Full disclosure - the below text is generated by AI since I've spent a LOT of hours trying to troubleshoot these issues with chatgpt/gemini and no luck. If there's any other information that I can provide please let me know. I'm trying to gather everything I can (after the reboot since its totally unreachable right now) and get back to the thread here.
Also, there's no monitor available for me to access the console physically and it happens in the worst scenarios ever (mostly at night or when Im busy and need to give up troubleshooting and just restart...)
Hardware
- Host: Dell OptiPlex 7060
- CPU: Intel 8th-generation CPU
- RAM: DDR4
- Network: Onboard Intel Ethernet adapter using the e1000e Linux driver
- Storage: SSD
- Proxmox: Proxmox VE
- Guest: Home Assistant OS running as a VM
- Network: Ethernet
- Proxmox host IP: <PROXMOX_IP>
Problem
The Proxmox host becomes partially unresponsive after an unpredictable amount of uptime.The interval is highly variable — it can happen after approximately 3 days, or it can run normally for 3 months.
When the problem occurs:
- The Proxmox host still responds to ICMP/ping.
- TCP port 8006 is reachable.
- TCP port 22 is reachable.
- However, the Proxmox web interface does not load.
- The Proxmox mobile app cannot connect.
- SSH establishes the TCP connection but then the host closes the connection before completing the SSH handshake.
- HTTPS connections to port 8006 do not complete and eventually time out.
- The Home Assistant VM behaves inconsistently: sometimes it remains partially accessible, while other times it becomes completely inaccessible.
- A complete reboot of the Proxmox host reliably restores normal operation.
SSH:
Connection established.
...
kex_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host
Connection closed by <PROXMOX_IP> port 22
For HTTPS:
curl.exe -k -v --connect-timeout 5 --max-time 10 https://<PROXMOX_IP>:8006/api2/json/version
Connection timeout after 5001 ms
A basic TCP test to port 8006 reports the port as reachable, but an actual HTTPS connection cannot complete.
Previous observations
I have previously seen e1000e / Intel NIC-related messages on this system, including NIC/link-related errors.Various troubleshooting/configuration changes have been attempted previously, but none have permanently resolved the issue.
The failure is completely intermittent and does not appear to follow a predictable workload or uptime period.
There are no similar issues with other devices on the network.
Important detail
The problem is not simply that the network connection goes completely down.During the failure, the host can still respond to ping and accept TCP connections, but higher-level services such as SSH and the Proxmox API/web interface stop functioning correctly.
A reboot immediately restores normal operation.
I would like to determine whether this is likely related to:
- e1000e / Intel NIC or driver
- Linux kernel
- Proxmox services
- storage/I/O
- hardware/firmware
- another host-level issue
Non-AI: The above behaviour is simply what happened right now, however, there's been times in which everything became totally unresponsive. No pings, no guest VMs, nothing worked. There were also times when unplugging/plugging the ethernet cable got everything back up (when totally unreachable from what I could observe), but other times where only a restart would fix the issue.
I'm not sure if I'm fighting a hardware issue or a proxmox issue at this point and I dont want to spend money on AI suggestions blindly (such as new router, new NICs, new whatever).
Any help/suggestion would be highly appreciated. Thanks in advance !
P.S: I hope this is the correct section for this issue, cant find anything better.
