Installing Proxmox VE on a Mac Pro

[hisaltesse]

Hi guys. I have been reading this forum and first of all I would like to thank the developers of Proxmox. Great tool.

My case is a little different. I have a sweet Mac Pro 8-Core with 16GB RAM and 4 x 750HD. I decided to convert it to Proxmox. But I am encountering a few issues: (note that I have not installed the Mac RAID card or any other).

1. I was able to install Proxmox 1.1 on one of the empty hard disk but my Mac would not recognize and boot it. In order to boot on the Proxmox hard disk I had to remove all other hard disks and reboot the system. Only then I was able to boot into PVE and create VEs.

2. Then I decided to add one more empty disk (not reformatted, so probably still had the HFS+ file system) to the Mac Pro so I have one disk for Proxmox VE and the other one empty. After re-installing Proxmox I was still not able to boot into it. (Now I am reformatting the empty disk with the linux files system to see if there will be a change)


So my questions are:
1. do you foresee any issues with running proxmox on the Mac Pro hardware?

2. My other main issue is: I noticed that Proxmox takes care automatically of formatting the system. However I would not like to have my /vz partition on the same hard disk as the OS, in case of disk failure.
Could you please advice on how to achieve this while keeping everything compatible with Proxmox and OpenVZ?

I look forward to your comments.
Thanks.

 

[hisaltesse]

How does Proxmox partitions the disks?

So I reformatted another drive and put 2 drives in my Mac Pro.
during the installation process I selected disk 1 for proxmox.

However after the installation i was expecting to see my second drive available but I look like Proxmox formated both drives as LVM.

Can someone please help me understand why/how proxmox handles the installation on a computer with multiple (non raid) drives?

I would like to have one of my 4 internal disks for backups/snapshots so that if the OS fails I can restore it and re-import the backups using vzdump.

Any clue how to achieve this settings?

 

[tom]

Hi guys. I have been reading this forum and first of all I would like to thank the developers of Proxmox. Great tool.

My case is a little different. I have a sweet Mac Pro 8-Core with 16GB RAM and 4 x 750HD. I decided to convert it to Proxmox. But I am encountering a few issues: (note that I have not installed the Mac RAID card or any other).

1. I was able to install Proxmox 1.1 on one of the empty hard disk but my Mac would not recognize and boot it. In order to boot on the Proxmox hard disk I had to remove all other hard disks and reboot the system. Only then I was able to boot into PVE and create VEs.

2. Then I decided to add one more empty disk (not reformatted, so probably still had the HFS+ file system) to the Mac Pro so I have one disk for Proxmox VE and the other one empty. After re-installing Proxmox I was still not able to boot into it. (Now I am reformatting the empty disk with the linux files system to see if there will be a change)


So my questions are:
1. do you foresee any issues with running proxmox on the Mac Pro hardware?

we do not have mac´s here, so I assume you know already more than we do. I really like that you use Proxmox VE.

2. My other main issue is: I noticed that Proxmox takes care automatically of formatting the system. However I would not like to have my /vz partition on the same hard disk as the OS, in case of disk failure.
Could you please advice on how to achieve this while keeping everything compatible with Proxmox and OpenVZ?

I look forward to your comments.
Thanks.

Current status:
we use LVM2: one root and one data partition. the data partition is mounted on /var/lib/vz/. if you do not like this way you need to do manual changes, but:

Upcoming Proxmox VE 2.0:
Flexible storage pools, means you can decide where you store the VM´s.

 

[tom]

So I reformatted another drive and put 2 drives in my Mac Pro.
during the installation process I selected disk 1 for proxmox.

However after the installation i was expecting to see my second drive available but I look like Proxmox formated both drives as LVM.

Can someone please help me understand why/how proxmox handles the installation on a computer with multiple (non raid) drives?

I would like to have one of my 4 internal disks for backups/snapshots so that if the OS fails I can restore it and re-import the backups using vzdump.

Any clue how to achieve this settings?

The install process takes only one disk (or one hardware raid volume).

You can manually mount a second disk (e.g. to /backup via /etc/fstab) for destination for vzdump.

 

[hisaltesse]

we do not have mac´s here, so I assume you know already more than we do. I really like that you use Proxmox VE.



Current status:
we use LVM2: one root and one data partition. the data partition is mounted on /var/lib/vz/. if you do not like this way you need to do manual changes, but:

Upcoming Proxmox VE 2.0:
Flexible storage pools, means you can decide where you store the VM´s.

Many thanks for your answers Tom,
1. Any idea when we will be able to try out Proxmox VE 2.0 and when it will be released? I can't wait.

2. In the meantime would you mind enlightening me on the commands to change the /var/lib/vz to be on disk 2 instead of disk 1?

3. Also does it have to be /var/lib/vz or can it be /vz as suggested by openvz without issues? Is so how?

4. And finally I was interested in purchasing a new raid card supported by linux but the one I am interested in comes with kernel 2.6.25 and above; and openvz is also currently on kernel 2.6.26 (not sure if it is stable). Would I be able to upgrade the openvz kernel without jeopardizing my proxmox installation?

