Accessing Promox interface directly on host?

[leesteken]

Or you could also boot an ubuntu live or something and try to mount the original proxmox on the disk. Then you'll have access to the files in /etc/pve. But there shouldn't be a lot of relevant config in your case.

The directory /etc/pve/ is empty if you do not boot Proxmox (because it is a pseudo filesystem backed by a database). Which was why I tried to help to get a console login (SSH and web GUI were reported to be not working). If you know a way to access the (real) contents of /etc/pve/ by booting from a live DVD, please explain it in more detail. It would be really usefull to me and for other posts in this forum.

PS: It turns out it is possible. My apologies to @AKA

 

[tom]

I think not. Most of those settings are in /etc/pve/ which is empty unless you get the original Proxmox to boot and (as I said before) can login, SSH, or access the web GUI.
Maybe someone else knows how to inspect the database behind /etc/pve/?

See also https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/pve-admin-guide.html#chapter_pmxcfs

 

[AKA]

Ah, i knew that it was backed by pmxcfs, but not about the database.
Thanks for the clarification. Learned something today (again).

 

[bfred]

Thank you guys, my friend is back and I'll probably go tomorrow. More news soon.

Fred

 

[bfred]

Good and bad news... so we did manage to access the backup files and had some changes to restore them. Unfortunately there were only 2 of them since June, so not sure the backups were actually happening as my friend thought it was...

The first one needed to access some iso files also present on that 4TB disk on a pool-isos directory, then volume (from the error message at VM startup). So we restored the 2nd backup and then we're getting this error:
"TASK ERROR: IOMMU not present"

Any idea what this could be?

Thank you.

ps: I installed 6.x proxmox and the backups are coming from a 5.4 version. Would installing 5.4 work better then?
ps2: I also saved the promox config.db and other potentially interesting files from the 1TB disks.

 

[leesteken]

I assume you got that error when starting a VM with PCIe passthrough? This is not a Proxmox version thing (please keep using a supported version 6.2), it is a host configuration issue. Sounds like you either missed a step in enabling IOMMU in BIOS/UEFI or the Proxmox configuration. Maybe run update-initramfs -u, update-grub or pve-efiboot-tool to make sure your settings are applied?

 

[leesteken]

Did you manage to get it to work? Do you want someone to double check your configuration? You'll need to provide /etc/default/grub.cfg or /etc/kernel/cmdline, /etc/modules and any files you added to /etc/modprobe.d/.

 

[bfred]

Well... we struggled a bit more and my friend brought back an 'old' video card and planned to install Windows natively. For some reasons when he updated the bios it crashed it and now the machine no longer start. He is back to his 'main' city and planning to bring back the machine to the shop where he bought it to see how to fix that issue.