Proxmox configuration -> devices won't communicate on lan

[Akky]

Hello, I know there must be an easy fix to my problem but I have looked up for 6 months and no video, forum, or person could help me with this... I want to start a home server with and really old pc, mainly a NAS server and a plex one.

Please keep in mind that I'm a noob with those things (this is my first-ever server config). I don't really know what's relevant or not to troubleshoot this issue but I hope somebody with more experience can help me.

Long story short, my devices won't communicate with each other on LAN, I can't ping any of my devices... and I can't communicate with my server, or in this case, with the Proxmox web GUI. If I install proxmox on my pc, on an Oracle VM VirtualBox, I can access the web GUI.... and the devices communicate if I connect the pc and the server with a cable (making it only a LAN connection between 2 computers).

I assume the router is the issue here but I tried everything and nothing works (I know it's a crappy router from my internet provider, but still)... Please ask me what to provide so maybe we can figure out the mystery together

 

[Dunuin]

Router usually isn't the problem.
Did you use a free IP of the same subnet of your router for your PVE host and set your routers IP as the PVE hosts gateway and DNS?
What does your /etc/network/interfaces look like? What NIC is used?

And I wouldn`t recommend PVE if you just want a simple NAS/plex box. That's doable but you probably need months/years to learn linux administration to run it properly. Not many people are willing to spend so much time and effort and just want a quick set.up-and-forget solution. Keep in mind that PVE is a full-fledged Linux where 99% of the stuff you could do isn't covered by a (web)UI. PVE for example got no NAS functionalities. If you want something like that that means you will have to install and set up that all on your own via CLI. Would be way easier to use some appliance like TrueNAS or Unraid where you don'T need to care about the OS underneath it, which also could run some VMs and where everyting can be done using the webUI.

 

[Akky]

Thank you for your response @Dunuin!

I wanted to use PVE because I may set up in future a Minecraft server (or another game server) using the virtualization of the PVE. I come to the conclusion that keeping multiple virtual machines, for different workflows is cleaner to manage (PVE - True nas for storage, plex for plex, windows for game servers).

I'm a fast learner and I'm not really afraid to learn Linux . I just hit this wall that I can't get past it... and 6 months of just searching the internet to fix it on my own says something about my determination .

Anyway, here's what my /etc/network/interfaces say (I didn't make a ps because it's on another pc so I just typed it):

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

iface enp4s0 inet manual

auto vmbr0
iface vmbr0 inet static
address 192.168.1.24/24
gateway 192.168.1.1
bridge-ports enp4s0
bridge-stp off
bridge-fd 0

And here it's a ps from my router:

 

[Dunuin]

Config looks fine so far. But keep in mind that your routers DHCP-Range is covering the whole 192.168.1.0/24 subnet except for the IP of the router irself. So you basically can never be sure that IPs are unique (which they need to be) when using any static IP, like you do with PVE.

What does a ip addr show? "enp4s0" is listed there? And you see a "UP" and not a "NO-CARRIER" for vmbr0?

 

[Akky]

Hello,

For some reason, it started working. I deleted everything from my router, from the DHCP static leases and now it works. I still can't ping my windows pc from the PVE but if it works now it's ok.


You seem very experienced with servers, can you please give me some links/videos that can help me with setting up a NAS and a plex/jellyfish services? (I don't know if it's better (or the differences) to have LXC containers for them or VM) . Everybody has their opinions on the NAS part... I have read on this forum that a lot of people don't really think it's a good idea to use TrueNAS (including you).

I have some old HDDs that I want to use -> 2 1TB for NAS (for mirror or something like that, to be sure I don't lose my data... I lost a lot of pictures from an external HDD...) and 1 TB for my movies (plex or jellyfish, don't know which one is better or which I can really connect to my tv ).

Once I'm familiar with those 2 services on my network I want to try to look up a solution to use them from anywhere (that's another challenge for me because I'm concerned about security, but we'll see). And in the long run (maybe after some big upgrade for the server, because mine is really low on specs at the moment) some VMs/containers with Windows for a game server.

Do you have any advice?
Thank you for your time in advance!

 

[Dunuin]

For some reason, it started working. I deleted everything from my router, from the DHCP static leases and now it works. I still can't ping my windows pc from the PVE but if it works now it's ok.

You should set your routers DHCP range for example from 192.168.1.51 to 192.168.1.254. That way your router wouldn't assign 192.168.1.2 to 192.168.1.50 to DHCP clients and your IPs shouldn't collide as long as you give your hosta a static IP between 192.168.1.2 and 192.168.1.50.

. I have read on this forum that a lot of people don't really think it's a good idea to use TrueNAS (including you).

I by myself run two TrueNAS VM. It's just nothing I would run on weak consumer hardware, nested or if you just want a few TBs of storage.
With just 2x 1TB I probably would use disk passthrough with a OpenMediaVault VM.
But then not great if you want to use unprivileged LXC as you can't directly mount NFS/SMB shares there,

 

[Akky]

So, let me see if I understand this correctly, it's easier on the hardware (because of my low-spec server) to just make a VM with OpenMedia Vault and on that VM use the disk passthrough? And use that as my backup storage for my data and maybe for the plex/jellyfin.

But then not great if you want to use unprivileged LXC as you can't directly mount NFS/SMB shares there,

and this part I don't really get it

 

[Dunuin]

So, let me see if I understand this correctly, it's easier on the hardware (because of my low-spec server) to just make a VM with OpenMedia Vault and on that VM use the disk passthrough? And use that as my backup storage for my data and maybe for the plex/jellyfin.

Yes, but of cause only for backing up other physical machines, not to backup your servers data.

and this part I don't really get it

- secure VMs: only SMB/NFS shares possible
- less secure unprivileged LXCs: only bind-mounts possible
- least secure privileged LXCs: NFS/SMB shares + bind-mounts possible

 

[Akky]

Yes, but of cause only for backing up other physical machines, not to backup your servers data.

Yep, I understand. I'm gonna go look that up on how to set up OpenMedia Vault

- secure VMs: only SMB/NFS shares possible

Got it, make OpenMedia vault as a VM, not a container , VM is more secure.

Thank you so much for the help!! As you can imagine, because I'm new to those kinds of stuff, I have a lot of questions but I do not want to keep this thread thaaat long and waste anymore of your time

I'm gonna look up how to set up the OMV as a VM, with the disk passthrough from PVE, and try to set up everything on my own. If I get stuck again, I'm gonna open a new thread.