Server Restart while Installing Operating System

Operating Systems & Open Source
1

A small bit of background. I built this server years ago. It started life running FreeNAS, but I ended up having issues that were beyond me to debug. Being a student at the time, I moved over to Windows Server since keys were free. It has been fine, but I’m in the process of de-Microsofting my life as much as possible, so Windows Server has to go. I am trying to get Ubuntu 20.04.3 Server on it, which is what is causing my problem.

It makes it through POST, I can get into the BIOS and GRUB, but after I attempt to start the Ubuntu installer, the computer restarts as if the reset button was pressed. Sometimes it will make it to language selection, sometimes it will only make it to the screen with the keyboard and a person in a circle. It will still boot into windows Server just fine.

I have tried updating the BIOS which didn’t fix it. The most obvious, but least satisfying, answer is that it’s simply an unsupported OS. The newest version that is supported is 12.04, but like almost everything else on that list is EOL. TrueNAS appears to work as well, but I don’t have enough hard drives to do that migration.

Has anyone experienced this with Supermicro motherboards? If so is there a workaround? I haven’t found anything relevant in the manual or on Google. I also don’t know how to pull logs or troubleshoot the OS since it doesn’t ever make it to a terminal. If there is anything else I can provide for troubleshooting please let me know. Alternatively, is there a better place to ask?

Specs
Mobo: Supermicro X9SRL-F
CPU: Xeon E5-1620 v2
RAM: 32 GB ECC

Thanks

2

Don’t know what it is but you could if you have a spare pc hook up serial console to capture any console output.

It’s been a while so not sure if your flavour of Linux supports install via serial console or debug to serial console but I’m assuming it’s a kernel or boot parameter.

That way when the machine dies you still have any last gasp error messages captured and displayed on your other machine’s terminal.

3

i might be more to do with your motherboard than the cpu
o.s support list for supermicron

4

I didn’t know outputting to a serial terminal was an option. Getting that working with Ubuntu was a few more steps than I felt like dealing with so just ended up using FreeNAS, which has that option built into the boot menu. (To append to the OP, TrueNAS/FreeNAS only gets through the installer which is why they ‘appeared’ to work, actually trying to boot gives basically the same behavior as Ubuntu.)

Anyways, see the serial output here: FreeNAS Boot Log - Pastebin.com

It looks like it quits in the middle of loading kernel modules, but no specific error was thrown. It may be worth noting a second boot attempt ended at line 307 instead of line 308. Is there any useful information here?