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Proxmox Virtual Environment

Set up

Windows VM

Mac VM

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

First time installation of PVE - SSD/HDD choices

Home Server

My Proxmox Home Server Walk-Through

Login timeout

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

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.
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
  • 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?

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

  • Add additional drive in proxmox | How to?
  • How to add storage to Proxmox
  • How To Add External USB Storage To Proxmox
  • easiest way to mount USB drive Proxmox 7?
  • Add a new physical hard drive to Proxmox VE 4x 5x
  • Add Storage Drive To Proxmox 7
  • 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.
  • Storage: LVM Thin
  • 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

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.

Mount a Network Share in a Linux Container

How to mount a Network Share in a Linux Container under Proxmox

Setup a MediaWiki Server

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

Multiple node cluster

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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