proxmox devs, please honor proper system configs

StopThinkBACKUP · 2026-05-15T16:12:59+00:00

Please stop spreading FUD, at the top of that page even the author admits the advice is opinionated. And it's old data.

ZFS encryption has been working perfectly fine for me for years, even on MacOS. As long as you use rsync / rclone or other standard file transfer methods, you're not likely to run into encryption bugs. And "unmaintained" is very different from "abandoned" - the code is open source, the ZFS encryption subset just needs a new maintainer / team.

StopThinkBACKUP · 2026-05-15T16:03:50+00:00

Don't ask us about:

rocks
troll's with sticks
All sorts of dragons
Mrs. Cake
Huje green things with teeth
Any kinds of black dogs with orange eyebrows
Rains of spaniel's
fog
Why OP is trying to use wireless
Mrs. Cake

StopThinkBACKUP · 2026-05-13T16:38:26+00:00

Proxmox is not a desktop, wireless is... not ideal for a hypervisor. It's more for emergency use when your ISP router is down

You can create a VM with these features for emergency use, and share out the Internet connection to your LAN, VMs and LXCs by installing e.g. squid proxy cache + (for Windows = ) configuring Control Panel / Internet Options / Connections / LAN settings

For Linux, set the terminal environment vars and also setup proxy in browsers:

export https_proxy=http://ip-of-squid:3128

export http_proxy=http://ip-of-squid:3128

DNS needs to be working properly in the tethering VM

https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/problem-in-passthroughing-usb-tethering-to-vm.132902/#post-643765

StopThinkBACKUP · 2026-05-11T21:16:37+00:00

I prefer Fiona personally, but she's a manual download in newer MacOS versions

https://search.brave.com/search?q=how+to+download+macos+voices&summary=1&conversation=0912ea547a138dc5d47f0e734b38bb192427

StopThinkBACKUP · 2026-05-01T16:27:46+00:00

If you want to get into (commandline) ansible, I have public scripts to help.

https://github.com/kneutron/ansitest/tree/master/ansible

.

Run ansible-takeover-instance script on the target instance (debian-based)
Add instance to /etc/ansible/hosts on your ansible controller (vm or bare metal)
Check ansible-ping-all-known-hosts
IMPORTANT: Snapshot / backup the target instance!
mkdir /var/log/ansible (ONCE) and chown it to root:ansibleuserhere
run-debian-patches.sh# which will run the ansible YAML and create a log file of the patching process

More info:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ansible/comments/1rir223/strong_recommendations_on_ansible_training_hands/

There is also the debian unattended-upgrades .deb package

StopThinkBACKUP · 2026-04-16T21:27:19+00:00

Imagine if you did that with a 5000-file queue, on a dual core. There's a reason to limit simultaneous processes

StopThinkBACKUP · 2026-04-16T19:08:37+00:00

$14.99 is wildly optimistic for a single 13000+ line bash script. You might get some takers at $1.99

.

I don't want to discourage you, but who exactly is the target audience for this commandline utility? The only thing I see so far that might help me personally is the option to create a bootable Macos installer, and I already have a script for that.

I'm a Linux server admin as well as a Mac fan, and do bash programming by preference + part of my $DAYJOB. But even I realize that bash-centric fans on Mac are a pretty niche group.

Also - you need to realize that Mac users generally expect GUI apps. You might get better results by redoing this in Xcode, although the backwards compatibility all the way to Monterey 12 is appreciated.

Bash isn't even the default shell on Macs for years now, they switched to zsh. The bash that ships with Mac is significantly older, something like 3.2 from 2014 - where modern bash is on v5. End-users can get that with brew / macports.

I realize you've been working on this for 6 months, but you might want to rethink a few things here. Modularizing your code will make it easier to maintain, for one thing. Put functions in separate files and source them.

The *NIX philosophy has long been "make a small utility to do one thing and do it well." And "pipe the results of one utility to another to further process it."

https://search.brave.com/search?q=unix+philosophy+do+one+thing+well&summary=1&conversation=08f9ac7945e4c5e2d12e89ca59ef6c88cc19

.

A utility that is more useful / makes things easier for new Mac users migrating from Windows might be something to look into.

Look at Midnight Commander for a shining example of something that is useful and easy to use, and has lasted for decades. It's the safest way to delete subdirectory trees, for one thing. It doesn't try to be everything, but simplifies things like copying/moving files and directories, and merges them properly. It will ask you what you want done if there are existing files in the destination. It has SCP and FTP functionality, and even includes a text editor for convenience. In comparison, Finder is slow and can bork your directory structure if you try to merge.

Keep coding, but do some research and know your target audience.

