VM powered off ok - now won't boot again

[dlhartley]

Hi all,

I have a VM that I have just built, powered on and installed the OS successfully. Once that had finished, I shut the VM down, also without any issues. Now, when I power the machine on, it appears to power on ok, but instead of briefly seeing the boot screen (like every other VM usually does), it just sits on a black screen, and nothing appears. I left it sitting in this state for about 15 minutes, and it hadn't progressed any further.

I can reproduce this error easily: Create new VM (with the virtual disk located on an iSCSI storage array), power on, install os, shutdown once finished. Won't boot again!

I'm not game to shut any of my other VMs down, just in case they don't power on properly again - this is the first time i've ever had this issue, and it doesn't seem to matter which ESX host I attach the VM to, either.

If I remove the hard disk from the VM, it powers on as usual and the screen appears, but upon reattaching it, it goes back to the black-screen problem and never boots. I thought it could be a problem with the iSCSI storage, but when I initially set the server up it could access it fine, and can happily browse the datastore from the VM host, so I know it's not a network issue.

Any ideas?

David

[weinstein5]

What O/S are you trying to install? Also confirm the boot order of the VM-

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[dlhartley]

The OS is a customised build of linux - not sure what distribution (3rd party application). It installs ok, it's not the installation that's the problem - it's when i try and turn the VM back on after it's powered down.

I can't get into the BIOS to check the boot order - absolutely nothing displays on-screen, unless I remove the virtual disk from the VM settings.

[weinstein5]

In the settings of the VM there is a check box in the Boot Options section that will force the VM into bios the next time it reboots - it really sounds like somthing is going on during the boot process that is hanging the boot -

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[dlhartley]

OK. Boot order is as follows:

1. Removable Devices

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Legacy Floppy Drives

2. Hard Drive

-

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Bootable Add-in Cards

-

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Seagate Disk(0:0)

3. CD-ROM drive

4. Network boot

I checked the hard disk, and Hard Disk 1 is assigned to SCSI (0:0).

David

[weinstein5]

Confirm nothing is in your floppy drive -

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[dlhartley]

I've attached a screenshot of what happens when I click "Power On". Blank screen..

[dlhartley]

There's definitely nothing in the floppy drive, and i've moved the hard-disk up to the top of the boot sequence, still no luck!

[weinstein5 · Accepted solution]

This customized build of Linux what are you using it for? What does the applicaiton you attemting to run do? Can you install just aplain RHEL or Windows o/s and see if that boots? I really believe during the boot sequence it is not finding something that it is expecting -

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[dlhartley]

It's a content-filtering application / OS. It's supposed to boot from the "CD" - an ISO that's stored with the virtual disk files - and doesn't boot from the hard disk itself. Strange setup I know, but it works (when it powers on).

I bumped up the CD-ROM in the boot process, and it seems to be booting fine now - thanks for that!

I don't remember ever having to adjust the boot order in the first place, so that's why I hadn't tried that before you suggested it.

Thanks again!

David