ESXI installer fails to boot on VP66xx

[mysteriousCzrsX]

Component

Dasharo firmware

Device

Protectli VP6670, Protectli VP6650

Dasharo version

v0.9.1

Dasharo Tools Suite version

No response

Test case ID

No response

Brief summary

When trying to boot the ESXI 8.0U3 intaller on VP6670 or VP6650 platforms it will hang on Shutting down firmware services.... When installer is booted manually from the uefi shell with -V (verbose option) we can see the following output before it hangs:

Shutting down firmware services...
Measuring existing page tables...
...allocating new page tables...
..will move 3 pages to 0x6be7e000
About to ExitBootServices...
...successful
Copying page tables...
...switching page tables 1...
...running on new page tables
Scanning system tables...

How reproducible

100%

How to reproduce

Insert a flash drive with ESXI installer into the DUT. Power on the DUT and boot from the flash drive.

Expected behavior

ESXI installer boots correctly.

Actual behavior

ESXI installer hangs on Shutting down firmware services...

Screenshots

No response

Additional context

No response

Solutions you've tried

The following solutions were tested:

• booting the installer headless (-H option)
• booting the installer with workarounds disabled (-Q option)
• booting the installer without UEFI runtime services support (-U option)

Examining the bootloader code, I was able to determine based on the output that the installer produces before hanging that it hangs after mboot/system.c line 239. Most likely on function e820_mmap_merge or system_blacklist_memory.
This explains why the latter two solutions did not work - installer crashes before those parameters take any effect.

[miczyg1]

Last time I fixed the hang it was occurring at ...switching page tables 1.... Now it seems like another issue popped up, probably due to an updated version of ESXi. Well, this calls again for more debugging and analysis @BeataZdunczyk

[miczyg1]

@mysteriousCzrsX BTW mboot/x86/system.c does not exist. But mboot/system.c does.

[mysteriousCzrsX]

@miczyg1 My bad path is right now

[miczyg1]

VP6670 worked before with ESXI 100%. Maybe the newer version has another issue. What was the exact version of ESXI used?

[mysteriousCzrsX]

I used ESXI 8.0U3.

[miczyg1]

I used ESXI 8.0U3.

Great, but it should be indicated in the issue summary