VM Help

[jwsmiths]

OK so situation - I have several FreeNAS servers all running latest version (11.1-U4) but cannot get Ubuntu 16.04 server to boot on any of them. I am following any of the various online tutorials but no matter I do at the end of it all I get is a perfectly black screen and an unresponsive VM. The system will book the install ISO, go through the complete installation and then after reboot I power off and delete the virtual CD ROM driver, select the bootx64.efi file from the EFI menu (or before booting fix the directory location from the install CD) and then boot up the system. I get a black screen that looks like the screenshot below. Nothing else. Any ideas???

Thank you

 

[dlavigne]

Have you tried https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/howto-how-to-boot-linux-vms-using-uefi.54039 ?

 

[jwsmiths]

Have you tried https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/howto-how-to-boot-linux-vms-using-uefi.54039/?

I am getting an error when I click on that link, if it is the same message I think it is though about fixing grub then yes I have tried.

 

[dlavigne]

Silly forum software added the question mark to the URL. Should be able to see it now.

 

[KrisBee]

I have occasionally seen when testing a VM appear to stall for several minutes before the EFI shell was visible in the web VNC connection.

I assume you are using a web VNC connection, althougth that's not immediately apparant in your screen shot. There have been reports in the past the certain resolutions on the VNC device don't work.

When you installed Ubuntu 16.04 in a VM did you just go with the default LVM disk layout? IIRC the correct EFI files ought to be installed in /boot/efi/EFI and there is no need for any post-install fix. Also, I think you want to pick the shim efi file, or the frame buffer efi file, if you are dropped to the EFI shell and then exit to use the boot manager options.

Rather than trying any kind of EFI fix post-install, have you tried attaching a rEFInd iso to your ubuntu VM to see it will boot post-install.