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Proxmox Virtual Environment

Set up

Windows VM

  • How to Unlock a Proxmox VM. Then reboot pve.
  • For Windows installation, if we are dropped at the EFI shell, we can use reset -s to shut down the system.
  • Windows VirtIO Drivers & Creating Windows virtual machines using virtIO drivers from fedoraproject.org
  • (Videos) Launching a Windows VM in Proxmox (Win10), Virtualize Windows 10 with Proxmox VE (Win10)
  • In OS tab, be sure to choose the right Guest OS Version; if we choose (10/2016/2019), we will select 2019 in the driver folder locations OR if choose (11/2022), we will select the corresponding driver folders. This affects the later steps when we select the drivers to install.
  • There are 3 drivers we shall install.
    • vioscsi\win10\amd64\vioscsi.inf (we need it in order to see the virtual disk)
    • NetKVM\w10\amd64\netkvm.inf (in order to get network working, this can be installed later from Windows Device Manager)
    • Balloon\win10\amd64\balloon.inf (memory balloon driver, this can be installed later)
    • Guest agent (Qemu-guest-agent). Make sure we have installed all missing drivers from Device Manager. We can go to virtual machine Summary tab to check if the IPs shows the Windows IP.
  • Balloon driver
    • If balloon driver is not installed on Windows Virtual Machines then memory metrics will not be collected for windows virtual machine. Steps to Install balloon driver on Windows Virtual Machines
    • A balloon driver is a component of the VMware Tools package of drivers and utilities that help virtual machines (VMs) run better. The purpose of the balloon driver is to take physical RAM from a VM and release it back to the VMkernel. This reclaim usually happens when the ESXi server is short on RAM and this specific VM is the loser in the competition for physical RAM. How the balloon driver helps VM performance
  • Change network to use a static IP.
  • Enable RDP.
  • (Related to Audio device). Change Hardware - Display - SPICE (instead of default). W/o doing that, we'll get an error "Can't start vms with audio device(SPICE) in pve 7.3 "
  • For Audio, we need to add it to the hardware list (driver=spice is OK). PS: audio works when I tested using the Microsoft Remote Desktop app on mac. It does not work when I use Remmina app from Ubuntu initially but if I change the sound setting (from "Off" to "Local" in the "Advanced" tab) it works.
  • Windows 11 (10/21/2021). We can still use 10/2016/2019 for the Version selection. When I check the Task Manager (Windows 11 Pro, Version 21H2, OS build 22000.675), it shows 1.8/4GB was used and 101 out of 127GB is free.
    • OS: version 10/2016/2019
    • System: BIOS: OVMF (UEFI). Machine - q35. Add TPM. Qemu Agent. SCSI: VirtIO SCCI
    • HD: Bus-VirtIO Block. Disk size >=32
    • CPU: Cores >=2. Type - Host
    • Memory
    • Network: VirtIO
    • After finish, adding CD/DVD - VirtIO iso
    • Install: Browse VirtIO disk. AMD - win10. Next, browse NetKVM - win10.
    • After reboot. Continue to answer questions. Reboot
    • File manager. VirtIO disk. Run virtio-win-gt-x64.exe.
    • Right click on Start. Device Manager. All clean.
  • Windows 11 VM / Office 2019 install error 0-2054
  • Windows 11 virtual machine on Proxmox 8/19/2022
  • AMD/NVIDIA GPU Passthrough in Window 11 - Proxmox Guide 7/22/2022

Mac VM

Upgrade

Install on Debian

Installing Proxmox VE 7.x on Debian Bullseye for custom partition layout (video)

