Importing Disks without SSH

[Vaneixus]

I was testing the past 2-3 days in ways a disk can be imported without having to pass by SSH access, I can say I had succeeded in uploading and importing a .qcow2(I think it will also work with .raw files as well, but have not tested as of yet.) Proxmox recently(as of 8.4 actually) added a new API option to upload disks to a new content type known as "import" via the API. and before that, there was also the option to import new disks to an existing(or new) VM via the import-from parameter, which was added all the way back in 7.x if I remember correctly. Currently, in v78.0, the provider will replace the VM if the fileID field is updated/set. I disabled that functionality to test updating an imported disk without having to delete the VM itself with the other disks. I can say it works.

here's my .tf file that I used to test updating and importing a Disk to a VM without having to replace said VM. Note that SSH is not set and the user used is a pve(not pam) user, and thus is not even able to login via SSH.

terraform {
  required_providers {
    proxmox = {
      source = "bpg/proxmox"
    }
  }
}

provider "proxmox" {
    endpoint = "https://{node1ip}:8006/api2/json"
    insecure = true
    username = "infra-agent@pve"
    password = "infratest"
}

resource "proxmox_virtual_environment_file" "test_upload" {
    node_name = "node1"
    content_type = "import"
    datastore_id = "local"
    source_file {
      file_name = "disk2.qcow2"
      path = "disk.qcow2"
    }
}

resource "proxmox_virtual_environment_vm" "ubuntu_vm" {
  name        = "terraform-provider-proxmox-ubuntu-vm"
  description = "Managed by Terraform"
  tags        = ["terraform", "ubuntu"]

  node_name = "node01"
  vm_id     = 14321

  agent {
    # read 'Qemu guest agent' section, change to true only when ready
    enabled = false
  }
  # if agent is not enabled, the VM may not be able to shutdown properly, and may need to be forced off
  stop_on_destroy = true

  startup {
    order      = "3"
    up_delay   = "60"
    down_delay = "60"
  }

  cpu {
    cores        = 2
    type         = "x86-64-v2-AES"  # recommended for modern CPUs
  }

  memory {
    dedicated = 2048
    floating  = 2048 # set equal to dedicated to enable ballooning
  }

  disk {
    datastore_id = "local-zfs"
    file_id      = join("", [proxmox_virtual_environment_file.test_upload.datastore_id,
                             ":",
                             proxmox_virtual_environment_file.test_upload.content_type,
                             "/",
                             proxmox_virtual_environment_file.test_upload.source_file[0].file_name])
    interface    = "scsi0"
    size         = 10
  }

  disk {
    datastore_id = "local-zfs"
    interface    = "scsi1"
    size         = 15
  }

  operating_system {
    type = "l26"
  }
}

In the end my question is, what are the other uses for FileID other than importing via SSH and what file formats are expected to be supported by SSH importing? Otherwise, a fallback option can also be implemented where we check if a parameter like "use_ssh" is set to true then use SSH else use the API.

[Vaneixus]

BPG, That is all also dependent on the case if you want to pull this into your code/are interested in having this. I would also happy to be just running my fork if you're not interested.

[Vaneixus]

Vaneixus@0fe7856 here's my sole commit containing the changes necessary to add the two features as a proof of concept.

[Vaneixus]

there's this issue that's relevant for one of the two features necessary: #1913

[Vaneixus]

also, from my rather quick search through the codebase it seems that uploading disks is the only use case for the SSH client class? I might be wrong, but there were no other usages of the SSH client implementation other than for uploading/importing disks.

[bpg]

uploading snippets as well

[Vaneixus]

It seems that the upload to import feature supports .ova .qcow2 .raw .vmdk and finally .img . as for importing a disk, it's unknown, my quick glance in proxmox's code, it seems that only .qcow, .qcow2, .vmdk and .raw are supported, I will have to investigate this further. It might not be the case.

PVE supported backing formats for disks: https://github.com/proxmox/qemu-server/blob/fa4616272281b1cbe39da42b34c13739c2fbb027/PVE/QemuServer/Drive.pm#L33
PVE supported upload extensions: https://github.com/proxmox/pve-storage/blob/b6d049b176a6936e4d71a51c4d9de3e4f5680a82/src/PVE/Storage.pm#L119

[Vaneixus]

As for snippets... It makes sense. So yeah, I will probably be splitting this off into two different PRs, that is if you're fine with that, as the way I see it, it's two different (independent) features.