Suggestion: Forum section with frequently asked questions on Proxmox products

[Johannes S]

Hello everybody,

I just saw at least three threads where somebody asked how to use rclone to sync PBS datastores (the answer is of course: You don't). Although I'm happy to help people I think the time of help seeking people, the community and Proxmpox staff would be better served if we would have a kind of community effort to create a FAQ.
I'm aware of https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/FAQ but that can't be edited (propably to avoid ill-advised entries which are then associated with an official document so quite understandable limitation). It also containy quite generic questions not (except from the bit about lxc and docker) not the kind of often asked stuff from people looking for driveby-support.

So I think it might be a good idea to have a dedicated section for this for each product (PVE, PBS and PMG). Maybe in a curated/moderated way so we avoid to recommend some ill-advised reddit wisdom, random hacks or helper script to newbies?

What do you think about it?

Regards, Johannes.

 

[Johannes S]

It come to my mind that this might be the wrong place, so I also created a bug report: https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=5976

 

[UdoB]

It come to my mind that this might be the wrong place, so I also created a bug report: https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=5976

While bugzilla for sure is the correct way this forum has possibly more active users and allows more free discussion.

You are absolutely right. While there is the very fine reference documentation and the official wiki we just have no user-contributable “FAQ / Hardening / Best practice” documentation. The "natural" place would be the wiki under pve|pmg|pbs.proxmox.com, but probably that should really be left for Proxmox, the company.

Actually I had thought about it some weeks ago. One specific aspect stopped my idea to implement "something": maintaining an FAQ on the long run might be massively different from giving an answer here in the forum on the fly.

 

[Johannes S]

You are absolutely right. While there is the very fine reference documentation and the official wiki we just have no user-contributable “FAQ / Hardening / Best practice” documentation.

Well I don't really mean something like hardening since it's difficult to give generic advice for stuff which lies in the end in the responsibility of the administrator or software architect. To quote myself:

A hardening guide is actually not so easy since it depends on the threat model.
Just one example: NFS assumes that every Client can be trusted and ISCSI usually is not encrypted. While both might be acceptable in a strictly isolated corporate network, I wouldn't take this risk on a cluster of dedicated servers of some hosting provider or other zero trust environments.
So I doubt that there can be a "one size fits it all"-Tutorial.
In the end it's in the responsibility of the admin to create a thread and security model and configure everything accordingly.
https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/s...-hardening-wiki-page-be-created.148732/page-4

The reason I started this thread, that today I saw two or three threads on the same topic, how to backup pbs datastores with rclone to a cloud storage, which is something you really shouldn't do. I was kind of annoyed , because we had quite a lot of discussion on this not to long ago so I just inserted links to my posts in them. And this is not the only thing where it would be great if we could reduce to need the time to help people, who don't use the search function . Some other examples from @LnxBil (mentioning him so he gets the credit) on page two of the linked thread above:

Yet, I feel your need for better documentation, but more for the volunteer people like us here, so that we can just reference stuff ... most of them not at all PVE related like:

• how memory is used in Linux and why my VM uses more ram than shown inside of the VM (at least once a week this is asked)
• best ZFS setup with or without L2ARC, additional metadata special devices and SLOG
• how to share files between VMs
• best backup strategy of files inside of my docker in my VM
• how to build "the best setup" with what I have ...

To be clear: I don't want to get the third person who ever got banned from Proxmox forums so dear staff and community member drop send me a pm if something rubs you the wrong way. I don't want to annoy or offend anybody.

The "natural" place would be the wiki under pve|pmg|pbs.proxmox.com, but probably that should really be left for Proxmox, the company.

I agree with this too It would be weird to mix official information on licensing and legal stuff with community-sourced takes why helper scripts might be a good idea or not, why Linux using much RAM isn't actually a problem etc...

Actually I had thought about it some weeks ago. One specific aspect stopped my idea to mplement "something": maintaining an FAQ on the long run might be massively different from giving an answer here in the forum on the fly.

