2.3. Using the Proxmox VE Installer

The installer ISO image includes the following:

Note

All existing data on the for installation selected drives will be removed during the installation process. The installer does not add boot menu entries for other operating systems.

Please insert the prepared installation media Section 2.2, “Prepare Installation Media” (for example, USB flash drive or CD-ROM) and boot from it.

Tip

Make sure that booting from the installation medium (for example, USB) is enabled in your servers firmware settings.

screenshot/pve-grub-menu.png

After choosing the correct entry (e.g. Boot from USB) the Proxmox VE menu will be displayed and one of the following options can be selected:

Install Proxmox VE
Starts the normal installation.

Tip

It’s possible to use the installation wizard with a keyboard only. Buttons can be clicked by pressing the ALT key combined with the underlined character from the respective button. For example, ALT + N to press a Next button.

Install Proxmox VE (Debug mode)
Starts the installation in debug mode. A console will be opened at several installation steps. This helps to debug the situation if something goes wrong. To exit a debug console, press CTRL-D. This option can be used to boot a live system with all basic tools available. You can use it, for example, to repair a degraded ZFS rpool Section 3.8, “ZFS on Linux” or fix the bootloader Section 3.12, “Host Bootloader” for an existing Proxmox VE setup.
Rescue Boot
With this option you can boot an existing installation. It searches all attached hard disks. If it finds an existing installation, it boots directly into that disk using the Linux kernel from the ISO. This can be useful if there are problems with the boot block (grub) or the BIOS is unable to read the boot block from the disk.
Test Memory
Runs memtest86+. This is useful to check if the memory is functional and free of errors.
screenshot/pve-select-target-disk.png

After selecting Install Proxmox VE and accepting the EULA, the prompt to select the target hard disk(s) will appear. The Options button opens the dialog to select the target file system.

The default file system is ext4. The Logical Volume Manager (LVM) is used when ext4 or xfs is selected. Additional options to restrict LVM space can also be set (see below).

Proxmox VE can be installed on ZFS. As ZFS offers several software RAID levels, this is an option for systems that don’t have a hardware RAID controller. The target disks must be selected in the Options dialog. More ZFS specific settings can be changed under Advanced Options (see below).

Warning

ZFS on top of any hardware RAID is not supported and can result in data loss.

screenshot/pve-select-location.png

The next page asks for basic configuration options like the location, the time zone, and keyboard layout. The location is used to select a download server close by to speed up updates. The installer usually auto-detects these settings. They only need to be changed in the rare case that auto detection fails or a different keyboard layout should be used.

screenshot/pve-set-password.png

Next the password of the superuser (root) and an email address needs to be specified. The password must consist of at least 5 characters. It’s highly recommended to use a stronger password. Some guidelines are:

The email address is used to send notifications to the system administrator. For example:

screenshot/pve-setup-network.png

The last step is the network configuration. Please note that during installation you can either use an IPv4 or IPv6 address, but not both. To configure a dual stack node, add additional IP addresses after the installation.

screenshot/pve-installation.png

The next step shows a summary of the previously selected options. Re-check every setting and use the Previous button if a setting needs to be changed. To accept, press Install. The installation starts to format disks and copies packages to the target. Please wait until this step has finished; then remove the installation medium and restart your system.

screenshot/pve-install-summary.png

If the installation failed check out specific errors on the second TTY (‘CTRL + ALT + F2’), ensure that the systems meets the minimum requirements Section 2.1.1, “Minimum Requirements, for Evaluation”. If the installation is still not working look at the how to get help chapter Section 1.10, “Getting Help”.

Further configuration is done via the Proxmox web interface. Point your browser to the IP address given during installation (https://youripaddress:8006).

Note

Default login is "root" (realm PAM) and the root password is defined during the installation process.

The installer creates a Volume Group (VG) called pve, and additional Logical Volumes (LVs) called root, data, and swap. To control the size of these volumes use:

The installer creates the ZFS pool rpool. No swap space is created but you can reserve some unpartitioned space on the install disks for swap. You can also create a swap zvol after the installation, although this can lead to problems. (see ZFS swap notes).

ashift
Defines the ashift value for the created pool. The ashift needs to be set at least to the sector-size of the underlying disks (2 to the power of ashift is the sector-size), or any disk which might be put in the pool (for example the replacement of a defective disk).
compress
Defines whether compression is enabled for rpool.
checksum
Defines which checksumming algorithm should be used for rpool.
copies
Defines the copies parameter for rpool. Check the zfs(8) manpage for the semantics, and why this does not replace redundancy on disk-level.
hdsize
Defines the total hard disk size to be used. This is useful to save free space on the hard disk(s) for further partitioning (for example to create a swap-partition). hdsize is only honored for bootable disks, that is only the first disk or mirror for RAID0, RAID1 or RAID10, and all disks in RAID-Z[123].

ZFS works best with a lot of memory. If you intend to use ZFS make sure to have enough RAM available for it. A good calculation is 4GB plus 1GB RAM for each TB RAW disk space.

ZFS can use a dedicated drive as write cache, called the ZFS Intent Log (ZIL). Use a fast drive (SSD) for it. It can be added after installation with the following command:

# zpool add <pool-name> log </dev/path_to_fast_ssd>