Debugging Installation

Debugging Proxmox VE Install on some Mainboards

Boot typing debug at the boot prompt - this will give you a shell a various places - simple press Ctrl-D to continue the installer. After the installer shows the error, press abort (Ctrl-C) to get a console.

Then check if the HD device is detected and how it is named:

# ls /sys/block/

What is the content of

# cat /sys/block/sd<X>/removable

Maybe it is marked as removable drive?

For Example:

#ls /sys/block
hdc  ram0  ram10  ram12  ram14  ram2  ram4  ram6  ram8
ram1  ram11  ram13  ram15  ram3  ram5  ram7  ram9  sda  sdb

#cat /sys/block/sd[ab]/removable
1
1

You can also see the complete installation log with:

cat /tmp/install.log

Boot options

The installer creates LVM volumes for the root file-system, data and swap, based on the total disk size. You can customize some of these values, just type on the boot prompt of the installation ISO.

• At install time, at the boot prompt you can specify "linux" followed by one or more optional parameters, see below:
  • Default partitioning uses ext3, with only ext4 as option. If you want ext4 just type: ext4 (Note: PVE4 let's you chose fs during the installation)
  • To define the total size of hd to be used (only Proxmox > 2.3): hdsize=X (where X is in GB, and affects /dev/sda2 size (/dev/sda1 is small and only for boot). This way you can save free space on the HD for further partitioning (i.e. for an additional PV and VG on the same hard disk that can be used for LVM storage type).
  • To define the amount of root partition's disk space: maxroot=X (where X is in GB).
  • To define the amount of swap partition's disk space: swapsize=X (where X is in GB. Default is the same size as installed RAM, with 4GB minimum and HDSIZE/8 as maximum)
  • To define the amount of logical volume "data" space (/var/lib/vz): maxvz=X (where X is in GB).
  • To define the amount of free space left in LVM VG 'pve': minfree=X (where X is in GB, 16GB is the default if storage available > 128GB, 1/8 otherwise)
• Example, linux ext4 maxroot=25 swapsize=8 maxvz=400 minfree=32
• follow the instructions as always
• if you screwed up grub and can't boot from hd anymore, boot from the installer cdrom and at "boot:" prompt just type: pveboot (NOT preceded by "linux"). This will boot from cdrom and mount LVM root and data partitions

(None of those options are available for ZFS)

Other Cheat Codes

During the initial boot while installing ProxMox from the CD, for some Mainboards, it might be necessary to use one or more of the following cheat codes (boot parameters):

vga=normal
noapic
noacpi
mem=512M

At the installation boot prompt, to use these codes, you would type something like:

debug mem=512M