Recovery when locked out from SSH and GUI won't start?

[BrianDiPalma]

My Proxmox instance isn't serving its web GUI and I can't login via SSH.
I've tried using `root` but it appears that by default you can't SSH into Proxmox.
The VMs are running just fine and serving their various applications and I can SSH into them.
That appears to leave me no choice but to reinstall Proxmox.

I was wondering is it possible to recover the various VMs/their backups during the installation process or is it hopeless?

 

[leesteken]

By default, you can SSH with root into a Proxmox host. Either you turned if off or you passed through the network card, or something is broken?
You can backup (most) VMs while running from the command line as well as the web GUI. Can you login to the Proxmox console?
Can you "remote desktop" into the VMs and from there access the web GUI or SSH into the Proxmox host?
Can you shutdown the host by pressing the power button (but don't hold it!), it should shutdown the VMs gently automatically but may take a few minutes?

If the VMs and/or backups are stored on the same drive as your Proxmox installation, you need to save them somewhere before reinstalling. Instead, I would advise to reboot your Proxmox host without starting the VMs that use PCI passthrough (disable in BIOS or change kernel paramters during boot) and see if you can fix the problem.

 

[BrianDiPalma]

I forgot about just plugging a screen in. I'm so used to remoting into machines it didn't enter my mind until after I posted my question.
I thought by default you couldn't SSH in as root but it looks like PermitRootLogin is set to yes...
I really don't get what the problem was. Well I'll lug back the machine back to where it came from, everything seems fine now.

 

[BrianDiPalma]

It seems my ISP provided router was messing up the hostname resolution or something.
Using the IP address instead of the hostname works.
It must be trying to protect itself as I was about to install OPNsense on Proxmox.