Talos 1.8.0+ initial boot fails in phase meta (6/12)

[smauermann]

Bug Report

Hi team, I am failing to boot any Talos v1.8.0+ ISO from USB on an HP Elitedesk 800 g5 Mini (i5 9500T with vPro). The boot process fails in the meta phase at step 6/12.

I would really love to switch to Talos but I am at a loss right now on how to proceed. I would love any hints!

Description

Up until and including v1.7.7 I can boot just fine and apply the machine configs to have a function Kubernetes cluster. However, if I try to boot any Talos version greater than v1.8.0, the boot fails. Please see a screenshot of the failed boot process below.

I have tried various other images to verify nothing is wrong with the node: Debian, Proxmox, CoreOS, and of course different Talos version.

Besides the different versions, I have played with different extensions namely intel-ucode, i915-ucode, mei, utils-linux including all permutations of the selected extensions.

Interestingly, I was able to creat a cluster with 1.7.7 and upgrade to 1.8.0. Another upgrade to 1.8.3 (no extensions) failed, though. The screen just went black after the reboot and never came up. I am trying this now again with different extensions.

EDIT: I was able to upgrade from 1.7.7 without any extensions to 1.8.3 including the following extensions:

customization:
    systemExtensions:
        officialExtensions:
            - siderolabs/i915-ucode
            - siderolabs/intel-ucode
            - siderolabs/mei
            - siderolabs/util-linux-tools

Logs

"Screenshot" of the boot failure:

Environment

• Talos version: v1.8.3
• Kubernetes version: na
• Platform: metal on HP Elitedesk 800 g5 Mini (i5 9500T with vPro)

[smira]

So there might be a mix of several issues here, with Talos 1.8 there's unfortunate side-effect for those having i915 - the i915-ucode should be included, otherwise the Linux kernel fails to boot (it will be fixed for 1.9+).

As for the error above in the screenshot, it is certainly a bug, but I don't understand how it ends up with way.

Does the disk contain any previous Talos install when booting from an ISO (USB)?

[smira]

Oh yeah, I misread the picture. I guess you might have META partition somewhere on the disk.

Moreover, it might be related to incomplete wipe of the system disk. Please try to wipe the disks before installation.

[smauermann]

Hi @smira, thanks for your swift reply! I did shred both internal disks before installing Talos and I performed a wipe via the disks machine config during the install of 1.7.7. I was pretty sure that I nuked everything before the installation. Is there any way of checking for the existence of META extraneous partitions?

[smauermann]

Also, I'm happy to hear that the i915 issue will be fixed with the next minor version. Keep up the great work.

[smira]

I don't see the logs, but I wonder if there's a message somewhere up from the VolumeManager controller about META partition being found (it shouldn't be).

[smauermann]

I did not observe such a message, but then again the logs fly past pretty quickly and all I could capture is in the screenshot above 😄

[smira]

One of the options is to record a video, it sometimes allows to see individual messages.

[smauermann]

Would a talosctl reset get rid of any META partitions that could mess with any subsequent installs?