rhel initrd getting corrupted during import

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user11655

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Oct 29, 2025
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As I import a ESXi VM (rhel 9.5 based, 300gb single disk), from a vmfs datastore, it imports the vm, but as I boot the vm it fails to boot. I can boot from the rescue kernel and get in and rebuild the initramfs using dracut --regenerate-all -f and then reboot and all is good.
This started after a 3 rebuild on the proxmox cluster due to messup on the storage volumes and other initial un-forseen changes. the esxi vmfs DS did not change at all. The import works perfectly with no error messages (fyi, it is taking about 1 hour 20 minutes over fiber attached san, 1gb network to the san attached lvm storage on the same array). I cannot understand why this is happening. I tried different target selection in multipath.conf, to no avail. and since this is all imported over the network, you would think ALL vms would get corrupted. NO SO. the windows VMS import with no issue. Ideas?
 
The original VM was using a VMware SCSI controller, while after the import Proxmox uses a different virtual SCSI controller.

The disk itself is fine, the fact that rebuilding the initramfs with: dracut --regenerate-all -f immediately fixes the problem confirms that.

The RHEL initramfs still contains the VMware storage drivers/configuration. Rebuilding it allows RHEL to detect and use the new Proxmox storage controller, after which the VM boots normally.
 
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As @xybo mentioned, the initrd isn't getting corrupted during the import. RHEL creates the iniitramfs during installation. When you install RHEL on an ESXI host RHEL detects that it doesnt need to put the various virtio-drivers into the initramfs. So when you import the VM to Proxmox and set the SCSI controller to VirtIO SCSI single your vm doesnt boot because the virtio drivers aren't loaded.

You can check with lsinitrd | grep -i virtio if the virtio drivers are loaded or not.

On Debian based systems on the other hand you dont need to worry about that.

Here is a link to the appropriate wiki article: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Paravirtualized_Drivers_for_Linux

And regarding your Windows VM. You probably just use the default option for the disks as SATA during the ESXI Importer which isnt optimal. You should install the virtio-drivers https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Paravirtualized_Block_Drivers_for_Windows
 
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