Quick Answer: Proxmox Compatibility

⚠️ TL;DR: NO, not on Proxmox host. YES, inside VMs.

🔴 Running on Proxmox Host: NOT RECOMMENDED

Why Not?

zram will steal RAM from your VMs (up to 50% of total RAM)
tmpfs will allocate 40% of RAM, reducing VM memory
Kernel parameters are tuned for desktop, not hypervisor workloads
May cause VM performance degradation and instability

What Could Go Wrong?

VMs running slower due to memory pressure
Increased swap usage on VMs
Proxmox host becomes less responsive
Unpredictable behavior under heavy VM load

✅ Running Inside VMs: FULLY SAFE & RECOMMENDED

Perfect use case! Run the optimizer inside your desktop VMs:

# Inside your Ubuntu/Fedora/etc desktop VM:
sudo ./one-button-optimizer.sh

Benefits Inside VMs:

✅ Full optimizations without affecting host
✅ Browser/IDE caching works great
✅ Each VM gets its own optimized environment
✅ No risk to other VMs or Proxmox host

📊 Safe to Use Anywhere (Read-Only Tools)

These monitoring scripts are 100% safe on Proxmox host or VMs:

./quick-status-check.sh     # System overview
./tmpfs-info.sh              # tmpfs information  
./benchmark-tmpfs.sh         # Performance test
./benchmark-realistic.sh     # Cache simulation

They only read information, make no changes.

🛡️ Protection Built-In

The script now detects Proxmox and shows this warning:

⚠️  Proxmox VE host detected!

This tool is designed for desktop Linux systems and may not be
suitable for Proxmox hosts. Key concerns:

  🔴 zram: Reduces RAM available for VMs
  🟡 tmpfs: Allocates significant memory (up to 40%)
  🟡 Kernel params: Tuned for desktop, not hypervisor

Continue anyway? (y/N):

You can abort safely or proceed if you understand the risks.

🎯 Recommendations by Use Case

Scenario	Recommendation	Reason
Desktop VM	✅ USE IT	Perfect match, fully safe
Proxmox Host	❌ DON'T USE	Wrong optimizations
Container (LXC)	⚠️ MAYBE	Depends on privileged/unprivileged
Testing	📊 READ-ONLY TOOLS	Safe monitoring only

💡 Summary

Simple Rule:

Inside VMs: GO FOR IT! 🚀
On Proxmox host: DON'T! ⛔
Monitoring scripts: Always safe 👍

Detailed Analysis: See PROXMOX_COMPATIBILITY.md

2.5 KiB Raw Blame History