Cheat sheet

https://github.com/vzamora/Proxmox-Cheatsheet

SSD/HDD choices

Home Server

My Proxmox Home Server Walk-Through

ZFS, NFS

  • ZFS (Zettabyte File System): A file system developed by Sun Microsystems for use in their Solaris operating system. It is now available on many other operating systems.
  • Yes, ZFS can be used without LVM. Even on a workstation, you could use ZFS to pool your disks into a single large pool of storage rather than keep them separate or rely on LVM. How to Install and Use ZFS on Ubuntu (and Why You’d Want To)
  • ZFS vs RAID-0
    • ZFS is not like RAID-0. RAID-0 is a type of RAID that stripes data across multiple disks without any redundancy. If one disk fails, all data is lost. ZFS, on the other hand, provides data redundancy and checksumming to avoid silent data corruption.
  • ZFS cons
    • XFS vs ZFS vs Linux Raid. ZFS is a very CPU-intensive filesystem. This can lead to slower performance on systems with limited CPU resources.
  • Proxmox installation.
    • The default file system is ext4. ZFS is an alternative to ext4.
    • The Proxmox VE installer, which partitions the local disk(s) with ext4, XFS, BTRFS (technology preview), or ZFS and installs the operating system.
    • The main advantage of ZFS over EXT4 is guaranteed data integrity . ZFS protects your data by enabling volume management on filesystem level. EXT4 does not offer volume management on the filesystem level
  • ZFS vs EXT4: Best File System for Linux and Other Operating Systems
  • RAM

Users, groups

Create Users, Groups and Assign Permissions in Proxmox VE

Login timeout

Proxmox GUI Session Timeout. The login ticket is valid for 2 hours and gets refreshed every 15 minutes.

Login in browser

Display, copy-and-paste

  • noVNC is still a type of VNC.
    • noVNC is an open source VNC client that runs well in any modern browser including mobile browsers (iOS and Android). It is both a VNC client JavaScript library as well as an application built on top of that library. noVNC follows the standard VNC protocol, but unlike other VNC clients it does require WebSockets support.
    • Kali In The Browser (noVNC)
  • VNC Client Access
  • By default, Proxmox assigns a standard VGA device for BIOS-based virtual machines and a QXL device for UEFI-based virtual machines.
  • For Windows OS, we can use the default (noVNC)
  • For Linux OS, SPICE is better (clipboard in noVNC does not work). Screen can be scaled as we want. Copy and paste still does not work after I installed spice-vdagent. virt-manager Spice copy paste doesn't work. But the copy-paste function works in Debian VM launched by Virtual Machine Manager (actually the menu bar are different. One is called 'Remote Viewer'/remote-viewer and the other embedded viewer from /usr/bin/qemu-system-x86_64 is called 'QEMU/KVM').
    • (Debian11 and antiX VMs) When I use "ps -ef | grep spice", I got /usr/sbin/spice-vdagentd & /usr/bin/spice-vdagent as shown in the screenshot here for the VM launched by QEMU/KVM. But I did not see /usr/bin/spice-vdagent in the VM launched by Proxmox.
    • B/C a hint from above, I found a solution here. After I run /usr/bin/spice-vdagent , copy-and-paste works!
    • In summary, 1) sudo apt install vdagent 2) /usr/bin/spice-vdagent
    • (Fedora 35). Copy-and-paste works out of box (vdagentd & vdagent are automatically running in the background). Maybe it's because Fedora is a Red Hat based Linux OS.
    • How to add spice-vdagent to VirtIO VM?
Tool Pros Cons
noVNC It is a lighter approach, as it has less services required (less overhead), which allows for a quick “one off connection” solution. It is an open source VNC client JavaScript library as well as an application built on top of that library. It runs well in any modern browser including mobile browsers (iOS and Android). The clipboard does not work. Audio device?
Spice presents the guest windowing system with an X driver that captures X protocol operations directly. This means that Spice can provide better performance than VNC. It requires more services than noVNC.

