V9.2 Bootable disk

[dittman]

I installed V9.2 on an ESXi 7 hypervisor. The installation was successful but the hard drive was not made bootable. I can leave the installation ISO connected and use it to boot the hard drive, but shouldn't the hard drive be marked as bootable by the install?

I've read through the installation guide twice to see if I missed a step but I don't see anything I imissed.

[sms]

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> [...] the hard drive was not made bootable. [...]

   As usual, a transcript showing the actual behavior might be more
helpful than your analysis of the situation.

> [...] and use it to boot the hard drive, [...]

   "use it" _how_, exactly?

   What, exactly, are you doing/seeing?

   I know approximately nothing, but if there's a way "to boot the hard
drive", then I'd say that that drive _is_ bootable.  Whether the UEFI
stuff on your system realizes that might be a different question.

   From my limited VMware experience (with E9.2), I'd expect the
installer to make everything wonderful, including adding a suitably
named boot option to the UEFI stuff, but when my stuff worked, I mostly
stopped worrying about the fine print.  Can you get to the UEFI shell
and explore?

[m_detommaso]

Please, post the output of the bootmgr command "device".

in my case :

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BOOTMGR> DEVICE

BOOTABLE DEVICES (System Disks, Installation Kits, other):

  DKA0        (HD) = FS0    UEFI: V9_2         OpenVMS: DIRAC_X86SYS 8192  MB  SATA Disk
  DKB0        (HD) = FS1    UEFI: V9_2         OpenVMS: DIRAC_X86SYS 8192  MB  SATA Disk
  DKC500     (DVD) = FS3    UEFI: V9_2         OpenVMS: None         1338  MB  SATA DVD
  DKC600     (DVD) = FS4    UEFI: E9_2_1       OpenVMS: None         1574  MB  SATA DVD
  DKC200      (HD) = FS2    UEFI: E9_2_1       OpenVMS: X86SYS_E921  8192  MB  SATA Disk

[tim.stegner]

the boot manager does not automatically start using the disk you installed -to- until you first use that disk in a BOOT command. Thus: BOOTMGR> BOOT DKC200 should boot the upgraded disk, and BOOT will default to DKC200 on subsequent reboots.

[dittman]

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>> [...] the hard drive was not made bootable. [...]
>
>  As usual, a transcript showing the actual behavior might be more
> helpful than your analysis of the situation.

Unfortunately since it's the ESXi console I can't cut and paste text, but I have attached a screenshot showing that it can't find a compatible bootloader when the ISO is disconnected from the virtual CD.

>> [...] and use it to boot the hard drive, [...]
>
 >  "use it" _how_, exactly?

Use the ISO to boot into BOOTMGR and then boot from the installed disk (DKA0 in my case).

>   What, exactly, are you doing/seeing?
>
>   I know approximately nothing, but if there's a way "to boot the hard
> drive", then I'd say that that drive _is_ bootable.  Whether the UEFI
> stuff on your system realizes that might be a different question.

I think the disk image isn't getting the disk label set correctly.

>   From my limited VMware experience (with E9.2), I'd expect the
> installer to make everything wonderful, including adding a suitably
> named boot option to the UEFI stuff, but when my stuff worked, I mostly
> stopped worrying about the fine print.  Can you get to the UEFI shell
> and explore?

I'll explore a bit.  It's been a while since I've dealt with UEFI on Itaniums so I've forgotten a lot of that.

Added in 43 seconds:

the boot manager does not automatically start using the disk you installed -to- until you first use that disk in a BOOT command. Thus: BOOTMGR> BOOT DKC200 should boot the upgraded disk, and BOOT will default to DKC200 on subsequent reboots.

It does, but I have to have the ISO attached to the virtual CD to have a device that can start the boot process and get to BOOTMGR.

[tim.stegner]

Start the boot manager from the copy present in the UEFI partition on DKC200. See Section 3.1 for how to start the boot manager from UEFI. (Choose the FS for DKC200 instead of the DVD)

[dittman]

I started working on this again this morning after reading the replies. I started the VM without the ISO image attached and got the message above about no compatible bootloader found and left it to reply to some emails. When I got back to it I found that it booted to the EFI menu. Based on sms's suggestion I poked around in the EFI shell and saw the files were in the partition on the disk.

Since the files were there I selected the option to enter setup and from there went to Configure boot options->Add boot option and added the one marked "V9_2".

If I select the hard drive from the EFI Boot Manager it doesn't do anything. If I boot I get the screen I posted earlier. If I leave it after about a minute it loads BOOTMGR from the disk and then boots from DKA0.

So something isn't quite right with my setup so I need to explore the VM settings in ESXi.

Thanks, everyone!