28 Mar
2023
28 Mar
'23
1:11 p.m.
Hi all,
I am having to leave Proxmox behind - every time there has been a power
cut (every 4-6 weeks), the machine has failed to boot. This last time, I
have had to re-install and restore VMs from backup. So I am
investigating what to use instead, in the hope that it will be less
damaged by power breaks.
VBox is familiar, and the machine is not a lap-top, so running windows
24/7 is not a problem, although I suspect I should reboot once a week,
weather it needs it on not. :)
Xen is another option. New to me, but my websites are on Xen on Bitfolk,
so high compatibility.
The VMs are all Ubuntu. If I use Xen I will have to install a Windows VM
because I use software that has no Linux version yet.
Has anyone any advice or warnings they would like to share?
Thanks
Ian
--
Ian Hobson
Tel (+66) 626 544 695
28 Mar
28 Mar
1:36 p.m.
Hi,
Could you provide any more information about why the machine has failed to
boot?
I am having to leave Proxmox behind - every time there
has been
a power cut (every 4-6 weeks), the machine has failed to boot.
This last time, I have had to re-install and restore VMs from
backup. So I am investigating what to use instead, in the hope
that it will be less damaged by power breaks.
VBox is familiar, and the machine is not a lap-top, so running
windows 24/7 is not a problem, although I suspect I should
reboot once a week, weather it needs it on not. :)
Xen is another option. New to me, but my websites are on Xen on
Bitfolk, so high compatibility.
The VMs are all Ubuntu. If I use Xen I will have to install a
Windows VM because I use software that has no Linux version yet.
Has anyone any advice or warnings they would like to share?
Thanks
Ian
--
Best wishes,
@ndy
--
andyjpb(a)ashurst.eu.org
http://www.ashurst.eu.org/
0x7EBA75FF
3:34 p.m.
Hi,
I had start-on-power enabled, so the machine would boot upon the power
being restored.
The problem following a power loss, is that it would boot, but fail to
start Proxmox, and complain that I have to run fsck manually (on the
boot spinning rust drive).
This involved swapping display and keyboard from another machine (which
I could then not use) and try to fix the problem using a tablet for
internet access. Yuk!
This was usually enough to fix the problem, but this last time,
it wasn't. I had to reinstall Proxmox and then try to configure it to
see my backup disk. It could have gone smoother had I taken better notes
when I first built it. Of course, not having experience of Proxmox I did
not know what to note - and the notes were still lost deep in the
machine I could not use. :(
When Proxmox works, it works well. VMs start on boot if so configured.
PyHole handles DNS.
Ian
On 28/03/2023 20:36, Andy Bennett via BitFolk Users wrote:
Hi,
Could you provide any more information about why the machine has failed
to boot?
--
Ian Hobson
Tel (+66) 626 544 695
I am having to leave Proxmox behind - every time
there has been a
power cut (every 4-6 weeks), the machine has failed to boot. This last
time, I have had to re-install and restore VMs from backup. So I am
investigating what to use instead, in the hope that it will be less
damaged by power breaks.
VBox is familiar, and the machine is not a lap-top, so running windows
24/7 is not a problem, although I suspect I should reboot once a week,
weather it needs it on not. :)
Xen is another option. New to me, but my websites are on Xen on
Bitfolk, so high compatibility.
The VMs are all Ubuntu. If I use Xen I will have to install a Windows
VM because I use software that has no Linux version yet.
Has anyone any advice or warnings they would like to share?
Thanks
Ian
5 p.m.
Hi,
The problem following a power loss, is that it would
boot, but
fail to start Proxmox, and complain that I have to run fsck
manually (on the boot spinning rust drive).
Do you know what filesystem is in use on the drive?
Running "mount" at a shell should tell you.
Best wishes,
@ndy
--
andyjpb(a)ashurst.eu.org
http://www.ashurst.eu.org/
0x7EBA75FF
29 Mar
29 Mar
2:07 a.m.
Hi Andy,
On 29/03/2023 00:00, Andy Bennett via BitFolk Users wrote:
Hi,
I think it was vfat or ext4. Have reformatted and installed O/S on
another drive, so cannot be sure.
