Accidentally deleted /etc/pve - and I don't have a backup

[David Fisher]

I accidentally deleted /etc/pve and I have no backup. Can anyone guide me in getting up and running again?

The disk image files are still in place and I have copies of vm conf files from /etc/pve/nodes/proxmox/qemu-server. But apart from that I have nothing. Re-installing would be a major pain! Help!

pve-manager/6.4-4/337d6701 (running kernel: 5.4.106-1-pve)

 

[entilza]

Are your VMs on the same disk? This is why its best to have prox independent on a small SSD.

 

[entilza]

Could you install a second temporary drive.. install pve with same host name/network settings, then backup /etc/pve from it and restore it back on the main.

 

[leesteken]

Could you install a second temporary drive.. install pve with same host name/network settings, then backup /etc/pve from it and restore it back on the main.

The directory /etc/pve is stored inside a database, and to restore those files can only be done from a working Proxmox. So it depends whether the original Proxmox will still boot. Otherwise, maybe copying the database from the new to the old Proxmox might work. Sounds more difficult than just using the newly installed Proxmox and copying the VM configurations. Just make sure not to delete the VM virtual disks during new installation!

 

[entilza]

The database is located here, if you copy this from the new install it may help?

/var/lib/pve-cluster/config.db

 

[ph0x]

May I ask how one accidentally deletes a whole directory?

 

[Dunuin]

May I ask how one accidentally deletes a whole directory?

Good question. And isn't the first time I'm reading this.

 

[leesteken]

Good question. And isn't the first time I'm reading this.

Since /etc/pve is a database, would it not be great if it did versioning as well? Maybe add a timestamp field to every entry and keep a reasonable amount of them, add support rollback to an earlier version?

 

[ph0x]

Feel free to version control it.

 

[leesteken]

Feel free to version control it.

I have, but the patches don't fit in the size of these posts.