configfs. 3.486347l sustemd[1l: modprobe@dm mod. service: Deactivated successfull Load Kernel Module configfs. .486710] systemd[ Finished modprobe@dm mod.service 
OK 1 Finished modprobe@dm mod.service Load Kernel Module dm_mod. 3.487427] sustemd! Load Kernel Module dm mod. modprobe@efi pstore.service: Deactivated successfully. .487813] sustemd[: Finished modprobe@efi pstore.service Finished modprobe@efi pstore.service - Load Kernel Module efi_pstore. Load Kernel Module efi_pstore. 
OK .488555] systemd[1l: modprobe@fuse.service: Deactivated successfully. .488751] VP] User Level meta-driver version: 
0.3 .4888921 sustemd[1l: Finished modprobe@fuse.service Finished modprobe@fuse.service Load Kernel Module fuse. Load Kernel Module fuse. 489753] systemd! modprobe@loop.service: Deactivated successfully.
sustemd[1l: Finished modprobe@loop.service - Load Kernel Module loop. OK 1 Finished modprobe@loop.service Load Kernel Module loop. 
sustemd[11: Mounting sys- -fuse-connections.mount FUSE Control File System. Mounting sys-fs-fuse-connections.mount 
sustemd[11: Mounting sys-kernel-contg mo 47cze4b417a3 r/w. Quota mode: none FUSE Control File System Kernel Configuration File System. 
3.4933291 EXT4-fs (dm-1): mounted 788f69a9- Mounting sys-k -kernel-conf Kernel Configuration File System. 
 systemd[ systemd-repart.service nount Repartition Root Disk was skipped because no gger condition checks were met 
 systemd[1l: Finished systemd-remount-fs.service Hisens Remount Root and Kernel File Syster

 

[morphexe]

Yeah, I tried recovery, it just did the same in my. Cant seem to figure out what happens yet... I managed to boot after trying a few more times, and for now it is on.. but I didn change a thing.

 

[guruevi]

1) what drive did you install it on, is it set to boot first in your UEFI
2) do you have CSM enabled or another previous install on any other drive, if so, did you wipe the disks
3) is your hardware (disk) working properly?
4) have you used another USB drive or whatever you are installing from?

The error above is highly suspect, the text and format is not legitimate. Are you using a tool to write your flash disk? If so, it may be backdoored and basically a pre-boot malware is trying to start your Linux environment. I would suggest only using the ISO from the Proxmox website and using something like dd to write it to a USB drive. However, if you have infected your machine with pre-boot malware, you must wipe all the disks from another computer, reset the EFI to factory, re-flash the EFI and reset it to factory again before re-using the disks - in commercial/secure environments you may as well send back the hardware (your manufacturer can use SecureBoot verification).

 

[morphexe]

I installedi on SSD drive (non NVME), according to SMART is in pretty good state.
I do not have CSM enabled, can try enabling it.
1 of my HDDs are having smart issue - they are pretty old - , but not being used right now (although connected, can this be a issue?). the rest are Perfect shape according to SMART - and those are running in ZFS pools.

4, no, but I have used the same USB to install both Arch, windows, ubuntu and few other distros meanwhile (both with ventoy and without) and all of them work great.

About the error, that is from a different used, I don`t get any output at all apart from the Loading Ram disk.
The ISO is from Proxmos website, I have both used Ventoy to install, and used Balena Etcher to write the ISO.

 

[guruevi]

No, CSM should not be enabled.
"pretty good state" what does that mean exactly. The error specifically points at the fact the bootloader was written to 'a' disk, but it cannot find the rest of the boot system on the same disk, or whatever disk it is pointing at. That could have various causes. Typically it's a failed install or in the case of multiple disks, one thing is on one disk, other parts are on other disks. Or it is finding a remnant of another install on some disk and booting that instead of what you are expecting to boot. Something to that nature. My suggestion would be to wipe all disks properly (including boot sectors/labels) then install using only the boot disk you are expecting installed, then install the remaining disks afterwards once it is working properly.

However, what I am saying about the error message you are getting is that it is not legitimate. It has spelling errors, like sustemd and Kernel File Syster - basically something is either severely corrupting your output (bad hardware) but then you would not be consistent given how bad this is. Or my suspicion is that it is a fake bootloader, at first glance looks legitimate, but like SPAM email, full of mistakes, poor translation etc.