The problem following a power loss, is that it
would boot, but fail to
start Proxmox, and complain that I have to run fsck manually (on the
boot spinning rust drive).
Do you know what filesystem is in use on the drive?
Running "mount" at a shell should tell you.
Best wishes,
@ndy
--
Ian Hobson
Tel (+66) 626 544 695
4 Apr
4 Apr
7:47 p.m.
Hi,
I think it was vfat or ext4. Have reformatted and installed O/S
on another drive, so cannot be sure.
If it was vfat then that will need an fsck every time the machine reboots
unexpectedly. vfat doesn't have good support for UNIX/Linux style
permissions so I'd expect it to contain disk images or something for the
the containers.
ext4 is journaled (by default) and should survive an unexpected reboot so
if this is causing an fsck then you might want to look into other causes.
Perhaps it's set up in one of the non-default / non-journaling modes or
perhaps there are some harware errors or settings (writeback caches) that
make the mounter think the log is unrecoverable.
Best wishes,
@ndy
--
andyjpb(a)ashurst.eu.org
http://www.ashurst.eu.org/
0x7EBA75FF
The problem following a power loss, is that it would
boot,
but fail to start Proxmox, and complain that I have to run
fsck manually (on the boot spinning rust drive).
Do you know what filesystem is in use on the drive?
5 Apr
5 Apr
1:29 a.m.
Hi All,
Big thanks to all who commented, esp @ndy.
IIRC the drive was vfat, and as part of the re-install, it is not ext4.
All default so journaling now on.
Will cycle the power later, and see what happens.
Can't now, the dog is on my knee, feeling poorly with the heat. It was
35C with 70% humidity at 7:30 AM this morning. (Bangkok has three
seasons - hot, damn hot, and f***ing hot in April).
Ian
On 05/04/2023 02:47, Andy Bennett via BitFolk Users wrote:
Hi,
I think it was vfat or ext4. Have reformatted and installed O/S on
another drive, so cannot be sure.
If it was vfat then that will need an fsck every time the machine
reboots unexpectedly. vfat doesn't have good support for UNIX/Linux
style permissions so I'd expect it to contain disk images or something
for the the containers.
ext4 is journaled (by default) and should survive an unexpected reboot
so if this is causing an fsck then you might want to look into other
causes. Perhaps it's set up in one of the non-default / non-journaling
modes or perhaps there are some harware errors or settings (writeback
caches) that make the mounter think the log is unrecoverable.
Best wishes,
@ndy
--
Ian Hobson
Tel (+66) 626 544 695
The problem following a power loss, is that it would
boot, but fail
to start Proxmox, and complain that I have to run fsck manually (on
the boot spinning rust drive).
Do you know what filesystem is in use on the drive?
6:08 a.m.
Hi All,
The machine has rebooted after sudden power loss.
Regards
Ian
On 05/04/2023 02:47, Andy Bennett via BitFolk Users wrote:
Hi,
I think it was vfat or ext4. Have reformatted and installed O/S on
another drive, so cannot be sure.
If it was vfat then that will need an fsck every time the machine
reboots unexpectedly. vfat doesn't have good support for UNIX/Linux
style permissions so I'd expect it to contain disk images or something
for the the containers.
ext4 is journaled (by default) and should survive an unexpected reboot
so if this is causing an fsck then you might want to look into other
causes. Perhaps it's set up in one of the non-default / non-journaling
modes or perhaps there are some harware errors or settings (writeback
caches) that make the mounter think the log is unrecoverable.
Best wishes,
@ndy
--
Ian Hobson
Tel (+66) 626 544 695
The problem following a power loss, is that it would
boot, but fail
to start Proxmox, and complain that I have to run fsck manually (on
the boot spinning rust drive).
Do you know what filesystem is in use on the drive? 
4 Apr
4 Apr
9:22 p.m.
Sorry to jump on on a side discussion, but does switching off journalling make extra disks
less secure?
I thought it just made them a bit quicker.
Iain
On 4 Apr 2023 at 8:48 pm, Andy Bennett via BitFolk Users
<users(a)mailman.bitfolk.com> wrote:
Hi,
I think it was vfat or ext4. Have reformatted and installed O/S
on another drive, so cannot be sure.
