Proxmox VE won't boot on DELL R640 with ZFS

[wirewound]

Hi,

i try to install PVE 8.3 on an DELL R640. Bootdevice is a single disk Intel S4500 SATA SSD.
The bootdevice can be on any Slot on the front backplane, same result. HBA330 is used as the controller.
After POST grub is loaded with the 3s count down.
Afterward the following error message appears:
Error loading \EFI\proxmox\6.8.4-2-pve\vmlinuz-6.8.4-2-pve: Not Found



The SSD is locked until the next cold restart. A simple warmstart didn't reset the drive and it is not longer detected on the HBA.

Tested so far:
- diffrent SSDs
- other backplane slot
- factory reset of the server
- server firmware is up to date
- changed the HBA330 card
- installing PVE 8.2
- installing from USB and idrac
result is everytime the same.


If i install PVE on ext4 without changing anything else it works out of the box.

Has anyone experienced similar issues?

Best regards.

 

[waltar]

Did you try both modes in system setup "UEFI" and "Bios legacy" ?

 

[alexskysilk]

install pve 8.1 instead.

does the problem go away? if yes, when you dist-upgrade, make sure you also install kernel version 6.5 and pin it. If not, I got nuffn.

 

[wirewound]

Did you try both modes in system setup "UEFI" and "Bios legacy" ?

Hi,
unfortunately, the system does not boot reliably even with Legacy Bios.

However, I tried a few things today.
After I used an old 300gb SAS HDD for the installation out of desperation, everything worked as I would expect.

I have only used Intel DC S4500 SSDs as boot devices the whole time. After an oddysee of firmware update attempts, I found a solution. Intel's “Bootable Firmware Update Tool” did not recognize the hard drives. I later found the “Bootable Firmware Update Tool” from Solidigm, which worked without any problems. After the firmware update PVE booted directly...

Firmware old: SCV10111 / SCV10100
Firmware new: SCV10150
https://www.solidigm.com/support-page/product-doc-cert/ka-00099.html

Best regards.

 

[waltar]

Unbelieveable but why not if it's worked with the other fw tool. Thanks for sharing.