Sound/audio and SPICE

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Protocol_for_Independent_Computing_Environments
  • SPICE (Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments) is a communication protocol used for virtual environments. It provides a remote display system, allowing users to view a virtualized desktop on their local machine and interact with it using keyboard and mouse input.
    • SPICE is often used in conjunction with virtualization platforms such as QEMU/KVM, and is widely used in enterprise and cloud computing environments.
  • SPICE (Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments) does not have any direct alternatives as it is a specific communication protocol used for remote display in virtualized environments. However, there are other remote display protocols such as RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol), VNC (Virtual Network Computing), and NX (NoMachine's Remote X protocol) that can be used as alternatives to SPICE in certain situations. Nonetheless, the most suitable protocol for a specific use case depends on various factors such as the nature of the application, the network bandwidth available, the desired level of graphics performance, and more.
  • https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/SPICE
    • Add sound hardware to VM
    • Change Display from default to Spice
    • (For Lubuntu) sudo apt install spice-vdagent spice-webdavd
  • Choose SPICE when launching the VM, it will download a vv file.
  • In ubuntu, "remote-viewer" will be used to open the vv file when we double clicked the downloaded file. Proxmox SPICE console apt install virt-viewer

Remote Desktop through browser

Guest agent

This affects whether we can see IP in the Summary option.

  • For Ubuntu VM,
    • Proxmox -> VM -> Options -> QEMU Guest Agent. Check both options: Use QEMU Guest Agent & Run guest-trim after a disk move or VM migration.
    • On Ubuntu VM,
    apt-get install qemu-guest-agent
  • For Windows VM,
    • Proxmox -> VM -> Options -> QEMU Guest Agent. Check the 1st option is enough.

can't shutdown a VM

Use the command qm unlock XXX 

qm stop XXX
# can't lock file '/var/lock/qemu-server/lock-996.conf' - got timeout

qm unlock XXX
qm stop XXX

Now we can go back to proxmox GUI to remove the vm.

But if the "qm unlock" does not work, we can use the kill command. See Proxmox can’t stop VM – How we fix it! 

ps aux | grep "/usr/bin/kvm -id VMID"
kill -9 PID  # VM will stop

Errors and solutions

Removing ProxMox Subscription Notice

Network

Ethernet port

How many Ethernet ports do I need on my Proxmox?

Linux bridge commands

An introduction to Linux bridging commands and features

LXC

Pi hole

Installing Pi-Hole inside a Proxmox LXC Container. 2GB disk, 1 CPU core, and 256MB of memory. The memory usage is pretty flat around 53MB according to Proxmox gui). I am using Debian 11 template. 

apt update
apt upgrade
nano /etc/sysctl.conf # disable IPv6 
reboot
apt install curl
curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash
pihole -a -p # change to a simpler password

SMART and wearout

I saw the wearout is 99% on my host disk (240GB Kingston SSD). I cannot delete a VM. If I use the command "qm destroy XXX", it shows "Unable to create output file '/var/log/pve/tasks/1/UPID:pvv....:qmdestroy:108:root@pam:' - Read-only file system". The host disk uses only 37% of storage on root partition. The solution: reboot Proxmox.

Storage Drive

  • Format a disk Prepare the drive 
    fdisk /dev/nvme0n1
 : p
 : d
 :   ENTER
 : p
 : w
 : n ENTER ENTER ENTER
 : p
 : w
 : q
    Now to go GUI, pve -> Disks -> Directory -> Create Dir.
  • lsblk, df -h and more 
    # lsblk
NAME         MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda            8:0    0 223.6G  0 disk 
├─sda1         8:1    0  1007K  0 part 
├─sda2         8:2    0   512M  0 part /boot/efi
└─sda3         8:3    0 223.1G  0 part 
  ├─pve-swap 253:0    0     8G  0 lvm  [SWAP]
  └─pve-root 253:1    0 215.1G  0 lvm  /
nvme0n1      259:0    0 465.8G  0 disk 
└─nvme0n1p1  259:1    0 465.8G  0 part /mnt/pve/vm1

# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev                  7.7G     0  7.7G   0% /dev
tmpfs                 1.6G  1.3M  1.6G   1% /run
/dev/mapper/pve-root  214G   30G  176G  15% /
tmpfs                 7.8G   40M  7.7G   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs                 5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
/dev/nvme0n1p1        458G  2.0G  433G   1% /mnt/pve/vm1
/dev/sda2             511M  328K  511M   1% /boot/efi
/dev/fuse             128M   16K  128M   1% /etc/pve
tmpfs                 1.6G     0  1.6G   0% /run/user/0

# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 465.76 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Disk model: WDC WDS500G2B0C                         
...
Device         Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1  2048 976773134 976771087 465.8G Linux filesystem

Disk /dev/sda: 223.57 GiB, 240057409536 bytes, 468862128 sectors
Disk model: KINGSTON SA400S3
...
Device       Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sda1       34      2047      2014  1007K BIOS boot
/dev/sda2     2048   1050623   1048576   512M EFI System
/dev/sda3  1050624 468862094 467811471 223.1G Linux LVM

Disk /dev/mapper/pve-swap: 8 GiB, 8589934592 bytes, 16777216 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

Disk /dev/mapper/pve-root: 215.07 GiB, 230925795328 bytes, 451026944 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

# pvdisplay
  --- Physical volume ---
  PV Name               /dev/sda3
  VG Name               pve
  PV Size               <223.07 GiB / not usable <3.57 MiB
  Allocatable           yes (but full)
  PE Size               4.00 MiB
  Total PE              57105
  Free PE               0
  Allocated PE          57105
  PV UUID               4taiYE-DDJa-4UdU-v3QY-kd2s-7r5i-shhJ7Q
  • Benchmark HD speed 
    hdparm -t --direct /dev/nvme0n1p1
hdparm -t --direct /dev/sda3
  • lvresize vs lvextend. lvextend can only increase the size of a volume, whereas lvresize can increase or reduce it. Increase the size of an LVM logical volume.
  • How to Manage and Use LVM (Logical Volume Management) in Ubuntu

Storage type

https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Storage

local vs local-lvm

  • What is the difference between “local” and “local-lvm” on Proxmox VE (PVE)? Which to use? Why use local/local-lvm?
  • local-lvm is actually a lvm-thin volume .
  • local: The path is /var/lib/vz and vz is a folder. 
    root@pve:~# tree -d /var/lib/vz/
/var/lib/vz/
├── dump
├── images
└── template
    ├── cache
    └── iso

6 directories
  • local-lvm: This is not a directory. In a simple way, lvm-thin storage - like a physical hard drive (image), /dev/pve/vm-100-disk-1 like a partition on that drive. local-lvm path? 
    root@udoo:~# ls -l /dev/pve
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Jul 18 17:40 root -> ../dm-1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Jul 18 17:40 swap -> ../dm-0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Jul 18 18:36 vm-100-disk-0 -> ../dm-6
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Jul 18 18:41 vm-101-disk-0 -> ../dm-7
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Jul 18 18:20 vm-102-disk-0 -> ../dm-8
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Jul 18 18:54 vm-103-disk-0 -> ../dm-9
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 8 Jul 19 11:16 vm-104-disk-0 -> ../dm-10

lvm-thin

  • Storage: LVM Thin. LVM-thin, or thin provisioning, is a feature of LVM that allows you to create logical volumes with a virtual size that can be larger than the available storage. Blocks in a standard LVM logical volume are allocated when the volume is created, but blocks in a thin-provisioned volume are allocated as they are written. This means that you can create a thin-provisioned volume with a large virtual size, but it will only consume physical storage space as data is written to it1. This can be useful for managing storage more efficiently and cost-effectively.

Single drive

If we have only one drive, we may like to delete local-lvm and then increase the space in local. See How to install Proxmox VE 7.0. Go to Node -> summary -> HD space to verify. 

lvremove /dev/pve/data -y
lvresize -l +100%FREE /dev/pve/root
resize2fs /dev/mapper/pve-root

Add a new storage

Passthrough a USB or a physical drive in VM

Upgrade storage

Resizing after copy to bigger SSD my experience

Shared storage

SAMBA/CIF

Mount a Network Share in a Linux Container

Plex

Proxmox LXC Intel Quick Sync Transcode for Plex

Proxmox increase vm disk size

Clone (full clone vs convert to template)

