Can't boot into RedHat 6.9. Excruciating install and boot times
I tried installing RHEL 6.9 Workstation on Dell Tower 7910 ( https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/desktops-workstations/dell-precision-tower-7000-series-7910/spd/precision-t7910-workstation ). It was shipped with Ubuntu 14 pre-installed on UEFI. The client wanted RedHat 6.9 instead.
We tried installing through USB, but couldn't get past the part of the process where it asks to provide the partition where the install files are located. (We only saw a list of ~5 partitions, which we thought to belong to the pre-existing Ubuntu install).
We then installed RedHat 6.9 Workstation through DVD. We left it installing over night, and the installation was still running. I'm unsure if it went to sleep in the process, but it took many, many hours to install. At one point, it popped out the disc and asked for "Disc 1". I just put the disc that was already being used and clicked "OK". It accepted the disc and finished the installation.
After install, I get the Ubuntu boot screen, which takes ~15 minutes (or more) to complete the loading process (where the loading circle makes a complete circuit). Then, the circle disappears and it hangs on this screen for ~30 minutes+, which at that point, it decides to just restart:
If, I instead press "Escape" at this hanging boot screen, the following errors are thrown:
Here are the legacy boot options:
Here are the UEFI boot options:
Why is Ubuntu the only UEFI boot option? The shown error dialogue box is the error that is thrown when clicking the "Add boot option" button.
Here is Dell's "One-Time Boot Menu" (from pressing F12):
Now, when I try to boot into ubuntu (UEFI) from that menu, I get this error:
Does anyone have any advice? Should I try a USB install again?
Responses
The error messages indicate the system is blocking interrupts, which is more than enough to explain the excruciating slowness. Apparently using the nointremap boot option, or possibly disabling some of the virtualization support options in the BIOS settings might help.
It looks like your RHEL6.9 installer was booted in legacy mode, and so made a legacy MBR-style partitioning to the hard disk. As a result, there is now no GPT partition table and no ESP partition on the system disk, so no place for native UEFI boot - hence the "File System Not Found!" error when trying to add UEFI boot options.
When the system is booted using legacy methods, the UEFI run-time interface is disabled and so the installer won't be able to add a new UEFI boot option to the BIOS, even if you overrode the partitioning style selection and manually created an ESP partition for the UEFI bootloader. Because of this, it is important to boot the OS installer DVD in UEFI style, which may sometimes be difficult as the BIOS might prefer legacy-style boot from CD/DVD over it.
Try inserting the RHEL 6.9 installation DVD and then going to the "One-Time Boot Menu". Does the DVD drive now appear under "UEFI BOOT:" too? If it does, select that option to boot from the DVD in UEFI-style, and add the nointremap option to the installation boot options. Once you get to the installer, make sure that the disk will be partitioned in GPT style, and that the ESP partition (technically, a 100-500 MB FAT32 partition with a specific partition type UUID) gets created.
If the UEFI boot option list still includes Ubuntu, you can remove it with the efibootmgr tool (in a RPM with the same name).
Basically just run efibootmgr -v and it will list all the UEFI boot options (and, depending on how the legacy compatibility is implemented in the firmware, possibly the legacy boot options too). In the leftmost column, each line has a boot identifier (BootNNNN, where N is a number). Find the four-digit number corresponding to the "ubuntu" line, then run efibootmgr -b NNNN -B to delete the UEFI boot option with that number.
If you don't need the virtualization technologies, your current configuration is probably fine. But if you need them, note that in UEFI RHEL 6.x systems, the grub.conf file is in a different location: it's in /boot/efi/EFI/redhat/grub.conf rather than /boot/grub/grub.conf. If necessary, you can just edit that file to add the "intremap=off" option on the kernel line.
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