Sure on the other hand there are some precedents: To give credit where credit is due I got the idea after I saw an old talk from a German Opensource conference: https://media.ccc.de/v/froscon2014_-_1489_-_de_-_hs5_-_201408231630_-_flames_-_kristian_kohntopp

The speaker remembered a time when the German Linux and PHP newsgroups (for the younger ones here: A kind of early forum, we oldtimers used beause we didn't had discord back in the days ) got a lot of posts from newbies who always asked the same questions without trying to look whether their might already somebody else asked that, even on the same day or week. Since the group culture of the linux newsgroups was at some point not in a good state but the PHP group was still quite new he tried an approach of "leading by example". He started a website/wiki with answers to often asked questions so if again the question would pop up he could drop a link to the corresponding article. This achieved two goals: First that people who took offense in lazy questioner could do something constructive on it without getting nasty. And second teach people asking for help, that they should look up whether there was already a solution for the problem. According to him for the PHP newsgroup this worked quite well (until Usenet died of course). He also remembered that the English C or C++ group (not sure it's some time I watched the talks video) did something simillliar, which not only resulted in a FAQ but also a book sourced from the entries.

After getting annoyed from the rclone questions I remembered the talk and thought it might be worth to try something simmiliar here.
Of course I could start in setting up an inofficial github pages repo for it but I would prefer to have some kind of official place for it and the forum seems like the best place to me.
So while it might be true, that it would be different and propably a certain investment at least I would prefer to spend my time in maintaining such a document instead of copy/pasting my earlier posting on the same subject. Your mileage may vary.

 

[UdoB]

Well I don't really mean something like hardening since it's difficult to give generic advice

Sure, I am just brainstorming. The difference between a compact FAQ and a broader knowledge base with snippets about all kinds of topics may be defined hard or soft.

The reason I started this thread, that today I saw two or three threads on the same topic

Yes. Again and again...

To be clear: I don't want to get the third person who ever got banned

Huh? I really do believe staff is appreciating your - and of several others of course - contributions.

Of course I could start in setting up an inofficial github pages repo for it

That would be a one man show as contributing is too difficult for most forum users. (And I don't like Github, try Codeberg or Gitlab...)

It would be better to have something where the active forum users could contribute. Regarding this aspect your idea with this forum would be ideal. A specific sub section (or sub-forum?) for pve/pbs/pmg would need some special rules: only users with adequately high reputation can start new threads and each first post needs to be editable forever.

Those high-reputation users should be allowed to edit all (or all first-) posts. In my opinion every single FAQ-topic needs more than one maintainer.

I have no idea if that's technically feasible, I am still just brainstorming. And I am not sure if the actual content would rise to a valuable resource or if it would quickly degenerate to some strange and old articles.

But we will never find out if we do not try something...

 

[Johannes S]

Sure, I am just brainstorming. The difference between a compact FAQ and a broader knowledge base with snippets about all kinds of topics may be defined hard or soft.

I agree The speaker in the linked talk also explained, that one of his goals for the PHP faq was to condense the content. So not only providing a solution to an often asked question or problem but also to give some insights in the background (Quote: "Like an article in the C'T (german computer magazine aimed at tech-savy people or IT professionals), but shorter in length) workings. But he also admitted that even before the newsgroup died like rest of Usenet it was difficult to find people willing to participate in it. However there were people who constributed, including people who also started as newbies. Some of his best cowriters even started with trolling before changing to the bright side of the force

Huh? I really do believe staff is appreciating your - and of several others of course - contributions.

I believe so too but I wanted to be sure I didn't accidentaly offend anyone since the referenced thread contains some posts of one of the mentioned banned users and as a non-native English speaker I wasn't quite sure whether my wording sounded too much like his way to phrase words.

That would be a one man show as contributing is too difficult for most forum users. (And I don't like Github, try Codeberg or Gitlab...)

github was just an example I'm happy with anything which works. It might be a good idea to do something of a mirror though: Publish the texts in the forum and on github/gitlab/whatever so in case the forum posts got lost n we would still have the content.

It would be better to have something where the active forum users could contribute. Regarding this aspect your idea with this forum would be ideal. A specific sub section (or sub-forum?) for pve/pbs/pmg would need some special rules: only users with adequately high reputation can start new threads and each first post needs to be editable forever.

Those high-reputation users should be allowed to edit all (or all first-) posts. In my opinion every single FAQ-topic needs more than one maintainer.

I have no idea if that's technically feasible, I am still just brainstorming. And I am not sure if the actual content would rise to a valuable resource or if it would quickly degenerate to some strange and old articles.

I'm also not aware of possible technical constraints (maybe @fabian might say something on it since he answered in the bz entry) but I agree with you on the modus operandi for such a sub section.

But we will never find out if we do not try something...

Exactly

 

[LnxBil]

I don't want to get the third person who ever got banned from Proxmox forums

I still wonder who the first was.

Publish the texts in the forum and on github/gitlab/whatever so in case the forum posts got lost n we would still have the content.

a wild guess ... a wiki? There were and still are people not working at Proxmox who have contributed to the wiki.