Installation kit (9.2) hangs on initial startup

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sstillwell
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Re: Installation kit (9.2) hangs on initial startup

Post by sstillwell » Sun Apr 16, 2023 8:30 pm

Well, for what it's worth a nested VM running on Ubuntu 22.04 inside of Proxmox 7.4 will successfully fire up OpenVMS E9.2-1 and complete the installation, albeit significantly slower. That says the hardware (host CPU) is fine, there's just something wonky with how Proxmox fires up the OpenVMS VM when done directly.

I've captured the command lines of kvm/qemu on both systems, but it's gonna be tedious to track down which options are causing the pause.

An earlier comment mentioned something about trace flags when starting up...I've tried launching in Verbose mode, but the results don't tell me anything. I can capture and share if it makes any difference to someone here.

Added in 37 minutes 47 seconds:
Woo! Every now and then you get lucky... :)

I'm not sure WHICH of the options provided below fixes the issue, but I'm installing now running directly under Proxmox VE.

This requires manual edits to the configuration file of the VM after you create it. The file will be found in

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/etc/pve/qemu-server/<vmid>.conf
where <vmid> is the ID number of the VM displayed in the Proxmox UI after you've created it.

Edits:

Add the following line to the file:

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args: -no-user-config -rtc base=utc,driftfix=slew -no-hpet -global ICH9-LPC.disable_s3=1 -global ICH9-LPC.disable_s4=1
Delete the following line from the file: (EDIT - THIS IS NOT NECESSARY)

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smbios: <values and stuff, all on single line>
(EDIT - THIS IS NOT NECESSARY)

I made a stab at it after looking at the two sets of qemu/kvm command lines...evidently I got something right. I hope this helps someone else...it sure was a puzzler.
Last edited by sstillwell on Sun Apr 16, 2023 9:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.


finitud
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Re: Installation kit (9.2) hangs on initial startup

Post by finitud » Tue Apr 18, 2023 11:00 am

The args: line has fixed the issue for me too, thank you so much!

How did you figure out, if you don't mind me asking? The option needed seems a bit cryptic :)


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sstillwell
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Re: Installation kit (9.2) hangs on initial startup

Post by sstillwell » Tue Apr 18, 2023 11:50 am

I set up a VM in Ubuntu 22.04 using Virtual Machine Manager and was able to successfully install there (as a nested VM, so to speak), so while it was running I used

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ps eax | cat
to get the entire command line used to launch that instance of qemu.

I then did the same thing with the running VM that DIDN'T work in Proxmox, and then just spent time comparing the options used. I'm not sure WHICH options of those listed are actually required, but I suspect that the --no-hpet (no high-precision event timer) may be the important one.

I'm glad it helped! Proxmox has been a great platform for my homelab, and being able to continue using it for OpenVMS is a huge relief.

Added in 10 minutes 27 seconds:
Okay, so that prompted me to test...I was right. The only thing that's REALLY necessary is:

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args: -no-hpet
I'm not sure WHY that's required, but if you take any of the other args out, it boots up and runs fine, but if you take out the -no-hpet arg, the system will hang on boot.

Hope that helps!


smirk
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Re: Installation kit (9.2) hangs on initial startup

Post by smirk » Tue Apr 25, 2023 7:22 am

sstillwell wrote:
Mon Apr 03, 2023 5:52 pm
How long should I wait for the process to proceed after this? It has been several minutes and all vCPU cores seem to be running at 100%.
It'll never move, but I'm sure you've noticed that ;)

I had the same issue with proxmox (7.4-3), as I noted in another thread, the solution was to add two NICs to the VM. With a single NIC (set to the E1000 type which VMS expects) the VM just "hangs", as you're experiencing, in the detecting/configuring devices stage. WIth two NICs, you set the first (net0) to something like virtio (basically VMS will not detect it as it cannot understand it) and you set the second NIC (net1) to being a E1000. Doing that allowed me to boot the installer, install the OS and have network connectivity.

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