Proxmox on Dell Precision 7530 Post Installation

This is a wonderful laptop and since it has a lot to give and was laying around I decided to use it as server.

Shutoff display
One problem to solve was that the display stayed on all the time. To solve that, I had to insert the command consoleblank into the GRUB command line:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="consoleblank=30"

That will switch off the display after 30 seconds. To do that I opened /etc/default/grub with an editor. And inserted “consoleblank=30” into the already existing line:

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="consoleblank=30"

after that call:

update-grub

Disable action on Lid changes
The second thing I wanted to disable was the action for lid changes. Since I don’t want to open or close it all the time, but there may be a time, I have to move it to another location. To disable that action, I opened /etc/systemd/logind.conf with an editor, removed the hashtag on all lines that contain the word HandleLidSwitch, and changed the values to ignore:

#HandleHibernateKeyLongPress=ignore
HandleLidSwitch=ignore
HandleLidSwitchExternalPower=ignore
HandleLidSwitchDocked=ignore
#PowerKeyIgnoreInhibited=no

After that, call:

systemctl restart systemd-logind

To test the changes, I rebooted the server.

Backup drives
Since I have a backup drive from a former Proxmox installation, I wanted to add it again. First, I wanted to mount it. To do so, I used fstab and the mount command. But before I could start, I needed the UUID and the folders prepared, so I created a folder in /mnt/:

mkdir -p /mnt/backup

To get the UUID and the file system type, I called lsblk in the console with some self-chosen columns:

lsblk -o name, uuid,type,size,tstype

Then I inserted the data into fstab:

UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx /mnt/backup ext4 defaults 0 0

After that, reload:

systemctl daemon-reload

Let’s test:

mount -a
ls /mnt/backup

It should show the contents of the disk. Then, add it as directory to storage.