[SOLVED] Destroyed my Proxmox installation by deleting folder, how to recover ?

[Herkz]

Hi,

Long story short, I was in my /var/vz/lib/cache/template folder to check the content of a LXC template that I have unzipped in this folder. When I was over, I deleted the folder one by one using "rm-r /usr" etc etc, in this folder.

This command seems to have deleted ALL the directories such as /var /dev/etc /usr as I had to delete them in the /template folder.

I feel extremely dumb. Now, Proxmox's interface doesn't show up, I can't even log on the CLI, just looping on "login", ssh is dead too.

My set up was :
2 SSD in Mirror ZFS for templates / small container data
1 4TB hard drive for 1 container data (Nextcloud)

If I missed any information, tell me.

How can I recover this mess without loosing all my data ?

Thank you for helping a real moron.

edit : Of course, I have the backup of all the container / data stored on the server but no backup of proxmox itself as I wanted to install a second node to use replication

edit2 : I have a spare SSD at home, maybe I can try to install proxmox recover what I can ?

 

[fabian]

if it's only the PVE config and files that you don't have backed up, you only need to re-create your network and storage config after re-installing - the container config is stored within the backup archives.

to make sure, you can boot a livecd and also take a full backup of the things that are still on the disk (especially /var/lib/pve-cluster would be interesting, as it contains the database that backs /etc/pve!). but recovering from deleting basically the whole system will be hard without a proper re-install.

 

[Herkz]

if it's only the PVE config and files that you don't have backed up, you only need to re-create your network and storage config after re-installing - the container config is stored within the backup archives.

to make sure, you can boot a livecd and also take a full backup of the things that are still on the disk (especially /var/lib/pve-cluster would be interesting, as it contains the database that backs /etc/pve!). but recovering from deleting basically the whole system will be hard without a proper re-install.

But is it possible to re-install proxmox without deleting all the data on the existing disk ?
To backup the data, can I just open the disk in my computer then extract the data ?

 

[fabian]

no - reinstalling proxmox will always format the disk (or disks) you select in the installer. you need to save anything you want to keep to another disk before re-installing, e.g. by booting with a live-cd and copying anything you want to keep to another disk.

 

[Herkz]

no - reinstalling proxmox will always format the disk (or disks) you select in the installer. you need to save anything you want to keep to another disk before re-installing, e.g. by booting with a live-cd and copying anything you want to keep to another disk.

That's what I did, was able to recover all the data but none of the config file.

Thank you very much !