Trouble booting the proxmox-ve_8.2-1.iso headless serial console via USB

[N0b0dy1985]

Hi,

I'm trying to do a headless installation over serial console via USB of Proxmox VE onto a Deciso DEC-850 embedded server. I've created the USB installation media twice, once with Rufus and again with Etcher, and either way when I boot to the USB, I get:

Welcome to GRUB!
error: no such device: /.disk/info.
error: no such device: /.disk/mini-info.

Output just hangs, and the Grub menu never appears, so I'm unable to continue with the installation. Any ideas? I'm stuck.

1. I've verified the iso hash
2. The BIOS is UEFI, latest version
3. The device is not configured for secure boot

Any help greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

 

[ffiala268]

Hi,

The fact that it boots to GRUB suggests that the USB stick is working. This happened to me few times and I found out that the problem in fact is the USB stick which in fact is OK. The installer sometimes doesn't like some USB flash drives... Did you try different drive? Some other brand or smaller size (ideally 8GB or simmilar...)? For example my quality 64GB USB3 SanDisk Flash didn't work but cheap 8GB USB2 Adata flash worked like a charm...
Also, do you have AHCI set or RAID? I think it doesn't work with RAID enabled but I might be wrong.

Cheers!

 

[N0b0dy1985]

I was using a 16GB Sandisk Cruzer. I'll see if I can find something smaller/different. AHCI, no RAID. My intention is to verify Proxmox will install via serial (no VGA on this box) onto ZFS, then install OPNsense as a guest VM. I'll check it out tonight. Thanks for the reply.

 

[N0b0dy1985]

So I tried four other USB drives of all different makes and sizes... same behavior. The first stick I had used to install Proxmox on two different mini pc/servers, both with VGA/mouse/KB and never saw this issue. Could my problem be caused by the fact that this server is headless with no VGA/mouse/KB? I'm connecting via serial to a terminal on my laptop. I was really excited when I saw the installer had serial support.

Grub is complaining that it's expecting two files that it's not finding. I mounted the proxmox iso in Windows, and I was looking through the GRUB.CFG file, and I don't see those files being called anywhere... so are they hard-coded in somewhere? Could I clip copies of those files from somewhere else, and incorporate them into the iso somehow?

 

[janlishak]

Hi,
We had this exact problem yesterday. The issue was that the server had two "on board" graphic cards. The monitor was connected to the cpu integrated graphic card (HDMI). It displayed the "welcome to Grub" message and then got stuck there. At that exact point as you described. We found out the reason was, it switch to the other IPMI graphics card (VGA). If you have multiple graphic cards. Try to check the other one for output, or disable one of them in BIOS.

 

[N0b0dy1985]

Hi,
We had this exact problem yesterday. The issue was that the server had two "on board" graphic cards. The monitor was connected to the cpu integrated graphic card (HDMI). It displayed the "welcome to Grub" message and then got stuck there. At that exact point as you described. We found out the reason was, it switch to the other IPMI graphics card (VGA). If you have multiple graphic cards. Try to check the other one for output, or disable one of them in BIOS.

I have zero graphics cards... trying to do a headless installation via serial console over USB.

 

[bushev]

I have the same issue, did you find a solution?

 

[vonkobalus]

For me it turned out that the issue was onboard + PCIe GPU ... while server boots via onboard GPU, the installer starts on PCIe GPU (this is not Proxmox specific issue, happens with several Linux graphic installs...)