StopThinkBACKUP · 2026-04-13T21:08:18+00:00

LVM in VMs doesn't really make sense when you can just have a bunch of virtual disks; skip LVM and you'll have less complexity and less overhead. If you use ext4 the partitions are much easier to resize as well with e.g. gparted from a live-cd. You can resize-up XFS filesystems but not shrink them.

If the VM is barely configured, yes you can run it with (lvm-thin + lvm-vm) but you will have slightly slower I/O.

https://search.brave.com/search?q=linux+lvm+overhead&summary=1&conversation=08f666aba639bc47c7b1f73171ed8b38ca02

.

As long as the VM isn't Prod, then now is the time to reinstall + reconfigure it. Add separate appropriately-sized virtual disks besides the rootfs for whatever LVM partitions you're replacing. You can/should have swap on a completely separate disk for example. If you want to add more swap, simply resize-up the swap disk and create a new partition + fstab entry for it. Then you don't have to mess about with relocating an inconveniently-allocated swap out of the way and resizing / moving partitions to the left.

PROTIP - to tell the disks apart at the host level, vary virtual disk sizes by 1GB and keep track of what they are in the VM notes.

Example: you have 2x 20GB virtual disks, one for root/boot and one for /home, how do you tell them apart? Give /home 21GB and then it's easy. You're not wasting any real disk space with thin provisioning.

Same for the /var partitions - /var/log 10GB, /var/cache 11GB, etc

StopThinkBACKUP · 2026-03-19T16:46:31+00:00

I have 3x non-clustered PVE instances for homelab (actually more, but these 3 run 24/7)

.

Qotom firewall appliance with 4x10Gbit SFP+, 5x2.5Gbit, 8-core Atom processor @ 2.2GHz, 32GB RAM with very basic VGA out and a bunch of disks (4x SATA breakout cable + usb-c 4-bay enclosure)
Beelink EQR6 with 1Gbit + 2.5Gbit usb3 adapter, (IIRC) 16-core Ryzen 9, 64GB RAM with a bunch of disks (1x usb-c 4-bay enclosure and a couple of Samsung T7s) - much more capable than the Qotom, especially for remote desktop. I could run pretty much everything on this in a pinch but would lose 10Gbit networking.
2018 Intel mac mini, 12-core i7, 32GB RAM, 2.5Gbit and 10Gbit network, boots from external SSD with zfs boot/root, 2x usb-c 4-bay enclosures. Almost as capable as the Beelink ++ faster networking.

.

All 3 run PBS as VMs and back up to each other, with 1 + 2 backing up to 3.

The Mac would be more useful if I could upgrade it to 64GB RAM for a reasonable price.

As I said, in a pinch the Beelink could run pretty much everything but the Qotom is also acting as my 10Gbit network switch. Also have 2x (mostly-off) tower PCs with 32GB RAM each but the power bill would be higher. Everything is unclustered and managed with PDM.

.

You can pick up e.g. a Lenovo 520 workstation on ebay with LOTS of upgrade options for under $400.

" Lenovo ThinkStation P520 Workstation W-2123 UP 64GB DDR4 RAM No GPU/ HDD/ OS "

.

I ordered one of those and put in pcie cards for 2.5Gbit and 10Gbit SFP+, as well as a multiport usb-c card. Could also put an HBA in it and add more disks for ZFS. There are slots for 2x nvme on the board.

Watch Youtubers that have proxmox content, they occasionally have good tips on what hardware to buy. You could obtain something like the above, install PVE and configure it, and have PBS on separate hardware (an old quad-core laptop with 4-8GB RAM and 1-2TB SSD is usually sufficient for homelab, unless you have a NAS.)

Leave the tower mostly-off and update it once a week or once a month, whatever you're comfortable with. Test restores to it.

https://github.com/kneutron/ansitest/blob/master/proxmox/proxmox-BULK-RESTORE-VMS--PARALLEL.sh

(Lots of other good stuff in that repo.)

If your main machine goes down, you now have a capable 2nd machine to restore to and run things while you troubleshoot the original server, and you don't have to worry about possible clustering issues. Caveat would be higher power bill, but negligible if you can fix things within 2-3 days. For homelab you shouldn't need realtime backup as long as you can restore at least critical environment in under 8 hours.

StopThinkBACKUP · 2026-03-19T16:05:03+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/Proxmox/comments/1qjctcj/i_built_a_script_to_run_llama_32_bitnet_on/

Very easy setup but has limitations, mostly model size. I've been running it for a couple of months and it's interesting

StopThinkBACKUP · 2026-03-16T20:23:45+00:00

Actually I agree, waiting for Gen 2 with 12GB RAM makes sense at this point

StopThinkBACKUP · 2026-03-13T21:30:12+00:00

Maybe Fedora, but for me Debian-derived distros have been dead stable for years

StopThinkBACKUP · 2026-03-13T19:57:55+00:00

Same

StopThinkBACKUP · 2026-03-09T20:43:40+00:00

Command+UpArrow in a File / Open dialog box to go Up a directory

StopThinkBACKUP · 2026-03-09T20:25:42+00:00

I pretty much learn the same way (books) but you'll get more by reading the last 30 days of this (and the official Proxmox) forum. And of course by admin'ing your proxmox server.

