VMware ESXi error upon boot "Relocating modules and starting up the kernel"
Coming back from a 4-day weekend, I noticed the A/C had been turned off for the duration of the long weekend and the heat was around 80-82 degrees. The HP ProLiant DL185G5 was running but the system fans were running at full RPMs but the system itself was not responding.
I switched the KVM to that particular server and the monitor could not detect video and keyboard was not coaxing a response. I plugged in a separate monitor/mouse to make sure it wasn't the KVM switch, still no luck. I tried holding down the power button however the server was not shutting down upon holding the button in for 5+ seconds so I cut the power to the power array it was running on and turned it back on.
When I switched it back on, the monitor displayed the ProLiant logo and began to boot\ without error.
Upon booting ESXi, the configuration loads up to approximately 97% and then I am met with this message:
"Relocating the modules and starting the kernel..."
The system hangs right here. I researched this problem and it seems to commonly happen with ESXi 5.5 installations on particular systems. Most fixes imply it is a video adapter problem and running in headless mode will work. I tried this but to no avail. I also read it was due to my KVM monitor not supporting 1024 x 768 (it does not), but booting without any monitor plugged into the machine doesn't seem to work either.
Before I start an ESXi reinstallation, I was wondering if any actual ESXi gurus can lend a hand to a Microsoft Hyper-V guy and suggest any possible troubleshooting steps to take prior to what I've done/intend to do.
Are there any troubleshooting steps I can take to get around where ESXi hangs at Relocating the modules and starting the kernel?
Any help would be great.
I finally pulled the server out of the enclosure and began testing the hardware. After pulling out all of the memory modules other than 2, the server booted into esxi as normal. After systematically adding memory modules to the server, booting, checking if bootup was successful, I narrowed the issue down to a bad memory module. Leaving that particular module out, the esxi server booted correctly/successfully.
A lot of times it is a bug or incompatibility between VMWare and the hardware you are using but this doesn't mean it can't work.
What you do is hit "Shift + O" and add the following:
ignoreHeadless=TRUE
After you should login by SSH and make the change permanent (otherwise you will have to manually hit Shift + O and the above with each boot):
esxcfg-advcfg -k TRUE ignoreHeadless
Source: http://realtechtalk.com/Relocating_modules_and_starting_up_the_kernel_VMWare_ESXi_67_Error_and_Solution-2032-articles