Question

VMDK's not booting with Kernel panic error.

  • 7 April 2024
  • 9 replies
  • 59 views

Badge +1

I have an OVA which I usually deploy on VMWare. when extracting the vmdk’s from it I get two of them. I am booting using a legacy bios (because the UEFI version just hangs in “press f2 for boot manager”) from the current disk and I get the following error:

 

 

Can anyone please help in resolving this issue?

 

Thank you.


9 replies

Userlevel 4
Badge +7

Hi there,

This could be quite a variety of things causing it - can we see more of the screenshot?

What is the OVA/vmdk’s you have extracted - are they publicly accessible?

Cheers,

Kim

Badge +1

Hi there,

This could be quite a variety of things causing it - can we see more of the screenshot?

What is the OVA/vmdk’s you have extracted - are they publicly accessible?

Cheers,

Kim

Hi, thanks for the reply!

 

This is the only thing I’m able to see when launching the console. It isn’t responding to anything I try.

 

The OVA’s are internal to my company, so unfortunately not publicly accessed. I would appreciate any outline to how to resolve / figure out this issue.

Thank you!

 

 

Userlevel 4
Badge +7

Hey,

No worries that’s fine.

Do you know what the underlying OS is, I think the answer to get more info is to boot from an ISO and mount the partitions from the vmdk and try to get to the log files to see if the kernel panic is logging a ‘why’ in there.

I suspect it is a missing driver that may need to be installed/slipstreamed into the vmdk for it to boot properly but its hard to say with only a tiny snippet of the panic.

 

Userlevel 6
Badge +8

Is the OVA created from an UEFI or BIOS system? Try to figure that out and then create a VM with the same structure. 

Some extra brain farts: 

  • Is this community edition or production? 
  • Are the VirtIO drivers in the OVA?
  • Have you spoken to the team who created the OVA and ask them to inject Virtio? 
  • Better is to use Nutanix Move to get the vm running on the AHV cluster and the create template from it. 

 

Badge +1

Hey,

No worries that’s fine.

Do you know what the underlying OS is, I think the answer to get more info is to boot from an ISO and mount the partitions from the vmdk and try to get to the log files to see if the kernel panic is logging a ‘why’ in there.

I suspect it is a missing driver that may need to be installed/slipstreamed into the vmdk for it to boot properly but its hard to say with only a tiny snippet of the panic.

 

The underlying OS is Oracle Linux. How do I check what the issue is, I haven’t installed any further drivers on the vmdk’s. How do I go about doing that? which drivers should I install?

Badge +1

Is the OVA created from an UEFI or BIOS system? Try to figure that out and then create a VM with the same structure. 

Some extra brain farts: 

  • Is this community edition or production? 
  • Are the VirtIO drivers in the OVA?
  • Have you spoken to the team who created the OVA and ask them to inject Virtio? 
  • Better is to use Nutanix Move to get the vm running on the AHV cluster and the create template from it. 

 

I believe the OVA is created using a BIOS system. 

It is the community addition, I haven’t put any additional drivers on the vmdks, I will need to look into Virtio. Unfortunately, I can’t get Nutanix Move to work either. Some weird installation issue. I have another topic on it in my profile. 

Userlevel 6
Badge +8

Oke since it is oracle linux you should have no issues starting it. 

Make a new virtual machines with bios and attach the vmdk's against them. 

As you are running Community Edition on third party hardware you need to enable cpu passthrough to the virtual machine, or else it will not start correctly. This is done as following: 

  1. SSH into the CVM:
  2. Run: acli vm.update <vm_name> cpu_passthrough=true

Now you can start the virtual machine. 

Badge +1

Oke since it is oracle linux you should have no issues starting it. 

Make a new virtual machines with bios and attach the vmdk's against them. 

As you are running Community Edition on third party hardware you need to enable cpu passthrough to the virtual machine, or else it will not start correctly. This is done as following: 

  1. SSH into the CVM:
  2. Run: acli vm.update <vm_name> cpu_passthrough=true

Now you can start the virtual machine. 

This worked! 

Thank you very much. I’m using this vm to develop a blueprint so just a few more questions
Will the cpu passthrough have to be enabled only on community edition? what other editions and configuration of hardware will need to have this before the vm boots correctly?

Thank you!

Userlevel 6
Badge +8

On the normal commercial version of nutanix this is not needed, they just work. But CE is the community edition and so, some hardware is not really working.  That is why on some hardware this setting is needed. 

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