Proxmox installation "Trying to detect country" (2024)

If you are having (several) issues with the Proxmox installer, try installing Debian 12 first and Proxmox afterwards inside it.

leesteken said:

If you are having (several) issues with the Proxmox installer, try installing Debian 12 first

Click to expand...

would that not be system in a system? Wanted to install Proxmox straight to the pc for resource usage efficiency. Found German thread on this subject, it said it went further after 30 minutes... So i will wait to see if that will help. I noticed this happens if I have ethernet cable connected. Tried without ethernet cable, then it does not try to detect country, allows to select from list instead.

ajocius said:

would that not be system in a system? Wanted to install Proxmox straight to the pc for resource usage efficiency.

Click to expand...

No it would not. Proxmox is based on Debian and reuses most of it. It's a known work-around when the installer fails to deal with a system.

I have the same default
I have to take the DVD of the previous version 2
proxmox-backup-server_2.3-1.iso

And finally after I install the update 3.0-1

For reference:
https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=4872

I've tried quite a lot of things to reproduce this, but so far no luck. I got a vague theory of it could be, although that still would not explain why it completely hangs at this point.

In case anyone manages to reproduce this, or hits it again by luck - it would be interesting to switch to tty3 by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F3, and the output from there of ip a, ping -vc1 1.1.1.1, cat /tmp/install-low-level-dump-env.log and dmesg -H | tail -n20.

New user here. Happened for me too the very first time. Then I tried again without the LAN cable and it was ok. Out of curiosity I tried again with the LAN cable plugged back in, and this time it proceeded albeit without detecting the country, so presumably the timeout worked the second time.

The first time I left it for a long time and it clearly wasn't going to progress.

New user here, same problem

Seem to me whatever geoip crap you use is of the usual quality and does't find the IP. At which point the installer just stops.

cheiss said:

I've tried quite a lot of things to reproduce this, but so far no luck. I got a vague theory of it could be, although that still would not explain why it completely hangs at this point.

In case anyone manages to reproduce this, or hits it again by luck - it would be interesting to switch to tty3 by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F3, and the output from there of ip a, ping -vc1 1.1.1.1, cat /tmp/install-low-level-dump-env.log and dmesg -H | tail -n20.

Click to expand...

root@proxmox:/# ip a
1: lo: <LOOPBACK> mtu 65536 qdisc noop state DONN group default qlen 1000
1ink/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
2: enp2s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
link/ether bc:ae:c5:94:7f:5b brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 192.168.1.103/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global dynamic enp2so
valid_lft 42671sec preferred_lft 42671sec
inet6 2a01:e0a:568:9d20:beae:c5ff:fe94:7f5b/64 scope global dynamic mngtmpaddr
valid_lft 86366sec preferred_lft 86366sec
inet6 fe80:beae:c5ff:fe94:7f5b/64 scope link
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

root@proxmox:/# ping -vc1 1.1.1.1
PING 1.1.1.1 (1.1.1.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: seq=0 tt1=57 t ime=12.722 ms
--- 1.1.1.1 ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 12.722/12.722/12.722 ms

root@proxmox:/# cat /tmp/install-low-level-dump-env.log
2023-10-11 19:02:36.947 INFO: initialized log
2023-10-11 19:02:37.002 INFO: query routes
2023-10-11 19:02:37.013 INFO: query block devices
2023-10-11 19:02:37.038 INFO: query DNS from resolv.conf (managed by DHCP client)
2023-10-11 19:02:37.059 INF0: trace country via IPv4
2023-10-11 19:02:37.070 DEBUG: DC TRACEROUTE: traceroute to 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
2023-10-11 19:02:37.082 DEBUG: DC TRACEROUTE: 1 .192.168.1.254 0.207 ms
2023-10-11 19:02:37.149 DEBUG: DC GEOIP: GeoIP Country Edition: IP Address not found
2023-10-11 19:02:37.149 DEBUG: DC TRACEROUTE: 2 194.149.174.112 11.963 ms

I can't enter the last command because | is not available on the keyboard ;o(
(I edited /etc/default/keyboard but I can't run systemctl because it hasn't started cleanly yet)
I hope to help you

I make the same observation as @tschmidt.

I started again without the RJ45 cable and when the screen offered an IP address I put the cable back and put an IP address compatible with my DHCP.
And everything works!

New member...french

update on my case:

I left it running over night to potentially do further debugging. But when I got back to it this morning it showed the EULA screen.

