Strange issue with booting XCP-NG

Danp

@stormi Yes... I understand that is the way it is supposed to work.

A Former User

@danp Well I use UEFI as well, so we do have the same issue here :), still curious in how this can be fixed of course.. I even upgraded to the latest XCP-ng 8.2.0 RC to see if it has been fixed but no luck so far So I keep my GPU out for a while again or I gotta get a AMD Workstation GPU.

I have tried every other solution, but no luck so far. I think its either XCP-NG or The MOBO I use (Gigabyte AORUS PRO X570).

Danp

@appollonius Have you tried installing CH 8.1 or 8.2 to see if it will boot without a monitor attached?

A Former User

@danp Ehmm no, I dont have an extra host where I can test it on.. Otherwise I wouldve done that with no problem...
I use a Quadro P400 and you?

Danp

@appollonius I have a PowerEdge R620, no additional GPU

A Former User

@danp Aha then it should boot without problems though... Strange...

Danp

@appollonius I don't have this issue. Just been following along on this thread and happened to run across the Citrix issue I posted earlier.

A Former User

@danp Ahh I thought you had the same problem, but I still find it strange and I cannot find anything about it on the interwebs...

Danp

@appollonius Did you read the issue I linked above?

A Former User

@danp Yeah though it still does not have any solution... Which is sad

Danp

@appollonius Found the patch where Citrix backported the fix to XS 7.1 -- https://github.com/xenserver/xen.pg/commit/4629bd92f3d3263da9d7fe304df422e54d56ee56

@r1 @stormi Guessing that they didn't pass this upstream to the Xen folks.

0 committed to xenserver/xen.pg

CA-316240: Fix booting on some platforms without monitor attached

Some platform UEFI firmware doesn't initialize EFI_GRAPHICS_OUTPUT_PROTOCOL
instance if there is no physically attached display present. So trying
to use it will result in NULL pointer dereference even before existing
BootServices.

Signed-off-by: Igor Druzhinin <igor.druzhinin@citrix.com>

A Former User

@danp thanks, I might be able to somehow tweak this in the EFI config but not 100% sure. Will check this out asap, otherwise I'll have to leave it to the Xcp-NG team

A Former User

@danp So I have another question, do you think that when I install XCP-NG in BIOS mode that this issue wont arise?

Now I know what the problem might be @stormi could this be an UEFI issue rather than an XCP-NG issue?

r1

@danp said in Strange issue with booting XCP-NG:

https://github.com/xenserver/xen.pg/commit/4629bd92f3d3263da9d7fe304df422e54d56ee56

This seems present for XCP-ng 8.0 and 8.2..

A Former User

@r1 Its still strange though that this problem still persists. As I think there are more people using the Quadro P400.. (Correct me if I'm wrong of course).

A Former User

Do you guys think that this has to do with UEFI? Otherwise I will have to reinstall XCP-NG in BIOS mode instead of UEFI mode...

r1

@appollonius I don't think it is driver issue (POST boot).. We may know more only from serial output.

Are you able to boot as-is in BIOS mode without reinstall?

A Former User

@r1 I could try that, will update when that has been done...

A Former User

@r1 How do I boot in BIOS mode without a reinstall? Can that even be done, because I remember that when I installed xcp-ng I had to choose between BIOS or UEFI am I correct? (Could be something else though) otherwise if not I can give that a try.

r1

@appollonius I think it will depend on hardware settings. See if you have option to change the mode in motherboard settings?

I don't have physical hardware access to validate this as I mostly use nested virtualization but XCP-ng /boot has required files support both for UEFI and BIOS mode.

Maybe @stormi can confirm.