My Homelabbing Journey Part 3

Finally Installing Proxmox on the OptiPlex

Welcome back! let’s get to Part 3 – the one where things actually start coming together. We’ve got thrifted routers bridged with DD-WRT, wired Internet in my room at a stable ~100 MB/s download… time to fire up the main star: Proxmox on the Dell OptiPlex 5070.

The ISO Adventure

Grabbed the latest Proxmox VE ISO from the official site. Yeah, I went with the bleeding-edge version (9.1-1 at the time) even though it was super fresh—stability? We’ll see.

First attempt: Ventoy. I love the idea—one USB, multiple ISOs. Plugged in my drive, set it up… and it just refused to boot properly on the OptiPlex. No idea why. I swear it wasn’t user error (okay, maybe a little).

Ended up with a corrupted partition mess. Spent way too long fixing the USB, then gave up and went with the reliable classic: balenaEtcher. Flashed the ISO, done in minutes. Lesson re-learned: sometimes simple wins.

The Display Port Surprise

USB ready, plugged into the OptiPlex, keyboard and mouse connected… nothing on screen.

Turns out OptiPlex 5070s (and many modern Dells) use DisplayPort primarily, and my ancient monitor only had VGA and HDMI. Tried VGA → black screen. Dug out a USB-C-to-HDMI adapter I had lying around → still nothing.

Sigh. Quick trip to the shop: bought a proper DisplayPort cable for 25 TND (~$8 USD). Worth every coin.

Back home, plugged everything in:

• DisplayPort to my old monitor
• Random ancient keyboard (couldn’t find my good one—still hunting)
• Mouse I had from before

(No creamy mechanical keyboard yet, but one day… one day. Same for a decent monitor.)

Installation: Smooth Sailing

Booted into the Proxmox installer. Everything went perfectly: disk selection, networking, root password, done.

Rebooted into the web interface at https://ip:8006. That first login feeling? Pure satisfaction.

Post-Install Magic with Helper Scripts

I could have gone manual: edit sources.list, disable enterprise repo, add no-subscription repo, remove subscription nag, update, etc.

But why suffer when community heroes exist?

Ran the famous Proxmox VE Post-Install Script from community-scripts.github.io:

bash -c "$(wget -qLO - https://github.com/tteck/Proxmox/raw/main/install/post-pve-install.sh)"

The Cursed LG Laptop Revival Attempt (And Why It Failed)

Once proxmox was up and running, I figured I dive into a side quest that turned into a full-blown horror story: trying to breathe new life into our family’s ancient LG CD500 laptop.

This beast has been in the family since around 2012 (maybe earlier—who knows). It’s still technically functional, running Windows 7 infested with every virus known to mankind, locked legacy BIOS, cracked hinges, the works. I thought: perfect low-power server candidate! Pi-hole, Jellyfin, lightweight Docker stuff—why not?

Spoiler: it didn’t go as planned.

Step 1: Teardown and Parts Harvest

First move: disassemble the laptop. Inside:

• 250GB 2.5” SATA HDD (original)
• 2 × 2GB DDR3 RAM sticks (total 4GB—painful by 2025 standards)

Not exactly a powerhouse, but enough for basic self-hosting.

I had a bigger idea: swap in my 1TB HDD (the one I was using as extra storage in the OptiPlex Proxmox node, I forgot to mention that).

So I:

• Pulled the 1TB drive from the OptiPlex
• Ran full SMART tests in Proxmox (all good)
• Mounted it read-only to check data
• Wiped it completely

Now… what to install?

The Plan: Bare-Metal Debian

Goal: lightweight Debian (stable or testing) as a low-power server.

Problem #1: Locked legacy BIOS with unknown password. No boot menu access, no changing boot order reliably. (I tried all possible solutions but didn’t manage to fix it)

Problem #2: Can’t easily boot from USB (BIOS lock + no reliable way to make it boot first).

Solution I chose: dd the Debian netinst ISO directly to the HDD itself.

Yes, you read that right. Debian ISOs are hybrid—they can be dd’d to a disk and boot like a USB stick. I figured: flash the ISO to the 1TB drive, slap it in the laptop, and let it boot straight into the installer.

Downloaded the latest amd64 netinst ISO from debian.org, ran:

dd if=debian-12.7.0-amd64-netinst.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M conv=fdatasync status=progress

Moved the drive back to the LG. Powered on… and it actually booted into the Debian installer! Victory… or so I thought.

The Nightmare Begins: Partitioning Hell

Everything went fine until… partitioning. No matter what I did: guided, manual, msdos table, ext4 + swap—the installer threw: “Failed to create a file system. The ext4 file system creation in partition #X of /dev/sda failed.” Over and over. I dropped to shell, tried manual wipes, mkfs.ext4 by hand—sometimes it worked, but the installer kept failing later steps. Hours of troubleshooting later, I finally understood the root cause.

Technical Deep Dive: Why It Failed

Here’s the full breakdown (for anyone attempting something similar—learn from my pain):

The Core Issue

Debian netinst ISOs are hybrid:

• They contain an ISO9660 filesystem (for CD booting)
• Plus a partition table (for USB/HDD booting)

When you dd it to the target HDD:

• The laptop boots from the ISO9660 section (treats it like a CD)
• The installer mounts /dev/sda1 (the ISO9660 partition) as /cdrom
• The installer sees the installation media on the target disk
• For safety, it refuses to format any partition on that disk

Classic self-referential paradox. The drive is both the installer and the target.

Everything I Tried

• Manual partitioning with bootable flags
• Wiping the first 100-200MB with dd if=/dev/zero
• wipefs -a /dev/sda
• Force unmounting /cdrom in shell
• Manually creating filesystems before continuing
• Adding boot parameters for the ancient Intel GPU (nomodeset, vga=normal, debian-installer/framebuffer=false)
• Switching between stable and testing ISOs

Nothing fully worked. The installer kept getting confused about the codename/release because /cdrom was broken or remounted.

What Would Have Worked

• Using a non-hybrid full DVD ISO (no partition table conflict)
• Installing via Proxmox VM with physical disk passthrough
• Host-level debootstrap on the HDD from Proxmox (partition → format → chroot → install GRUB)

But… BIOS password blocked reliable USB booting, and I didn’t want to keep swapping the drive. CMOS battery removal? Tried but no luck. No jumper, no master password worked.

Final Outcome: Abandon Mission

After way too many hours, I gave up.

• Wiped the 1TB drive again
• Put it back in the OptiPlex as storage
• The 250GB original HDD became a cold backup/external drive
• The LG laptop… went back to being a dusty relic

Lesson learned: Never dd a hybrid netinst ISO directly to your target internal HDD on old locked-BIOS machines. If I ever get another old laptop (or somehow crack that BIOS password), I’ll go the VM passthrough route—foolproof.

Silver Lining

My main Proxmox node is running strong. Sometimes the win is knowing when to stop fighting. Next up setting up services and more.

Thanks for reading – more homelab adventures coming soon.

Inshallah this becomes a long series. The more I break, the more I’ll share.

Stick around if you want to learn together.

رَبِّ زِدْنِي عِلْمًا ۞ وَفَهْمًا وَحِكْمَةً
رَبِّ يَسِّرْ وَلَا تُعَسِّرْ ۞ وَتَمِّمْ بِالْخَيْرِ

~ Darknight