Stuck On Loading Initial Ramdisk

[ccigas]

Hello everyone, I am trying out Proxmox for the first time. I recently installed the latest version off of the site for PVE and I cant get past "Loading initial ramdisk..." It kind of looks like it went through the process of loading the ramdisk but got stuck on whatever comes next, I attached a screen shot of it.

I am running this on a Dell R720, 512GB of RAM and a couple of I think 8 core CPUs. Ram, CPUs and disks are reporting as healthy in the drac. I installed through UEFI, should I give legacy a chance? Curious how where to go from here, appreciate any help. Thank you

 

[floh8]

https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/proxmox-ve-7-4-cannot-be-installed.125677/

 

[ccigas]

https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/proxmox-ve-7-4-cannot-be-installed.125677/

I did a memtest and passed. Took around 12 hours but I passed. By the time I noticed it was going through each test again.

 

[floh8]

https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/proxmox-ve-7-4-cannot-be-installed.125677/post-549781

 

[tratthatt]

So I felt I needed to write here as this was the first result on google for me... and if like me you are stuck on “Loading Initial Ramdisk” here is what I did:

I was trying to install Proxmox 8 on top of Debian 12 following the official guide:

https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Install_Proxmox_VE_on_Debian_12_Bookworm

I have 3 servers in my cluster so I update them one by one rotating the guests between the servers. The first install went perfect and no issues but the second got stuck on “Loading Initial Ramdisk” on the first reboot after running:

apt install pve-kernel-6.2

systemctl reboot

After pulling my hair for some days on why it worked on the first machine and not the second I finally had an epiphany, a short memory of me thinking “hmmm that was a bit reckless” during the first installation. “A bit reckless” as in I did NOT reboot after installing the kernel and just continued with the next apt and removing the old Debian kernels.

So if you have nothing to loose and so on... try just skipping the first reboot(or boot into Debian again through the advanced grub options) and continue installing the rest of Proxmox even removing the old Debian kernels (this will give you warnings when removing the kernel you are currently on).

Is this bad? / Will this give us grief down the road? I don’t know this is not medical advice.

The graybeards are more than welcome to feedback on this approach.

Oh and have some patience (I know you already do as you already tried just waiting for the message to go away) when booting, it will freeze on “Loading Initial Ramdisk” for like 30 sec.

 

[the Goat]

I had the same error with the boot hanging at the "Loading Initial Ramdisk" step. Based on the message from @tratthatt above, I booted back into debian and continued following the instructions. I did everything except removing the debian kernel. At that point I was able to boot into the proxmox kernel, remove the debian kernel, and continue with the install.

 

[defekt]

Hey, I might be a little bit late to the Party but I had the same Issue. For me disabling TPM did the trick.

 

[reynierpm]

I just recently installed PVE 8.1.4 in an NVME disk attached through a PCIe port, the first time I rebooted all was fine but now I am installing a new SSD disk and it did just get stuck on the boot screen with the following messages:

Loading Linux 6.5.11-8-pve ...
Loading initial ramdisk ...

and it sits there for hours. I had a TrueNAS Scale running there and have a lot of information on the disks which I would not like to lose.

@defekt ... what do you mean by disabling TPM?

For me disabling TPM did the trick.

I have also tried adding `nomodeset` to the parameters while booting with no success. I am stuck, can any one give me some other ideas?

 

[defekt]

@defekt ... what do you mean by disabling TPM?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Trusted_Platform_Module

 

[ravenactuall]

Hi
same here. I'm running 8.1.2. Any way we can debug or something?
I'm running on a lenovo laptop. every security thing is disabled.

 

[PHXX]

Same problem as first post, but I had installed with Ventoy 1.0.99. (Proxmox 8.2-1).

I came back to balenaEtcher with ISO on Sandisk USB.

Secure Boot (Standard) ON is supported by balenaEtcher, no need to juggle On/Off, leave it permanently On.
TPM On as well and everything works.

(Ventoy is great for everything except Proxmox (in my case)).

 

[ravenactuall]

i had that problem with ventoy. dont know why but proxmox tries to use ventoy's ram disk as it's own. here is the fix:
press "E" when you're choosing to boot proxmox and remove ramdisk option at the end of linux variale. then Ctl + X to boot with that option. Got to do this everytime
I'm not 100% sure but i guess using normal mode in ventoy ( not the grub2) fixes the issue as well.

 

[MrColt]

i had that problem with ventoy. dont know why but proxmox tries to use ventoy's ram disk as it's own. here is the fix:
press "E" when you're choosing to boot proxmox and remove ramdisk option at the end of linux variale. then Ctl + X to boot with that option. Got to do this everytime
I'm not 100% sure but i guess using normal mode in ventoy ( not the grub2) fixes the issue as well.

I registered just to thank you for your post. I loaded up a Ventoy drive with proxmox to install on my NAS and was scratching my head on what it was getting stuck on. But it referencing the Ventoy in the boot was not on my mind at all.
Thanks for the help!