Backup and restore VM

  • Backup and Restore from proxmox wiki. How to Backup Proxmox? Proxmox Backup and Recovery Methods.
  • How to backup and transfer a Proxmox VM to another Proxmox Node
    • Backup file has a timestamp on the filename and it is saved to /var/lib/vz/dump if it is saved in local (pve) or /mnt/pve/vm1/dump if it is saved on my vm1 storage.
    • The backup file can be seen on the GUI under $STORAGE (pve) -> Backups where $STORAGE is the storage name (e.g. local). From there, it has a 'Restore' button where we can restore it with an option to enter a new VM ID.
    • If the backup file is saved in local (pve), the backup file can also be seen under the VM|Backup menu.
    • The backup VM has a filename vzdump-qemu-$ID-$Date-$Time.vma.zst (compression by default). If we select the file, we can click the 'Restore' button to restore the VM.
    • After restoring, the new VM has a new ID but the VM name is still the same as the original one (so we can only use the ID to distinguish the VMs). Therefore, if we use the static IP in a VM, it is better to shut down the old one before we Start the new VM.
    • If we remove/delete the restored VM, the backup file is not affected (not deleted).
    • It seems backup + restore = clone.
    • If we back up a container, the backup file name has a format vzdump-lxc-$ID-$Date-$Time.tar.zst.
    • The backup speed is quick. Using the "top" command it shows it is the command zstd running for the backup.
  • Restore Proxmox VM from backup – Here are the steps to recover your VM
  • VM ID:
    • One biggest problem is I cannot tell what the backup file is from the file name after I back up the files to another location. The backup file however contains VM ID on its filename. That is the only clue we can use to find out what the VM is on the original Proxmox.
    • The Backup Notes is useful actually. In the backup folders on Proxmox, it also create *.notes files if we create it on the GUI.
    • Maybe it's useful for me to create a text file along with the backup files to show what the files represents.
  • Question: why sometimes my backup files are not shown on GUI.
    Ans: the default backup storage is "local". We need to toggle that from the GUI. PS: the storage we changed cannot be memorized.
  • Schedule backup: Backup in Proxmox VE with screenshots.
  • Proxmox VE Full Course: Class 10 - Backups and Snapshots
    • Snapshots (for testing someting). PS: No need to stop the VM. Taking snapshots and rollback is fast. It always saves the snapshots on the same (?) disk.
    • Backup. PS: No need to stop the VM. It will let you choose where to back up and other options. Mode: Snapshot, Suspend, Stop.
    • Automatic backup. Datacenter -> Backup -> Add (Create Backup Job).
  • lxc container backup suspend mode exit code 23. LXC backup failed - code 23. Choose Backup Mode from snapshot to stop. The LXC will auto-restart after backup is finished.

Setup a MediaWiki Server

How to Setup a MediaWiki 1.31 Server on a Debian 10 Proxmox container

Multiple node cluster

Remove a node

# shell in the node we want to keep
pvecm nodes
pvecm delnode [NODE_NAME]
pvecm nodes
  • The instruction asks to power off the node we want to remove before calling "pvecm delnode". If I follow it, I got an error cluster not ready - no quorum?. The solution at here works (without to reboot the main node). However, the 2nd node still showed the 1st node:(
pvecm nodes
pvecm expected 1 # assume my cluster expected 1 node after I removed extras
pvecm delnode udoo
# Could not kill node (error = CS_ERR_NOT_EXIST)
# Killing node 2
pvecm nodes
# Now only 1 node is left

Migration VM

High Availability

Proxmox VE Full Course: Class 16 - High Availability

USB passthrough

Thin client

Raspberry Pi THIN CLIENT for Proxmox VMs

Android app

Proxmox Virtual Environment

Android emulator and nested virtualization

Is there a guide to getting Android x86 installed on Proxmox?

Security

Am I compromised? If you need true remote access, set up a VPN that you connect to on your router.

Error 401: no ticket

Empty browser's cache. It works.

Check SMB Share availability before starting a VM

add a startup delay to your VMs and CTs if this is the only time you have this issue. Then set up a script in crontab to run @reboot that just waits x seconds, then remounts the share.

Cloud image, Cloud-init

Proxmox vs. ESXi

Proxmox Backup Server/PBS

proxmox-backup-client

Remote machine management

Self-Hosted Remote Desktop Connection Alternatives

Remotely

RPort

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