[SOLVED] Upgrade to 8.1, can't boot my WIN 2016 VM (PVSCSI) anymore

[Pcom]

Hello,

Two months ago we migrated our infrastructure from VMware esxi to proxmox 8.0.
I've asked more than once on the forum how to switch SCSI controller from PVSCSI to virtio ( Example ) but I never had a real solution.

Yesterday we updated all our host to Proxmox 8.1 and around 20 VM can't boot anymore (17 rockylinux + 3 windows 2016) stuck like this:



Some other VM works perfectly fine.
Trying to analyze the problem I noticed that the difference was the scsi controller, I can't boot where PVSCSI is configured and I can where Virtio is set (some VM already had Virtio because created directly on proxmox using virtio and not migrated from esxi OR migrated using a very long procedure with VMware converter).

On rockylinux solution was very fast, I changed SCSI controller to virtio and everything restart (I'm sure this was NOT working a couple of months ago, as you can see in the link above I wasn't able to boot switching this way, but OK if this works now), on windows 2016 it doesn't work and I'm stuck with 3 VM.
Tried everything:
- I changed SCSI controller to LSI, megaraid, virtio.. nothing.
- detached disk and recreated as IDE, SATA... can't boot, blue screen "inaccessible boot device"
- our machine verison is 8.0, tried to change machine version to newer (8.1) or older (7.1, 6.0) nothing
- tried to switch from OVMF bios to Seabios, doesn't work

I'm always stuck on this page or Blue screen, "inaccessible boot device"


Actual NOT working configuration



Please help.
Thanks

 

[Pcom]

Please help.
I don't know what else try to solve this problem.

Maybe is possible to revert proxmox updates (without destroy everything, especially VM data)? How?
Or anyone knows how to boot VM, even in IDE ?

Many thanks.

 

[Pavletto]

Hi. I had moved many linux and windows VMs from Hyper-V to Proxmox and what's how i did this. May be this will help you or somebody:
All VMs has a VirtIO SCSI Single controller.
Linux:
qm import disk and so on...
HDD type is SCSI
Then booting from distro ISO, Rescue System, 1, enter

chroot /mnt/sysimage (or how it will be written in you system)
dracut --regenerate-all -f && grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg (what's for non-uefi. For uefi will be slightly different path like /boot/efi/EFI/centos/grub.cfg)
//wait for task to be completed//
exit
reboot now

Windows:
qm import disk and so on...
HDD type is IDE
if windows booting into BSOD you will need to open local registry (you can find info in internet how to do it, i used windows repair mode mostly)
When you imported local registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services (this is in IMPORTED registry)
in iastorv and msahci set 0
when export registry and reboot.
Now you should be able too boot into windows.
p.s. Also you can add 2nd SCSI hdd and after you install virtio drivers you can shutdown your windows VM, detach this 2nd hdd and change you boot hdd from IDE to SCSI type.

 

[fiona]

Hi,
thanks for the report! Unfortunately, it seems there an issue sneaked in for building pve-edk2-firmware which made PVSCSI support unavailable for booting with OVMF. It needs to be explicitly enabled when building the package, because it is not maintained upstream. We're working to release a fixed version soon!

 

[Pcom]

Solved.

To help others:
- changed boot disk as IDE
- startup - > press F8 before blue screen -> safe mode
- vm should boot fine in safe mode
- remove this (not sure if this is the reason of the problem or not to be honest)

- reboot normally
- vm should boot fine in normal mode
- shutdown
- add a small secondary disk in virtio scsi
- boot -> disk is seen in computer management -> shutdown
- detach and remove the small virtio disk
- detach the main primary disk and reattach as virtio scsi

Now everything is OK and FINALLY we have all VM with virtio scsi, no more vmware components.

Thanks

 

[fiona]

Solved.

To help others:
- changed boot disk as IDE
- startup - > press F8 before blue screen -> safe mode
- vm should boot fine in safe mode
- remove this (not sure if this is the reason of the problem or not to be honest)
View attachment 58747
- reboot normally
- vm should boot fine in normal mode
- shutdown
- add a small secondary disk in virtio scsi
- boot -> disk is seen in computer management -> shutdown
- detach and remove the small virtio disk
- detach the main primary disk and reattach as virtio scsi

Now everything is OK and FINALLY we have all VM with virtio scsi, no more vmware components.

Thanks

Glad you were able to solve the issue and thank you for sharing how to switch the controller!

A package with the fix, i.e. pve-edk2-firmware=4.2023.08-2, is now available on the pvetest repository.