Installing on top of a pristine Debian 12 hangs at boot

[thib]

Hello Proxmox community,

I want to install Proxmox on a host with an encrypted disk, using LUKS and ext4. I noticed that the Proxmox installer didn't support it, so I installed a vanilla Debian 12 and followed the steps documented on the wiki to install Proxmox on top of it.

I could successfully install Proxmox, but as soon as I tried to restart the Proxmox host, it hang during the boot process quietly right after I unlocked my encrypted disk. I've changed the boot parameter from quiet to noquiet. I could see that the machine was stuck on Job networking.service/start running.

I've stumbled upon three threads (one, two, three) all pointing towards a potential conflict with ntp and more particularly ntpsec-ntpdate.

I installed a fresh vanilla Debian, did a full-upgrade and ran sudo apt purge ntp ntpsec ntpsec-ntpdate, which removed zero packages, before following the rest of the instructions.
sudo apt list --installed | grep -i ntp doesn't yield any result.

I've tried an install and did multiple reboots to understand when the problem arose, and it's happening on the reboot that follows sudo apt install proxmox-ve.

I've tried the same steps on a Debian with an unencrypted disk and stumble upon the same problem.

The two potential sources of errors I could think about right now are:

1. My Debian doesn't have a root user (I leave the password field blank during the Debian install), I exclusively rely on sudo to perform privileged operations
2. My machine gets a fixed IP, but it retrieves it via DHCP (my dhcpd assigns a fixed IP to my NIC's MAC address). I still added the IP in my /etc/hosts as asked in the wiki

I'd be grateful for a direction to dig in

 

[aabraham]

Hello Proxmox community,

I want to install Proxmox on a host with an encrypted disk, using LUKS and ext4. I noticed that the Proxmox installer didn't support it, so I installed a vanilla Debian 12 and followed the steps documented on the wiki to install Proxmox on top of it.

I could successfully install Proxmox, but as soon as I tried to restart the Proxmox host, it hang during the boot process quietly right after I unlocked my encrypted disk. I've changed the boot parameter from quiet to noquiet. I could see that the machine was stuck on Job networking.service/start running.

I've stumbled upon three threads (one, two, three) all pointing towards a potential conflict with ntp and more particularly ntpsec-ntpdate.

I installed a fresh vanilla Debian, did a full-upgrade and ran sudo apt purge ntp ntpsec ntpsec-ntpdate, which removed zero packages, before following the rest of the instructions.
sudo apt list --installed | grep -i ntp doesn't yield any result.

I've tried an install and did multiple reboots to understand when the problem arose, and it's happening on the reboot that follows sudo apt install proxmox-ve.

I've tried the same steps on a Debian with an unencrypted disk and stumble upon the same problem.

The two potential sources of errors I could think about right now are:

1. My Debian doesn't have a root user (I leave the password field blank during the Debian install), I exclusively rely on sudo to perform privileged operations
2. My machine gets a fixed IP, but it retrieves it via DHCP (my dhcpd assigns a fixed IP to my NIC's MAC address). I still added the IP in my /etc/hosts as asked in the wiki

I'd be grateful for a direction to dig in

Have you tried to mitigate either possible avenue by trying to add a root user? The "normal" Proxmox VE installer does allow you to set a static IP address during the installation process.

 

[thib]

I installed a fresh Debian with a root user, and configured my network as such

root@proximighty:/etc/network# cat interfaces
# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

source /etc/network/interfaces.d/*

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

root@proximighty:/etc/network# cat interfaces.d/enp2s0
auto enp2s0
iface enp2s0 inet static
    address 192.168.1.220
    gateway 192.168.1.254

After restarting the network I could check that I indeed have the desired IP

root@proximighty:/etc/network# systemctl restart networking
root@proximighty:/etc/network# ip -4 addr
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: enp2s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
    inet 192.168.1.220/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global enp2s0
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

At this point I restarted, just in case, and the machine rebooted just fine and kept its address.

I then installed proxmox-ve with

root@proximighty:~# apt install proxmox-ve

After installing proxmox-ve I restarted the networking service just to check everything was still alright, and it restarted successfully

root@proximighty:~# systemctl restart networking.service

At this point I can access Proxmox's web interface on my local network



I rebooted, and the Proxmox host successfully booted without choking on the networking service like before.

I have changed two things:

1. I created a root user when installing Debian, and performed the Proxmox install from the root user.
2. I created assigned a static address to my NIC enp2s0.

I will perform another install or two to check if both are required or if only one of the two does the job. Ideally Proxmox would work without those requirements because

1. Adding a root password doesn't bring much value, I'd rather be able to identify who performs what action
2. I am already certain that this host will always get the same address, because my dhcpd assigns a fixed ip to the MAC address of my NIC. I am aware that this is something I need to be careful about when setting up the bridged network.

 

[thib]

I've stumbled upon https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/root-or-not-root.137326/#post-611050 and it looks like the root user is a hard, so I'll just roll with it

 

[thib]

For the sake of completeness, I performed a new install without defining a root password, and with a static IP defined and it Just Worked™.