5. Do you guys plan to give an option during the installation process to choose not to include KVM? Because if I had a choice I would have only installed Proxmox with OpenVZ and that's it.

I look forward to your input.
Regards.

 

[tom]

Many thanks for your answers Tom,
1. Any idea when we will be able to try out Proxmox VE 2.0 and when it will be released? I can't wait.

me too. we will release features step by step, next is move to Lenny.

To accelerate development:

• help in the forums for new users (gives us more time for development)
• donate some money to support the test labs

There is no release date fixed.

2. In the meantime would you mind enlightening me on the commands to change the /var/lib/vz to be on disk 2 instead of disk 1?

I remember there were already such discussion in the forums (query for /var/lib/vz)

3. Also does it have to be /var/lib/vz or can it be /vz as suggested by openvz without issues? Is so how?

on rpm system its /vz on debian systems its always /var/lib/vz. I see no benefit to change this, maybe you just symlink to var/lib/vz to vz

4. And finally I was interested in purchasing a new raid card supported by linux but the one I am interested in comes with kernel 2.6.25 and above; and openvz is also currently on kernel 2.6.26 (not sure if it is stable). Would I be able to upgrade the openvz kernel without jeopardizing my proxmox installation?

no, do not use a non-proxmox Kernel. but maybe this card is already working on our Kernel (backported)? just test and give feedback, which card?

5. Do you guys plan to give an option during the installation process to choose not to include KVM? Because if I had a choice I would have only installed Proxmox with OpenVZ and that's it.

I look forward to your input.
Regards.

If you do not need KVM just do not use it. you can also unload the KVM modules but this is not needed. Or you can disable VT in your bios and then the modules are not loaded - maybe this is the easiest.

 

[hisaltesse]

Hey Tom,

So I have re-installed promox on one drive. It was ok. And I just formatted the second drive as a regular Linux drive.

The purpose of this second drive is the just store the vz stuff.
Can I just mount it at /var/lib/vz and I am all set or do I have to add the drive to the logical group to extend it?

I am not sure which route i should take. Would things work fine if I just mount the regular linux drive at /var/lib/vz without worrying about LVM2?

Please let me know. Thanks.

 

[dietmar]

You can mount whaterver you want. Use LVM or simply mount a single disk.

But, we only consider the standard setup when we update. We can't support any non-statdard setting.

- Dietmar

 

[hisaltesse]

You can mount whaterver you want. Use LVM or simply mount a single disk.

But, we only consider the standard setup when we update. We can't support any non-statdard setting.

- Dietmar

Good point. So let's say I mount a standard disk. What will then happen at upgrade time, especially when upgrading to 2.0?

As a matter of fact I tried to mount a Linux partition at /var/lib/vz but it did not mount. It errors complaining about the file system type.

 

[tom]

Good point. So let's say I mount a standard disk. What will then happen at upgrade time, especially when upgrading to 2.0?

As a matter of fact I tried to mount a Linux partition at /var/lib/vz but it did not mount. It errors complaining about the file system type.

we will do intense test to make upgrade easy as always for standard system. we cannot test this update process with non-standard user-modified installations. but we will document it when we release it. but anyway, you can still make backups and store them on save place before doing major updates.

your mount problems: first you need to unmount the currently mount point, then you can mount the new disk. if you got errors its a good idea to post the error, otherwise no-one can give you a hint. post your line in fstab and the error message.

 

[hisaltesse]

your mount problems: first you need to unmount the currently mount point, then you can mount the new disk. if you got errors its a good idea to post the error, otherwise no-one can give you a hint. post your line in fstab and the error message.

Ok Tom, here are my outputs:

My current setting is as follow: I installed Proxmox on a 250GB disk (/dev/sda) and from within proxmox I formated the second disk (/dev/sdb) of 750GB into one extended partition. The only options I had were primary disk or extended.
When doing the primary I could not mount it. So I tried the extended.

after reboot I had the following error message:

promox login: FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors
VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on sdb1

fsck /dev/sdb
fsck 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006)
e2fsck 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006)
Couldn't find ext2 superblock, trying backup blocks...
fsck.ext2: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sdb

The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
filesystem.  If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2
filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock
is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
    e2fsck -b 8193 <device>

command: more /etc/fstab

proxmox:~# more /etc/fstab 
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
/dev/pve/root / ext3 errors=remount-ro 0 1
#/dev/pve/data /var/lib/vz ext3 defaults 0 1
/dev/sdb1 /var/lib/vz ext3 defaults 0 1
/dev/sda1 /boot ext3 defaults 0 1
/dev/pve/swap none swap sw 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0

command: df -h

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/pve/root          58G  626M   54G   2% /
tmpfs                 7.9G     0  7.9G   0% /lib/init/rw
udev                   10M   84K   10M   1% /dev
tmpfs                 7.9G     0  7.9G   0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1             496M   35M  436M   8% /boot

command: fdisk -l

proxmox:~# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1          66      524288   83  Linux
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2              66       30401   243671712   8e  Linux LVM

