Invalid values: failed to retrieve management interface name

[jaybyrrd]

Hey folks,

I am trying to install proxmox onto a personal server blade via ILO... and I keep getting stuck here. I have tried updating /etc/network/interfaces with an auto eno4 interface, but I am completely unable to set this management interface. I am not sure how to fix it. The server is an HP dl360p Gen8. Any advice would be great.

 

[jaybyrrd]

I hope it is okay to bump this, still no idea how to resolve this.

 

[gfngfn256]

Do you have multiple NICs connected?

I have no experience with HP over ILO - but I would think that you better choose a different NIC for Proxmox management than the one used for ILO, since ILO can completely takeover that interface therefore stopping Proxmox from using it.

I assume you also have to carefully setup your drives/array within the HP setup & then reboot server - before attempting a Proxmox installation.

 

[jaybyrrd]

Thanks so much for the response! I’ll add some details. This server is actually collocated since my wife hates having the thing in our home

I have 4 drive bags and 4 homogenous 3tb HDDs. Drives 0 and 2 make a RAID 1 logical drive for fault tolerant persistent storage. This is the logical drive I intend to use for proxmox as well as volume claims that I care to keep redundant. The other two are a logical drive in raid 0. Proxmox detects both.

Your intuition is correct that the ILO has its own network interface. Think of it as a gateway to physical access to the server. When I use it, it is more or less as if I have a keyboard, mouse, and monitor in the data center over IP.

I do have 4 NICs in the blade but only one is connected by Ethernet (so we have two interfaces connected, ILO and eno4). Here the issue seems to be that proxmox doesn’t detect the NIC at all? Wracking my head, especially since I had proxmox installed. I have other things I can try to experiment, for example maybe trying to install proxmox 6 and upgrade my way up, but I much prefer to figure out why I can’t select an interface at all (only blank option)…

Hope these details help and thanks again for working with me.

 

[gfngfn256]

As I understand Proxmox installer finds no NICs on the HW. This is probably a driver issue which could be mitigated.
If you try & spin up on the server a regular Debian 12 install (which PVE is based on - albeit with a Ubuntu-type kernel) - does it pick up the NICs correctly? (You could even try a plain live-Linux media without install to test this).

If the above works maybe try the Proxmox 7.4 ISO from here? See what happens, then try & update to current.

 

[fabian]

you can also try the debug mode which will drop you into a shell at various points and then inspect dmesg, lscpi, etc.pp.

 

[jaybyrrd]

Currently booting into 7.4, will report back... Thanks for the recommendations on what to inspect from those shell points. I tried debug, but wasn't sure what to shoot for. If this fails, I will give that a shot and report back.

 

[jaybyrrd]

So when I try to install 7.4, it fails at the point of trying to start the proxmox server. Going back to 8.2 to check out fabian's suggestion.

 

[gfngfn256]

I'm going to go back (repeat) my recommendation above:

If you try & spin up on the server a regular Debian 12 install (which PVE is based on - albeit with a Ubuntu-type kernel) - does it pick up the NICs correctly? (You could even try a plain live-Linux media without install to test this).

This will tell us somewhat what's going on.

 

[jaybyrrd]

When I first enter the debug console, there is only the loopback controller.

dmesg doesn't show anything particular. `lspci -nnvmm` when filtering for just network|ethernet shows nothing.

When I continue from this point it prepares installer mount points and working environment. Before installation

lspci still outputs nothing, dmesg doesn't show anything too specific... during this phase I did see it time out populating dev.

When I try to do an ifdown -a & ifup -a it hits an error:

ifdown: unknown address type "inet"

The only interface in the /etc/network/interfaces directory is the default loopback... could this be the root cause?


Next thing I am going to try is the debian install, yes... currently dealing with an issue where the machine doesn't want to boot off of the online iso.

 

[bbgeek17]

The only interface in the /etc/network/interfaces directory is the default loopback... could this be the root cause?

That is definitely the root cause. Either your server is broken (PCI disabled, bad NIC, etc) or there is no driver for your particular NIC. Trying other distributions, ie Debian is a good path.

---

Blockbridge : Ultra low latency all-NVME shared storage for Proxmox - https://www.blockbridge.com/proxmox

 

[jaybyrrd]

I think there might be an underlying issue. Does

$/ ifdown -a
ifdown: unknown address type "inet"

indicate the nic is bad or that ifdown/ifup cannot interpret the /etc/network/interface file and so the network is never configured?

 

[bbgeek17]

$/ ifdown -a
ifdown: unknown address type "inet"

indicate the nic is bad or that ifdown/ifup cannot interpret the /etc/network/interface file and so the network is never configured?

I dont think it means anything.
man ifdown

MAME
       ifup - network interface management commands

NAME
          ifup - bring a network interface up

          ifdown - take a network interface down

          -a, --all
                 process all interfaces marked "auto"

If the system didnt detect any interface during install, then there is nothing in the configuration with "auto" to process.


What you should run is "ip a". But, if you dont see any NICs in "lspci" or in boot log, then the system cant detect it.
Try latest Debian or Ubuntu. You could also try to boot from an image with HWE Kernel.

Good luck

PS you can also press: alt-f2/f3/f4 (or ctrl-alt-fX) and get to a shell from PVE install. You can then examine the system state from there. Although, I suspect you will see the same absence of the interfaces.

I'd check HP documentation on whether this system is compatible with any particular Linux flavor at all.

---

Blockbridge : Ultra low latency all-NVME shared storage for Proxmox - https://www.blockbridge.com/proxmox