Installing from packages on a live Etch system

[kobuki]

Hi there, it's my first post in theese forums. Recently I was looking for an easy and more or less complete solution to install a virtual machine container for my various needs. The ProxMox project seems to be a very good contender in the field. It's easy to setup, proven and open source.

One thing is I'm wondering about though: is it possible to install a ProxMox VE on top of a working Debian Etch installation? I have it set up exactly the way I want, and I want to keep it "at the level of the metal", and not run it in a virtual container. As there are apt repositories for the ProxMox project, in theory it would be possible to install it as a set of standard debian packages. Of course, after the kernel has been swapped to the ProxMox kernel (which contains unsaid modifications btw, but that's another story), and added some modules my system is using ATM.

Could you help me in the right direction on the subject?

 

[tog]

I doubt the guys would really support that method, but you could play around and try it yourself, don't see why not.

http://download.proxmox.com/debian/dists/etch/pve/binary-amd64/

Add the following to your /etc/apt/sources.list

# PVE packages provided by proxmox.com
deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian etch pve

Don't know where their GPG key is to import into apt-get off the top of my head, I'm sure you can find it by searching. I expect there will be additional steps to setup things the way PVE expects them to be setup, but I leave that to you to experiment with

Here's a hint:

# df -H
Filesystem             Size   Used  Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/pve/root          102G    38G    59G  40% /
tmpfs                  4.2G      0   4.2G   0% /lib/init/rw
udev                    11M    41k    11M   1% /dev
tmpfs                  4.2G      0   4.2G   0% /dev/shm
/dev/mapper/pve-data   382G    84G   299G  22% /var/lib/vz
/dev/sda1              520M    37M   457M   8% /boot

 

[tom]

Hi there, it's my first post in theese forums. Recently I was looking for an easy and more or less complete solution to install a virtual machine container for my various needs. The ProxMox project seems to be a very good contender in the field. It's easy to setup, proven and open source.

One thing is I'm wondering about though: is it possible to install a ProxMox VE on top of a working Debian Etch installation? I have it set up exactly the way I want, and I want to keep it "at the level of the metal", and not run it in a virtual container. As there are apt repositories for the ProxMox project, in theory it would be possible to install it as a set of standard debian packages. Of course, after the kernel has been swapped to the ProxMox kernel (which contains unsaid modifications btw, but that's another story), and added some modules my system is using ATM.

Could you help me in the right direction on the subject?

The only supported way is to use the Proxmox bare-metal installer. The installer partitions the hard drive with LVM (with space for snapshots) and configures the whole system in the right way.

If you just install on a existing system via apt you will run into several problems and you need to fix them "by hand". So you will succeed only if you have deep Debian knowledge and it will be impossible for us to support this custom installation.

So I highly recommend to do a bare-metal install.

Kernel: what information do you miss?

 

[tom]

Don't know where their GPG key is to import into apt-get off the top of my head, I'm sure you can find it by searching.

see http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Downloads

 

[kobuki]

Thank you both for answering. I am prepared for the situation where you can't support my specialized installation, that's not a problem if I can just run a simple upgrade when new releases are available (given I have correctly set up everything). I am also prepared for the possible modifications i need to make to my system to be able to succesfully start up the VE.

However, from what I gather the only way would be reverse engineering what the installer does, but i don't really feel it ethical nor really willing to do it since my goal was to find an easy solution that fits right into my environment, with little to moderate effort. I also respect your decision that you only provide the software as a preinstallable and upgradable system, your goal is supposedly not the provision and support of an installable Debian repository.

As to the kernel question: my knowledge is limited in the subject of Linux kernel-supported virtualization. To my knowledge, recent Linux kernels contain support for enabling KVM virtualization. Since your solution also supports KVM, I was wondering what the differences might be. I'm obviously under-educated in the field, so you might simply disregard my comment.

 

[charon]

the installer has been successfully modified to be installed from a live system / rescue system.

remind me in a couple of days and i will post it.

 

[kobuki]

the installer has been successfully modified to be installed from a live system / rescue system.

remind me in a couple of days and i will post it.

That's good news, thanks!

 

[dietmar]

As to the kernel question: my knowledge is limited in the subject of Linux kernel-supported virtualization. To my knowledge, recent Linux kernels contain support for enabling KVM virtualization. Since your solution also supports KVM, I was wondering what the differences might be.

We use kvm75 with enhancenemts for different keyboard layouts, and support for fari-scheduler paramter settings. And, our kernel is tested with the rest of the software. The kernel module itself is not modified (just updated to kvm75).