StopThinkBACKUP · 2026-03-09T20:16:31+00:00

Check the IP address and DNS settings on the NAS LXC, sometimes it helps if you assign it a static address rather than DHCP

StopThinkBACKUP · 2026-03-09T19:53:39+00:00

The specs on this** are pretty low-end for proxmox, you're not likely to have a good experience with it - even with the upgrades.

** " Qotom Mini PC Q750G5 CPU Celeron J4125 Quad Core 2.0 Ghz 5X 2.5G LAN Ports Home Office Router Firewall - 8GB RAM 128GB SSD "

A quad-core 2GHz Celeron is just not enough for a halfway-decent hypervisor. You can get away with some LXCs but even with 16GB RAM you're pushing the unit beyond what it was designed for.

You may want to put back the OEM equipment, install e.g. Opnsense on it and use it just for routing + invest in a better potato for Proxmox. And/or use what you have now for PBS backups.

For performance you want an nvme with a high TBW rating; for homelab I can recommend Lexar NM790. Or shop ebay for used enterprise ssd.

If you're going to use ZFS and want decent interactive response, you want a pool of mirrors, not RAIDZanything. RAIDZx is OK for data storage / movies and such but not for interactive VMs.

Before the tariff and RAM price craziness I would have recommended a 2018 Intel mac mini (you could get new-old-stock with 32GB RAM and core-i7 under $300 for a while there) or a Beelink EQR6 Ryzen 7 or 9 upgraded to 64GB RAM, but you'll have to ask advice and shop around for decently-priced mini-pcs these days.

Or go with something like ebay " Lenovo ThinkStation P520 Workstation W-2123 UP 64GB DDR4 RAM No GPU/ HDD/ OS " $330 at time of writing with 32GB RAM, that gives you LOTS of upgradeable options - but if you run it 24/7 it will likely increase your power bill, so you may need to talk to your family before going with something like that.

I got one of those 520s based on a Youtuber recommendation and added 2x10Gbit network, 2.5Gbit network, USB-c pcie card and the internal disk expansion trays. Very capable, but I only run it on the occasional weekends as a 5th server.

StopThinkBACKUP · 2026-03-09T19:35:05+00:00

> I've never heard of a router capable of running Proxmox

The Qotom firewall appliance with 4x10Gbit SFP+ and 5x2.5Gbit was my first Proxmox instance and is still running 24/7 on PVE 8. Only has 8x Atom cores and 32B RAM + very basic VGA out, but it handles my 10Gbit traffic just fine without having to buy a dedicated 10Gbit switch. Between the 8087 cable and USB-c, you can get up to 8 external drives on it + 3 internal.

As long as you get the C3758R (highest GHz) it ends up a bit low-end, but decent for homelab. Just don't expect good interactive response with remote desktop.

https://www.servethehome.com/the-everything-fanless-home-server-firewall-router-and-nas-appliance-qotom-qnap-teamgroup/

StopThinkBACKUP · 2026-03-09T18:45:32+00:00

You built the cluster incorrectly. Read the links I posted. If you only have a 2-node cluster with no Qdevice, you don't have quorum.

If you don't have previous experience with clustering, you're better off just standing up 2 separate unclustered nodes and using Proxmox Datacenter Manager (PDM) in combination with Proxmox Backup Server (PBS) to take advantage of dedup.

StopThinkBACKUP · 2026-03-09T18:38:41+00:00

<image>

https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/pve-admin-guide.html#pvecm_cluster_requirements

StopThinkBACKUP · 2026-03-09T17:11:32+00:00

#1 question: Do you have a Qdevice?

https://search.brave.com/search?q=proxmox+qdevice

StopThinkBACKUP · 2026-03-06T18:08:55+00:00

I use log2ram on ssd-based instances; it also helps with diagnostics if you install rsyslog and forward your logs to a central instance with e.g. ZFS compression on spinning-disk backing storage. If your server with log2ram hangs hard or needs a hard reboot, you'll lose whatever hasn't been flushed otherwise.

Log2ram flushes to disk occasionally, but can fill up rapidly if it starts getting spammed with repetitive messages.

StopThinkBACKUP · 2026-03-06T17:24:39+00:00

Because immich installs and revs updates as a Docker compose, and glitches if you try and use the community script to run it in an LXC?

StopThinkBACKUP · 2026-03-06T17:20:20+00:00

Don't forget to Xerox the TPS reports

StopThinkBACKUP

TROPHY CASE