REFInd-Initializing - hangs

Trev-lchs

HI, I know you guys will have the answers to this, but we have a new set of PCS to image, I can get them to Pxe boot ok and send the inventory up etc, but when it reboots it goes through the motions gives you the boot screen, but when you select boot to hard drive, it hangs with a thin blue background at the top of the screen saying REFInd -Initializing, nothing from here, any ideas? These are HP Prodesk 400 G7 PCs we are using Fog 1.5.7.2 kernel is 5.10.19 Tom Elliott64 also tried 5.10.34 Tom Elliott64. We are using UEFi boot which works perfectly with the older versions of the Prodesk 400.

Trev-lchs

@trev-lchs said in REFInd-Initializing - hangs:

HI, I know you guys will have the answers to this, but we have a new set of PCS to image, I can get them to Pxe boot ok and send the inventory up etc, but when it reboots it goes through the motions gives you the boot screen, but when you select boot to hard drive, it hangs with a thin blue background at the top of the screen saying REFInd -Initializing, nothing from here, any ideas? These are HP Prodesk 400 G7 PCs we are using Fog 1.5.7.2 kernel is 5.10.19 Tom Elliott64 also tried 5.10.34 Tom Elliott64. We are using UEFi boot which works perfectly with the older versions of the Prodesk 400.

Anyone?

Sebastian Roth

@trev-lchs said in REFInd-Initializing - hangs:

Anyone?

You are kidding, right?

Now to try and help with the issue described, FOG provides different so called “exit types” for chainloading the OS from disk after PXE boot if there is no task scheduled for the host. The default for UEFI machines is REFIND. Some machines work with that fine, others don’t. To change this to a different method go to the host’s settings -> Host EFI Exit Type and choose EXIT or even try SANBOOT. PXE boot the machine and see if it able to chainload the OS from disk.

we are using Fog 1.5.7.2

Fairly old version. If none of the other exit types work for you you might think about updating. Though I can’t promise you this will help. Some hardware is just not playing nice.

Instead of going for a full FOG update you can manually download different rEFInd versions from sourceforge and see if those work. Though there is a chance that a different version will break chainloading for a different kind of hardware. You never know.

Last but not least you might search the forums for refind.conf and read about playing with the parameters.

Trev-lchs

@trev-lchs Hi Sabastian, why would you think I was kidding? I have already tried all the options from Fog Config/ipxe general config/boot exit type, none of these have worked, I tried your suggestion on the host of EXIT, but although this did exit, it just said that chainloading failed, hit S. Thanks for the hint about refind.conf I will try that, thanks as always for your help.

george1421

@trev-lchs In the web ui -> FOG Configuration -> FOG Settings then hit the expand all button. In there will be bios exit modes and uefi exit modes. For bios SANBOOT works the best. For uefi rEFInd works the best. For bios SANBOOT should work straight away. For uefi some firmware is a bit flaky in that you may need to adjust the refind configuration file to get refind to locate your efi boot partition.

So when you pick refind it just hangs at initializing? The first thing I would do is ensure your firmware is up to date. Some early release firmware has bugs in it.

Its also possible that we might try an updated version of refind. What should be on your version of fog is 0.11.4 I see refind now has 0.13.2. We might want to test by swapping out 0.11.4 with the latest version of refind. See if that addresses the initialization issue. https://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/

PS:: the “anyone” comment also irritated me a bit. As with most opensource projects we are all volunteers working here on our time, and at our expense. This forum is active but realize we all have day jobs that come first.

Trev-lchs

@george1421 OHHHH I see, I Wasn’t trying to upset anyone just in a downward spiral of no time, I sincerely apologies if I caused offence.

Trev-lchs

@george1421 Hi George, what would be the best way to swap this file out, I am not a Linux guru of any sort, I have had a look in the link you very kindly sent, would it be best to download the whole folder or just a file in it, we are using Windows 10, 64 based systems. The PCs are brand new and should be fully up to date firmware wise.