If it was vfat then that will need an fsck every time the machine reboots
unexpectedly. vfat doesn't have good support for UNIX/Linux style
permissions so I'd expect it to contain disk images or something for the
the containers.
ext4 is journaled (by default) and should survive an unexpected reboot so
if this is causing an fsck then you might want to look into other causes.
Perhaps it's set up in one of the non-default / non-journaling modes or
perhaps there are some harware errors or settings (writeback caches) that
make the mounter think the log is unrecoverable.
Best wishes,
@ndy
--
andyjpb(a)ashurst.eu.org
http://www.ashurst.eu.org/
0x7EBA75FF
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The problem following a power loss, is that it would
boot,
but fail to start Proxmox, and complain that I have to run
fsck manually (on the boot spinning rust drive).
Do you know what filesystem is in use on the drive? 
5 Apr
5 Apr
8:28 a.m.
On 2023-04-04 22:22+0100, iain via BitFolk Users wrote:
Sorry to jump on on a side discussion, but does
switching off
journalling make extra disks less secure?
I thought it just made them a bit quicker.
They make unclean shutdowns start faster as they have a place to recover
from. This doesn't come for free as far as I know and something are
negligibly slower. The journal, I believe is frequently written to - but
I don't know if that creates a wear pattern issues. I could be wrong,
but I think a while back that vfat (without journal) was better for SD
cards because of the frequent journal writes, I don't know if that's the
same for emmc, since you'd expect durability.
Ed
28 Mar
28 Mar
2:22 p.m.
Hello,
On Tue, Mar 28, 2023 at 08:11:12PM +0700, Ian Hobson via BitFolk Users wrote:
I am having to leave Proxmox behind - every time there
has been a power cut
(every 4-6 weeks), the machine has failed to boot. This last time, I have
had to re-install and restore VMs from backup. So I am investigating what to
use instead, in the hope that it will be less damaged by power breaks.
To be honest a small UPS sounds much easier. It only needs a runtime
of a few minutes in order to do a clean shut down. So any model that
works with Linux should do.
So, that covers the issue of an abrupt power loss.
When you say, "the machine has failed to boot [after a power cut]",
what are the symptoms? Do you mean that when power is restored the
machine does not even try to boot? If so then there should be a
setting in the BIOS for what to do when power is restored, which
you'd want set to "power on".
Or does it actually get as far as booting Proxmox but somehow does
not start up the VMs? I have no experience of Proxmox but I've
heard it's pretty good so it's probably worth trying to fix whatever
is going wrong rather than spend time learning something else.
Cheers,
Andy
--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
4:07 p.m.
Hi Ian,
On 2023-03-28 20:11+0700, Ian Hobson via BitFolk Users wrote:
Hi all,
I am having to leave Proxmox behind - every time there has been a
power cut (every 4-6 weeks), the machine has failed to boot. This last
time, I have had to re-install and restore VMs from backup. So I am
investigating what to use instead, in the hope that it will be less
damaged by power breaks.
VBox is familiar, and the machine is not a lap-top, so running windows
24/7 is not a problem, although I suspect I should reboot once a week,
weather it needs it on not. :)
Well, Oracle, and if you want the bleeding edge kernel you may run into
issues as virtualbox tends to lag a bit behind.
Xen is another option. New to me, but my websites are
on Xen on
Bitfolk, so high compatibility.
The VMs are all Ubuntu. If I use Xen I will have to install a Windows
VM because I use software that has no Linux version yet.
Has anyone any advice or warnings they would like to share?
In December I got a bit annoyed with virtual box as it didn't restore
after the host suspended. I moved half-a-dozen VMs to qemu/kvm, seems
fine. I don't know if Xen has anything better to offer.
USB passthrough was the only issue I had, solved it by passing a USB
card through to the VM.
In general, kvm seems the way forward since that's in the kernel it
makes sense that it'd have better upstream support. Unscientific
observation, but it certainly feels faster in the guest and host boots
quicker.
Ed
387
days inactive
395
days old
11 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
-
Andy Bennett -
Andy Smith -
Ed Neville -
iain -
Ian Hobson