[B]Disk /dev/sdb: 750.1 GB, 750156374016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               1       91201   732572001    5  Extended
[/B]
Disk /dev/dm-0: 16.1 GB, 16106127360 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1958 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk /dev/dm-0 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/dm-1: 62.2 GB, 62277025792 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7571 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk /dev/dm-1 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/dm-2: 166.8 GB, 166845218816 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 20284 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk /dev/dm-2 doesn't contain a valid partition table

So I tried to mount the /dev/sdb1 to a test folder in /mnt/test for testing purposed and here is what I got:

proxmox:~# mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb1 /mnt/test/
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1,
       missing codepage or other error
       (aren't you trying to mount an extended partition,
       instead of some logical partition inside?)
       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
       dmesg | tail  or so

AND when I run : proxmox:~# dmesg | tail
I get this:

proxmox:~# dmesg | tail
vmbr0: no IPv6 routers present
FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors
VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev sdb1.
FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors
VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev sdb.
FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors
VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev sdb1.
attempt to access beyond end of device
sdb1: rw=0, want=4, limit=2
EXT3-fs: unable to read superblock

Let me know if this helps.

 

[dietmar]

promox login: FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors
VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on sdb1

Seems that this partition is not initialized. What filesystem is there, and what command did you use to initialize it?

- Dietmar

 

[hisaltesse]

To initialize it I used the command:

# fdisk /dev/sdb

Here is my initialization process (terminal output): let me know if I am missing something.

proxmox:~# fdisk /dev/sdb

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 91201.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
   (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): d
Selected partition 1

Command (m for help): n
Command action
   e   extended
   p   primary partition (1-4)
e
Partition number (1-4): 1
First cylinder (1-91201, default 1): 
Using default value 1
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-91201, default 91201): 
Using default value 91201

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.
proxmox:~#

 

[dietmar]

To initialize it I used the command:

# fdisk /dev/sdb

You also need to create a filesystem:

 mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb

 

[hisaltesse]

You also need to create a filesystem:

 mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb

At what point should I create the filesystem?
And from my log would you recommend that I choose e for extended or p for primary partition?

e extended
p primary partition (1-4)


Or can I just run your command mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb and start using it without partitioning it? (my guess would not no).

 

[tom]

At what point should I create the filesystem?
And from my log would you recommend that I choose e for extended or p for primary partition?

e extended
p primary partition (1-4)


Or can I just run your command mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb and start using it without partitioning it? (my guess would not no).

1. partition with fdisk (choose primary)
2. format (create filesystem)

 

[dietmar]

Or can I just run your command mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb and start using it without partitioning it? (my guess would not no).

Sorry, the correct command is:

mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb1

Then just use it.

 

[hisaltesse]

You can mount whaterver you want. Use LVM or simply mount a single disk.

But, we only consider the standard setup when we update. We can't support any non-statdard setting.

- Dietmar

The main reason for me doing this because if the main os fails I would like to be able to restore it, remount just the vz drive and be back to normal.

Is this a reasonable expectation or do you think I should go with LVM?

If so why and how ?

 

[hisaltesse]

Sorry, the correct command is:

mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb1

Then just use it.

Thanks a bunch Dietmar, I finally managed to mount it.
Now i would like to know if this is ok or if I should expect some issues when upgrading proxmox?

I was concerned about using LVM because I think it would make it very dependent from the other disk. However this way I can mount this data anytime after re-installing the boot partition if my server had an issue and it would still work.
What do you think?

 

[hisaltesse]

Alright so my proxmox seems ok now and I tried to download the mail gateway template and I am getting an error. Here is the log:

starting download: debian-4.0-proxmox-mailgateway_2.2-1_i386.tar.gz
--04:44:08-- http://download.proxmox.com/appliances/mail/debian-4.0-proxmox-mailgateway_2.2-1_i386.tar.gz
=> `/tmp/apldownload-4036-tmp.dat'
Resolving download.proxmox.com... 92.51.129.73
Connecting to download.proxmox.com|92.51.129.73|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 140,131,279 (134M) [application/x-gzip]

0K ........ ........ ........ ........ ........ ........ 2% 682.06 KB/s
3072K ........ ........ ........ ........ ........ ........ 4% 777.92 KB/s
6144K ........ ........ ........ ........ ........ ........ 6% 775.06 KB/s
.
.
.
132096K ........ ........ ........ ........ ........ ........ 98% 769.41 KB/s
135168K ........ ........ ........ .. 100% 762.41 KB/s

04:47:11 (747.39 KB/s) - `/tmp/apldownload-4036-tmp.dat' saved [140131279/140131279]

mv: cannot move `/tmp/apldownload-4036-tmp.dat' to `/var/lib/vz/template/cache/debian-4.0-proxmox-mailgateway_2.2-1_i386.tar.gz': No such file or directory


download failed: unable to save file - Bad file descriptor

Any idea what is going on?