Trev-lchs

@george1421 Hi Again George downloaded the zip, as I guess that makes sense, how would one swap this out?

george1421

@trev-lchs ok if you have the zip file go ahead and extract it. You are looking for refind.efi.

Now if you are not very good with linux, download and install WinSCP. That is a file mover program you can use to send the file from your windows computer to the FOG server.

On the fog server the current refind.efi file is in /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe directory. Rename the existing file and then use winscp to copy the new file over in its place. That is all that is needed. See if the updated refind does a better job locating the boot files.

Trev-lchs

@george1421 Thanks George that’s very helpful.

Trev-lchs

@george1421 Hi George,Ii have extracted the zip renamed the old one on fog, about to copy over but the filenames in the extracted zip does not contain refind.efi however is does contain
Refind_ia32.efi
refind_aa64.efi
refind_x64.efi
I suppose that’s 32 bit, arm64 and X64, I thought about changing Refind_x64 to refind.efi, however I have no idea how fog makes this decision so don’t want to do the wrong thing, could you please advise?

Sebastian Roth

@Trev-lchs Right, unfortunately we didn’t use the original name. Rename refind_x64.efi to refind.efi and give it a try.

Trev-lchs

@sebastian-roth Thanks Sebastian

Trev-lchs

@sebastian-roth Hi Sebastian, , Permission denied.
Error code: 3
Error message from server: Permission denied

this when attempting to copy from local PC to server using winscp
I am obviously doing something wrong, any advice would be truly welcome.

Sebastian Roth

@Trev-lchs Which Linux OS do you use?

Run chown apache:apache /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe/refind.efi for RedHat/CentOS systems or chown www-data:www-data /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe/refind.efi on Debian/Ubuntu Linux.

Sebastian Roth

@Trev-lchs Ahhh, I miss-read your message. You get the error when trying to upload the file to the server?! Which user do you use to upload the file? Maybe just upload the file to /tmp and then run the following commands on the console:

sudo -i
mv /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe/refind.efi /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe/refind.efi.orig
mv /tmp/refind.efi /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe/
chown www-data:www-data /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe/refind.efi

(For Debian/Ubuntu - if you have CentOS/RHEL, then use the other chown ... command posted a minute ago.

Trev-lchs

@sebastian-rothHi Sebastian I thought id take your advise and upgrade to the latest version of fog, I think the gods are against me today any advice on the below would be most welcome

  The current *fogstorage* database password does not meet high
   security standards. We will generate a new password and update
   all the settings on this FOG server for you. Please take note
   of the following credentials that you need to manually update
   on all your storage nodes' /opt/fog/.fogsettings configuration
   files and re-run (!) the FOG installer:
   
   Press [Enter] to proceed after you noted down the credentials.

OK
 * Backing up user reports.....................................Done
 * Stopping web service........................................OK
 * Setting up Apache and PHP files.............................Failed
   ###########################################
   #                                         #
   #      PHP Failed to install properly     #
   #                                         #
   ###########################################

   Could not find /etc/php/7.1/fpm/php.ini!

Trev-lchs

@trev-lchs rerunning the installer in a vain hope, pray for me

Sebastian Roth

@Trev-lchs Which Linux OS and version do you have? Kind of looks like Ubuntu 16.04?!?!?!

Trev-lchs

@sebastian-roth Yes I do believe that’s correct Sabastian
NAME=“Ubuntu”
VERSION=“16.04.7 LTS (Xenial Xerus)”
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
PRETTY_NAME=“Ubuntu 16.04.7 LTS”
VERSION_ID=“16.04”
HOME_URL=“http://www.ubuntu.com/”
SUPPORT_URL=“http://help.ubuntu.com/”
BUG_REPORT_URL=“http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/”
VERSION_CODENAME=xenial
UBUNTU_CODENAME=xenial

REFInd-Initializing - hangs

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