Going back to tty3 the log now has two additional lines indicating that it found the country.
Their timestamps are just a few ms after the old ones: 2023-10-11 17:12:25.311 (vs .303)
But those lines were NOT present when I looked at the log at ~17:21

Thank you both for the reports and debugging outputs!

They hopefully prove to be helpful, I'll investigate and report back.

My Box is still in the same state and I can investigate if that's helpful. (till ~17:30 UTC+1)

I know my way around debian and linux/cli in general.

@tschmidt: Thank you!
Could you run the following commands?
- traceroute -N 1 -q 1 -n 8.8.8.8
- geoiplookup 194.149.174.112
- rm /run/proxmox-installer/run-env-info.json && proxmox-low-level-installer dump-env

First two are what basically the installer does, the third re-runs the complete system detection. After the last one, the log file (cat /tmp/install-low-level-dump-env.log) again contains the actual log of the installer detection code.

@cheiss: unfortunatly I lost functionallty of tty3 trying to get a reverse shell so I can cutnpaste text
(no ^C ^D ^Z all don't work) Should have checked if there are additional shell ttys instead of assuming, sorry

If you know of any additional ways to access I can try, if not I can reboot and hope it happens again.

In the meantime here's the traceroute from my laptop (meither has any special routing so it should be the same)

tschmidt@fgn-t490s:~$ traceroute -N 1 -q 1 -n 8.8.8.8
traceroute to 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 10.122.3.2 1.886 ms
2 10.122.2.25 1.813 ms
3 100.64.0.1 2.582 ms
4 109.73.132.2 2.563 ms
5 109.73.132.3 2.611 ms
6 62.115.178.70 4.740 ms
7 62.115.153.213 4.873 ms
8 *
9 8.8.8.8 15.631 ms
tschmidt@fgn-t490s:~$ traceroute -N 1 -q 1 -n 8.8.8.8
traceroute to 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 10.122.3.3 1.858 ms
2 10.122.2.25 1.759 ms
3 100.64.0.1 2.702 ms
4 109.73.132.2 2.261 ms
5 109.73.132.3 9.279 ms
6 *
7 62.115.151.27 4.542 ms
8 *
9 8.8.8.8 4.683 ms

@cheiss: I managed to fix the shell and ran the commands

Somehow the system lost the default roue in the meantime but kept the ip. Both of which are provided via dhcp.

root@proxmox:/# traceroute -N 1 -q 1 8.8.8.8
traceroute to 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
connect: Network is unreachable
root@proxmox:/# ip a
1: lo: <LOOPBACK> mtu 65536 qdisc noop state DOWN group default qlen 1000
link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
2: enp2s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
link/ether f0:4d:a2:fa:0b:bf brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 10.122.3.234/24 brd 10.122.3.255 scope global dynamic enp2s0
valid_lft 2653sec preferred_lft 2653sec
inet6 fe80::f24d:a2ff:fefa:bbf/64 scope link
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
root@proxmox:/# ip r
10.122.3.0/24 dev enp2s0 proto kernel scope link src 10.122.3.234
root@proxmox:/# ip r add default via 10.122.3.3
root@proxmox:/# traceroute -N 1 -q 1 8.8.8.8
traceroute to 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 office.sw-core2.fg-networking.de (10.122.3.3) 0.261 ms
2 sw-core1.router1.fg-networking.de (10.122.2.25) 0.199 ms
3 100.64.0.1 (100.64.0.1) 1.167 ms
4 peer-01.k-net.de (109.73.132.2) 43.761 ms
5 knet01.rz.demando.de (109.73.132.3) 0.865 ms
6 *
7 google-ic-319726.ip.twelve99-cust.net (62.115.151.25) 13.748 ms
8 *
9 dns.google (8.8.8.8) 13.748 ms
root@proxmox:/# geoiplookup 192.149.174.112
GeoIP Country Edition: US, United States
root@proxmox:/# rm /run/proxmox-installer/run-env-info.json
root@proxmox:/# proxmox-low-level-installer dump-env
trying to detect country...
detected country: DE

Indeed, I have the same problem with PVE

By doing the same thing as in the previous post on session 3 Ctrl-Alt+F3

root@proxmox:/# geoiplookup 192.149.174.112
GeoIP Country Edition: US, United States
root@proxmox:/# proxmox-low-level-installer dump-env
trying to detect country...
Detected country: PVE Installation don't progress