MAAS commissioning did not complete — how to debug?

[christian]

We are just getting started with MAAS.

Installed MAAS 3.6/stable as snap on a PowerEdge R620, and attempted commissioning of another PowerEdge R620 using PXE boot.

The enlisting image booted successfully on the machine, but didn’t get very far it seems before powering down the machine.

The machine appears in MAAS with state Commissioning, and I am unsure how to debug what happened.

On the MAAS host, I was hoping to see some log files, but /var/snap/maas/common/log/ is empty.

Any tips on how to proceed?

[billwear]

Hey, @christian, welcome to MAAS!

Click on the machine hyperlink in the machine list:

That should bring you to a screen like this:

Click on “Commissioning,” on the line “Summary Network …”, which should give you something like this:

What do you see there?

[christian]

Hi @billwear , thanks for following up.

Under Commissioning, the machine shows pending steps:

Additionally, it now shows a power error, with help text “Check power”.

Only a single entry under Logs:

Node changed status - From ‘New’ to ‘Commissioning’

[christian]

We tried with another server (a Dell PowerEdge R630), seemingly with the same result.

PXE boot happens, but after a short while the commissioning scripts seem to halt the system. (Signal is lost on the DRAC virtual console.)

Perhaps we are overlooking some essential prerequisites for using MAAS?

[christian]

Perhaps the issue is that the MAAS PXE network is an isolated network?
The subnet is configured without a gateway.

I was assuming that newly added machines would use the MAAS server as a proxy for any required downloads during commissioning.

If a gateway is required, we can set this up…

[christian]

Okay, after defining a gateway on the PXE subnet, the commissioning process went further.

Machine summary now says:

Error: Loading ephemeral

From the logs tab:

TIME	EVENT
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:43	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-power_state_change with frequency once-per-instance
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:43	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-final_message with frequency always
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:42	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-scripts_per_instance with frequency once-per-instance
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:42	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-ssh_authkey_fingerprints with frequency once-per-instance
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:42	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-install_hotplug with frequency once-per-instance
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:42	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-scripts_per_boot with frequency always
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:42	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-scripts_user with frequency once-per-instance
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:42	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-keys_to_console with frequency once-per-instance
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:42	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-reset_rmc with frequency once-per-instance
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:42	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-scripts_per_once with frequency once
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:42	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-scripts_vendor with frequency once-per-instance
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:22	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-package_update_upgrade_install with frequency once-per-instance
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:21	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-byobu with frequency once-per-instance
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:21	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-ntp with frequency once-per-instance
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:21	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-grub_dpkg with frequency once-per-instance
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:21	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-ssh_import_id with frequency once-per-instance
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:21	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-runcmd with frequency once-per-instance
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:21	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-apt_configure with frequency once-per-instance
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:21	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-locale with frequency once-per-instance
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:19	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-snap with frequency once-per-instance
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:17	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-set_passwords with frequency once-per-instance
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:16	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-ssh with frequency once-per-instance
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:16	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-update_etc_hosts with frequency always
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:16	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-set_hostname with frequency once-per-instance
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:16	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-resizefs with frequency always
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:16	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-seed_random with frequency once-per-instance
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:16	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-users_groups with frequency once-per-instance
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:16	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-rsyslog with frequency once-per-instance
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:16	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-update_hostname with frequency always
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:16	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-mounts with frequency once-per-instance
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:16	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ running config-growpart with frequency always
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:15	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ reading and applying vendor-data2
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:15	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ activating datasource
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:15	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ reading and applying vendor-data
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:13	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ attempting to read from cache [trust]
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:13	Node commissioning - ‘cloudinit’ searching for network data from DataSourceMAAS
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:06	Loading ephemeral
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:45:06	HTTP Request - /images/0b8cd26/ubuntu/amd64/ga-24.04/noble/stable/squashfs
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:44:55	Performing PXE boot
Mon, 01 Sep. 2025 20:44:55	PXE Request - commissioning

I don’t see any specific error related to Loading ephemeral.
Any hints on how we can proceed?

Thanks.

[r00ta]

@christian

Machine summary now says:

Error: Loading ephemeral

Where do you see this?

[christian]

The last thing we see on the console before the commissioning image starts shutting down is:

cloud-init (1545]: Cloud-init v. 25.1.4-@ubuntu0r24.04.1 finished
at Mon, 01 Sep 2025 21:19:47 +0000. Datasource DataSourceMAAS [http://10.1.0.254
:5248/MAAS/metadata/].
Up 44.19 seconds

Then services are stopped and the machine powers down:

systemd-remount-fs.service..mount Root and Kernel File Systems.
lvm2-monitor.service - Monusing dmeventd or progress polling.
Reached target shutdown.target - System Shutdown.
Reached target final.target - Late Shutdown Services.
Finished systemd-poweroff.service - System Power Off.
Reached target poweroff.target - System Power Off.
45.880948] reboot: Power down

[christian]

@r00ta

Where do you see this?

On the machine summary page in the MAAS UI:

[r00ta]

I believe something is messed up in your setup. You’d better to check the power credentials as well as the boot interface mac address.

Another thing you can try is to delete the machine from MAAS and power it on manually. It should PXE boot and pop up in the MAAS UI automatically. After that you should be able to commission it without problems

[christian]

Excellent — after deleting the machines and trying again, commissioning came through. Thank you!

If anyone finds this thread in the future: Make sure the DHCP offer on the PXE boot network has a working gateway.

I would perhaps suggest to add a note in the UI in the gateway field about the necessity of a working gateway. The field is optional, and made me think it wasn’t necessary.