Grub Unable to Boot OS

also, just changing the size manually during the installer is a valid work around to this issue.

gparted was not creating a partition table and trying a manual size of 200 or 224 did not work and resulted in the same error

@Crazy_Human

This is starting to sound like a hardware issue. Especially is gparted could not create a partition table.

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That’s what I had begun to fear was the case. And I just tried installing proxmox onto a different drive that I swapped into the system and I am getting the same errors

Image of error message:

have you tried creating new installation media to verify it is good?

along with that, get a USB HD and do the installation using the USB HD as the target. if that works, i would assume a bad SATA controller, if that does NOT work, i would assume bad RAM or bad CPU.

if the SATA controller is bad, disable it in bios and add a cheap HBA like a PERC H310 or something.

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I have tried a new version of Proxmox and a USB HD would not be an option for this because of a bug with the motherboard/CPU that only allows for the use of 2 USB ports when booting off of a USB drive (Which might be possible to ‘fix’ if I was able to spoon feed it the USB drivers).

It smells like a bad storage device to me.

also tried an older installer which resulted in a slightly different error message when looking at the logs which was “File descriptor” [number] [path of something] “leaked on pvs invocation. Parent PID 1859: /usr/bin/per1” and then partition /dev/sda3 not found

even though I have tried 2 different drives?

you did also try different SATA cables too, correct?

Two drives had the same error? Ok, could be the SATA cables or the controller on your motherboard or HBA.

Try an experiment. If you have a USB to SATA adapter, try installing proxmox on the SSDs connected to USB. If that works, but not on the motherboard or HBA, then we know that may be toast.

@Biky
man would you read back a little please?

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specific part which you missed:

a USB HD would not be an option for this because of a bug with the motherboard/CPU that only allows for the use of 2 USB ports when booting off of a USB drive (Which might be possible to ‘fix’ if I was able to spoon feed it the USB drivers).

Yes and the 2 SATA cables I have tried were the same ones that I was using before the issues started

I have skimmed through the replies, if you haven’t noticed, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to like your replies if I didn’t at least passed by them. And it wouldn’t make any sense to upvote a reply I didn’t even bother to read.

I did see that OP can only use 2 USB ports, but given the old CPU (Fx6300), I don’t know if a ps/2 keyboard is being used or not.

@Crazy_Human I assume you don’t have a USB hub to connect the mouse, kb and install media and to connect the other SSD to the second USB.

One thing you could check, like Zedicus mentioned, is another installation media. If Proxmox is bad with both versions that you used, it could be that the way you write the thumb drive may not be ok. I had issues in the past, even quite recently, when media would not work properly if the iso was not written using Rufus or Balena Ether, dd would not make the USB bootable for some reason.

So, try gabbing an Ubuntu desktop image, that contains gparted, so you can test and format your SSDs internally. If you can’t format them properly, then again, I would assume it’s either the cables or a bad SATA controller.

Edit: just because it is bootable, doesn’t automatically mean it is properly written.

I have tried 3 different versions of proxmox all put onto a USB drive using rufus 3.18 in DD mode because of the motherboard having issues with linux distros that are just put on as an ISO using rufus (would have issues with intramfs)

and i have tried putting a GPT partition table onto the drive using the proxmox installers and live boot versions of Ubuntu 20.04.1 desktop, gparted live 1.4.0, and I believe I might have also tried with debian 11.3.0

Edit* also this is not the first time I have installed Proxmox this will have been the 3rd time on this system alone

and an HBA card would only be possible if it were a PCI or PCIe x1 slotted card due to available board space

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i have also built Proxmox on a number of systems, several of them being AM3. it is usually very uneventful. if you have easy access to any other hardware you could try swapping for testing purposes (CPU, RAM, etc) i would say that would also be a valid step.

you have a lot of NICs in this thing and not much storage so i am assuming you had small router VMs running on it or something like that. what all was this system being used for?

Well to break down the system I have on NIC for 10G connectivity, the 2nd NIC so that I can run my own router because the standalone router I have is only capable of 10/100, and I have a NAS with a NFS share set up for Proxmox to use which has most of my VMs on it (which is part of the reason why I want the 10G connectivity). It also has my DNS server on it and multiple others which don’t need dedicated NICs.

so for the cards i have in it is:

  • Cisco 10G NIC which has a PCIe x16
  • PNY NVS 300 which has a PCIe x1
  • Dell Pro/1000 Quad Port NIC which has a PCIe x4

and the board has:

  • 2x PCIe x16
  • 3x PCIe x1
  • 2x PCI

so the NIC need to be in the x16 slots which leaves on the PCIe x1 and PCI slots for any other cards I want to add

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so a few options, some better than others.

  1. buy a PCI GPU (pci radeon 9250 is about 20$) and a perc H310. assuming NO other MB issues, this works on 90% of AM3 boards. i have done it on other MSI boards, ASrock, gigabyte, all worked well. (it looks like you are using the NICS in the main x16x slots so this is not viable)

  2. replace the MB and CPU combo, i would grab an old opteron rig like an H8SGL, i have used those with Proxmox and i am still using one with freenas now.

  3. maybe temp ghetto rig a USB 2.0 hub up and do more trouble shooting, it has been a while since i dealt with the 2 port USB bug issue but if memory serves, certain USB 2.0 hubs will work on that controller and can gain you the ability to use multiple USB devices at boot. this is finicky and not for more than testing.

i think you are at the wall of having to change something drastic as you have fairly certainly eliminated it being software related.

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Update: I put the drive into a different system I have and used a 3rd sata cable and installed proxmox onto it brought it over to the system I have been having issues with along with the sata cable and plugged it into a different sata port and it works. I have it booted and connected back to the cluster and am in the process of updating it as I type this. Thanks for the help and I’m still not entirely sure of what was the cause.

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