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Russell Fulton
Asked: 2021-09-01 14:41:00 +0800 CST

Ubuntu 20.04 server install failing from live cd

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I have two Dell servers in a lights out data centre that I am trying to upgrade to ubuntu 20.04. I am accessing the servers via idrac and mounting CD virtually from my laptop at home. ISO is ubuntu-20.04.2-live-server-amd64 (I originally tried 20.04.01 which I have used successfully previously).

I am working remotely via VPN (fortigate) and again I have done this before and been surprised how well it works.

From idrac I mount the virtual media and reboot, select boot menu at the appropriate time and then select virtual CD. A second or two later the console clears and there are two icons at the bottom as expected.

enter image description here

quite what the coloured bars are in aid of I don't know but they keep getting deeper with time. They display the same in two different browsers (firefox and safari) I wondered if they were rendering problem with html5.

The display stays like this for some time ( around half an hour) and then displayed "decoding failed -- system halted" or fills with screeds of error messages ending in a kernel panic.

Any idea what the root cause is likely to be and how I might work around it?

I am guessing that the ISO image is getting corrupted somehow but it is weird that it takes over half an hour to decide this.

It is also weird that it happens on two different servers.

ubuntu drac

2 Answers

  1. Wat you can do:

    • Check the checksum of the .ISO if you suspect it is corrupted.
    • Are you mounting it from your local machine via VPN? If yes, place it in the datacenter and mount it directly, mounting it from a remote location will slow it down significantly

    I've never seen the artifacts on the bottom, but I wouldn't pay much attention to them, it's most probably just a cosmetic display error.

    In my experience the boot menu is shown instantly when I press Enter at the screen with the two icons.

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  2. Best Answer

    You say you're upgrading them, are you perhaps already running a previous version of Ubuntu? If so, you can just use do-release-upgrade to upgrade.

    If you're switching distributions or want a fresh start, download yourself the "network boot" variant (it's called mini.iso) which is Debian Installer based and runs in text mode, which might help in case the graphical UI messes up the DRAC.

    The netboot variant is available here for 20.04: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/focal/main/installer-amd64/current/legacy-images/netboot/

    Edit: You don't need PXE environment to boot the mini.iso, just burn it/mount it in remote console and fire away.

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