 

[kobuki]

the installer has been successfully modified to be installed from a live system / rescue system.

remind me in a couple of days and i will post it.

Hi, I'm wondering if you had any progress woth the modifications, or are they ready to be posted or downloaded for testing out your mods?

 

[sebs]

Hi kobuki,

you can find the modified installer here:
http://dl.schmidt-seb.de/proxmox.tar

Just extract the package on your rescue system, modify install.pl (Lines 40-50) with your data and execute install.pl.
If you get an error telling about a missing Encode.pm, you need to install libencode-perl.

Unfortunately my perl knowledge is as bad as my english, so this is just a quick and dirty solution. However, I tested the modified installer on a serverloft XL successfully. Your rescue system have to run a 64 bit kernel, otherwise chrooting into the new proxmox installation isn't possible - as far as I know.

good luck!

 

[kobuki]

Hi kobuki,

you can find the modified installer here:
http://dl.schmidt-seb.de/proxmox.tar

Just extract the package on your rescue system, modify install.pl (Lines 40-50) with your data and execute install.pl.
If you get an error telling about a missing Encode.pm, you need to install libencode-perl.

Unfortunately my perl knowledge is as bad as my english, so this is just a quick and dirty solution. However, I tested the modified installer on a serverloft XL successfully. Your rescue system have to run a 64 bit kernel, otherwise chrooting into the new proxmox installation isn't possible - as far as I know.

good luck!

Thanks, I'm gonna try this as soon as I can.

 

[jens]

Detailed setup instructions for serverloft

Here's a bit more detailed recipe...

# add your favourite editor below - I use joe
apt-get install libencode-perl joe

# get the installer, this is v1.1
wget '[URL]http://dl.schmidt-seb.de/proxmox.tar[/URL]'
tar xf proxmox.tar
cd proxmox

# edit the script to match your parameters
joe install.pl
chmod 755 install.pl
 
# edit the locales you need... i needed none at all
joe locale.gen

# i had to partition manually for the script to work, i.e.
sfdisk -uB /dev/sda << EOF
32,514048,L,*
514080,,0x8e,
EOF

# change the below, i used 12 and 24
./install.pl swapsize=4 maxroot=96

# there will be a few unconfigured packages... 
# ...that we gonna fix after a reboot

# now change to the new system
chroot /target
cd

# add your editor below...
apt-get install ipmitool joe

# double check network settings
joe /etc/network/interfaces

# enable the Serial-over-IP console
wget 'http://www.stochastix.de/static/serverloft/irmc-console.sh'
chmod 755 irmc-console.sh
./irmc-console.sh

# finish...
exit
sync; sync; sync

after that, disable the recovery system on the serverloft webpage and keep your finger pressed. if everything went right, you should be able to see the proxmox control panel under https://a.b.c.d/ where a.b.c.d is you own IP.

now, ssh back into your server. you may want to edit /etc/apt/sources.list and change it to use a local mirror and a few more sources. mine is below. note that i also added pvetest to access slightly more recent proxmox builds.

#deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian etch main contrib non-free
deb http://debian.intergenia.de/debian etch main contrib non-free

#deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian etch-proposed-updates main contrib non-free
deb http://debian.intergenia.de/debian etch-proposed-updates main contrib non-free

#deb http://www.backports.org/debian etch-backports main contrib non-free
#deb http://ftp.debian-unofficial.org/debian etch main contrib non-free restricted
#deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org etch main

deb http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile etch/volatile main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib non-free

# PVE packages provided by proxmox.com
deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian etch pve pvetest

To finish the installation, run the following

# update packages and install the  latet kernel
apt-get update; apt-get upgrade
apt-get install pve-kernel

# update list of available appliances
wget 'http://download.proxmox.com/appliances/aplinfo.dat'
cp aplinfo.dat /var/lib/pve-manager/apl-available
 
# enable write cache on hard disks (if you dare!!)
echo 'sg' >> /etc/modules
echo 'mptctl' >> /etc/modules
# edit rc.local and insert the following lines *before* the exit 0
#     /usr/bin/sdparm --set=WCE --clear=RCD --save /dev/sg0
#     /usr/bin/sdparm --set=WCE --clear=RCD --save /dev/sg1
joe /etc/rc.local

#reboot
shutdown -r now

That's it !!

you can find the modified installer here:
http://dl.schmidt-seb.de/proxmox.tar

Just extract the package on your rescue system, modify install.pl (Lines 40-50) with your data and execute install.pl.
If you get an error telling about a missing Encode.pm, you need to install libencode-perl.