How-To Forum Section for Proxmox...

[Ramalama]

I see in this forum over and over the same questions, most users aren't able to search etc...
I mean that's how it is and won't change probably, but if some of them see actually that there is something like a howto section or "solutions" section... he could be probably visit it first.
I would call it something like "How-To's & Solutions", make there a pinned topic with rules and see how this works out.

Another benefit of that, over the official wiki, is that everyone can make there threads. So you involve more people to help out etc.
Sounds for me like a win win for everyone.

Well for mail gateway & backup, dunno if there is something needed, i never looked in those sections, don't use it etc...
But for pve itself, a separated section would be amazing.

Cheers

 

[Dunuin]

What really would help is a closed pinned FAQ thread (and maybe a open FAQ discussion thread) where the staff can write down answers to the most frequent questions. With a list of all questions in the first post and a new post for each answer (so we can easily link to an answer). That way we could just link to an answer instead of explaining the same stuff again and again. Some questions I already explained 10 times and it would be way easier to just link to an answer from the staff.

Some questions that I read once a week:

• Why is my disk full? (they see what is assigned to LVM and don't look how much LVM is using in reality)
• Why is the capacity wrong? (raidz without increasing default volblocksize)
• Why is proxmox eating my RAM? (using ZFS and don'T know that ARC will eat 50% of RAM)
• Wrong RAM usage? (misunderstanding between free, available and cached RAM. Also Windows is reporting used RAM excluding cache and with linux cache is included)
• Why is NUC iGPU passthrough not working?
• Why is enterprise grade hardware recommended (especially SSDs and ECC RAM)?
• Why are my drives so slow? (not using virtio with win VMs or using bad ZFS configs)
• How to use shared folders inside VMs? (many want to bind-mount folders like with LXCs)

 

[Ramalama]

The thing with the pinned faqs, is that new users can't pin faqs or write something self.

I would like an option simply, where everyone could post simply howtos, of any cases...
And others can browse those, comment those, then the thread maker can update the first post.
Most important is just that the topic has a good name and the first post is an solution instead of a question.

Faqs is more a sort of, where you exclude people again, basically i imagine it simply like sticky topics.

What could work is, that we can combine it.

Like the section for the how-to's and the most important things, or most asked things, gets pinned in this forum section.

 

[Dominic]

Thank you for helping improve the documentation of Proxmox VE! I'll summarize what the current possibilites to do so are:

When you create a new thread, you have to possibility to select a prefix. One of those is TUTORIAL. Those prefixes are visible when you go through the forum pages and it is also possible to filter for them.

This is the easiest option to share your knowledge. The filtering might not be obvious, but it at least supports quick creation and linking.

If you want to propose new content, you can additionally choose one of the following options:

• The wiki: For specific setups, how-to guides, or tutorials the wiki is the right option to contribute. Wiki pages are also categorized, one category being for example HOWTOs. As far as I know, registration has been closed because of difficulties with spam some time ago. However, we would be happy if you sent a mail to office@proxmox.com to request an account!
• The reference documentation: For general content that will be helpful to all users please propose your contribution for the reference documentation. This includes all information about how to install, configure, use, and troubleshoot Proxmox VE features. The reference documentation is written in the asciidoc format. To edit the documentation you need to clone the git repository at git://git.proxmox.com/git/pve-docs.git; then follow the README.adoc document. In this case the Proxmox VE Developer Documentation certainly is worth a look. Feel free to ask for help on pve-devel if you want to do this!

If you think of a one-time-contribution, it is also possible to talk about workarounds like adding

1. your Forum-How-To to the Wiki or
2. content to the reference documentation

for you, so that you do not have to go through the setup-effort.

I see that the filtering is easier to miss than a new section, for example. But to me it also looks like

closed pinned FAQ thread ...) where the staff can write down answers to the most frequent questions. With a list of all questions in the first post and a new post for each answer (so we can easily link to an answer). That way we could just link to an answer instead of explaining the same stuff again and again.

is the Wiki (with the categories being somewhat like the list) and

would like an option simply, where everyone could post simply howtos, of any cases...
And others can browse those, comment those, then the thread maker can update the first post.

is forum + TUTORIAL prefix. As a consequence, I'd be happy if you could outline how what you had in mind differs from what I see!

 

[Ramalama]

Thanks for the answer Dominic.

- It was totally unclear to me, that i can search by prefix. This will be the same for many people, especially if they are new.

- In the beginning, as i entered the forum, i made posts, where i simply post asked something far too fast. I searched the forums, but not for the right keywords.
(Because most topics gets solved, got forgetting to mark as solved, and sometimes doesn't include good keywords)

You have absolutely right that the prefix "Tutorial" & "Solved" are the correct way.
I'm just saying, this way isn't immediately light visible & noob friendly. Where a dedicated Section is immediately visible and probably even animates people to contribute into it.
(I don't know if you seen level1tech forums, they do a similar approach with sub forums)

Example:
- https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/script-service-passthrough-helper.85488/
(Here for example, i didn't realized myself that i can tag with tutorial)

- https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/grafana-proxmox-dashboards.83577/#post-372661
(Another cool thing, that a user shared, but without any tag etc)

- https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/accessing-existing-zfs-pool-from-vm.84773/
(There is an howto from me, that has nothing todo with the topic description)

There are more threads of myself, of Dunuin i seen some too, and other users. Just ugh hard to find

However, it's just an idea, i mean in theory, we can simply make threads with tutorial description. Just a separate section could animate more people to simply write something. That's my thought.

Thanks

 

[Dunuin]

closed pinned FAQ thread ...) where the staff can write down answers to the most frequent questions. With a list of all questions in the first post and a new post for each answer (so we can easily link to an answer). That way we could just link to an answer instead of explaining the same stuff again and again.

is the Wiki (with the categories being somewhat like the list) and

Linking is sometimes difficult. I for example linked atleast 10 times to the page "https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Installation" if I wanted to show the users how to change the default "partition" layout. Because there is no linked contents list at the top, I can not copy a link with anchor to the exact paragraph I want to show, so I need to explain that the user have to search for the paragraph "Advanced LVM Configuration Options" on that page.
That would be way easier if I could directly link to that paragraph with a link like "https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Installation#Advanced_LVM_Configuration_Options".

Here it is done right and I can link to individual paragraphs: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/ZFS_on_Linux#sysadmin_zfs_limit_memory_usage

 

[tom]

Best practice, always link the html documtation pages:

https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/pve-admin-guide.html

 

[Dominic]

Just a note because it was not clear for me for a long time: When you link to the Administration Guide like @tom explained, then you can

1. on the top-left return to the index
2. select an individual chapter like installation
3. and then the table of contents at the left shows sections like the Advanced LVM Configuration Options