[SOLVED] Access files from Proxmox installation on an external disk

[tiko]

Hello guys

yesterday I tried (and failed) to install a new, bigger disk in my Proxmox server and migrate everything over.

As a result, I re-installed Proxmox on the new disk clean and removed the old one (as it wouldn't boot with both disks inside).

Now, I would still like to recover the VMs (or just the configs or at the very least some files that some services running in Docker on one of the VMs stored locally). I have installed the disk in my main PC (running Linux) and I can see it and it's partitions using ```lsblk``` but it won't mount. I'm getting the error ```mount: /mnt/sda: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.```

I know that this isn't directly related to a running Proxmox installation but maybe someone can help me out or point me in the right direction.
Thanks a lot!

 

[Kingneutron]

You can't mount just sda, it has partitions on it. Post output of ' lsblk -f '

 

[tiko]

You can't mount just sda, it has partitions on it. Post output of ' lsblk -f '

```
NAME FSTYPE FSVER LABEL UUID FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
sda
|-sda1
|
|-sda2
| vfat FAT32 28EE-EA6A
`-sda3
LVM2_m LVM2 oUL1rp-HuID-HabR-PinU-wpl1-fxcI-NeViqU
sdb ext4 1.0 928fba0b-67f7-4bbc-b64e-08ad1554f3ba 710.5G 17% /mnt/sdb
zram0
[SWAP]
nvme1n1
ext4 1.0 20e811f9-2591-466e-b156-ee926c05b33d 48.1G 89% /mnt/nvme1
nvme0n1
|
|-nvme0n1p1
| vfat FAT32 8A2B-D361 3.9G 2% /boot
|-nvme0n1p2
| ext4 1.0 96ebb3ac-feee-4ffc-aa07-6d753b82869c 28.5G 48% /
|-nvme0n1p3
| ext4 1.0 2a3adac5-9728-4071-affb-befe4b5856f7 102.6G 66% /home
`-nvme0n1p4
swap 1 be68e3a8-8aa4-4062-ab34-02a86ae10a61 [SWAP]
```

 

[tiko]

You can't mount just sda, it has partitions on it. Post output of ' lsblk -f '

Thanks so this pointed me in the right direction. I can mount sda2, but not sda3 however and that's where the data is.

 

[Kingneutron]

sda3 is LVM, likely lvm-thin - so you would have to use LVM commands such as ' vgchange -a y ' to activate it and define it as storage in PVE

 

[tiko]

Thanks I managed to mount the root partition, but not the old VMs that I need. Also to clarify: this drive is not inside my Proxmox VE machine anymore, but my regular PC. So its also not running Proxmox OS, it's just like any other drive. I already installed a new drive and set it up in my Proxmox machine. I'm only trying to recover data such as docker compose files and stuff that the containers themselves produced (.PDFs, .json files) on one of the VMs. Even the VM configs I can skip and set up from scratch, I just really want that data.

 

[tiko]

So I plugged the disk into an empty PC and it boots up (I figured it may be easier to temporarily run two instances, back the old one up, move the stuff over and be done with it), but I have two issues. 1) during boot it shows an issue with starting nginx and 2) I don't have Internet (not even the leds next to the ethernet ports are flashing). Could that be due to it being simply swapped from another, different PC with probably a different NIC? How can I fix it?

 

[sw-omit]

Different PC's probably have different port-names, so first run ip a to both see if proxmox even detects any ethernet-devices and if so what their names are, so you can edit /etc/network/interfaces to match at least one of them and then /sbin/ifup them (or reboot)

 

[tiko]

Different PC's probably have different port-names, so first run ip a to both see if proxmox even detects any ethernet-devices and if so what their names are, so you can edit /etc/network/interfaces to match at least one of them and then /sbin/ifup them (or reboot)

'''ip a''' gives me lo, enp4s0 and vmbr0.

The '''interfaces''' file reads
'''auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

iface eno1 inet manual

auto vmbr0
iface vmbr0 inet static
address (my old local IP)
gateway (my router IP)
bridge-porte eno1
bridge-stp off
bridge-fd 0

iface wlp1s0 inet manual

source /etc/network/interfaces.d/*'''

So only lo (which is only on the machine itself and the bridge for the VMs appear I both commands if I interpret them correctly. I added the following lines as a result
'''auto enp4s0
iface enp4s0 inet dhcp''' and ran '''ifup enp4s0''' but that didn't help, still can't ping my router unfortunately.

 

[tiko]

However after running '''ip a''' again I could see that enp4s0 has an IP from my usual DHCP range now (but still can't ping the router or anything else).

 

[tiko]

After a reboot I'm making progress. I can ping devices in my network now, but not anything else (Debian servers for example).

However since I can access the web interface at newlocalip:8006 my problem is solved! Thank you very much @sw-omit !!!

 

[tiko]

OK maybe just one more question: since this is a different machine, I had to adjust ram for the VM I need to access to boot. No problem. I can access it via the browser terminal and see all my files - great! What I can't do however is access them (and copy them via scp for example) from my computer as the VM does not have network connection now. Naturally I tried the exact same steps but here I just get a seemingly endless list in the interfaces file.

 

[sw-omit]

You forgot to change the "bridge-port eno1" to "bridge-port enp4s0" that is why it didn't use the static IP
Once you change that (and reboot), your server will have a static IP, and because your VM should still be bound to the previous vmbr0 and have network through it now, it will also have/get internet/network access again I would guess

 

[tiko]

You forgot to change the "bridge-port eno1" to "bridge-port enp4s0" that is why it didn't use the static IP
Once you change that (and reboot), your server will have a static IP, and because your VM should still be bound to the previous vmbr0 and have network through it now, it will also have/get internet/network access again I would guess

This fixed everything. Thank you so much!