[Bug] ESXi to Proxmox migration fails

[sm100327]

Hey there! 👋 Thanks for taking the time to report this bug — we appreciate it!

Please keep in mind: PegaProx is developed and maintained entirely by volunteers in our free time. We do our best, but we can't work magic 🪄 — please be patient, we'll get to your issue as soon as we can.

Want to help keep PegaProx alive?

• ⭐ Star the project — it's free and helps a lot!
• 💖 Become a Sponsor — helps us dedicate more time to development
• 🤝 Contributing code or docs is always welcome too!

---

Describe the bug

Again, not really a bug, more a question whether we are doing everything right.

We have a Proxmox Cluster running Proxmox 9.1.4 and connectivity to a ESX host running 8.0.3, the main storage is VSAN but we tested the VM running and shutdown on VSAN and on local storage on the ESX, both times it fails with $log_output_below

Based on the error message we expected some kind of field to select the source storage, but there isn't one

Steps to Reproduce

1. Use "Migrate to Proxmox"
2. Select (proxmox) target cluster, node and storage
3. put ESXi root pwd
4. Select target bridge
5. We tested all 3 modes of migration,
6. all fail with the error below

Expected behavior

Machine should be copied to Proxmox

Environment

• PegaProx Version: 0.9.3
• VMWare Version: 8.0.3
• **Installation Method: deploy.sh **
• **OS: Debian 13 **
• **Browser: Firefox 148 and Chrome 146 on Linux **
• **Behind Reverse Proxy? Yes, traefik **
• UI? Tested Both

Logs

[14:11:14] Phase: planning
[14:11:14] Planning migration of 'Vsan-cluster-test-vm-56' from XXXXX
[14:11:14] VM has 1 disk(s), 16.0 GB total
[14:11:14] Testing SSH to XXXXXX
[14:11:15] SSH OK: XXXXX
[14:11:15] Auto-detecting datastore...
[14:12:15] FAILED: Could not determine ESXi datastore. Please specify it manually.
[14:12:15] Phase: failed

Screenshots

Checklist

• I have searched existing issues to make sure this is not a duplicate
• I am using the latest version of PegaProx

[MrMasterbay]

Hi @sm100327 ,

Hm I see. Does your Datastore has special characters in there?
It could be that pegaprox is confused about certain special chars and is then not finding the datastore.

Regards,
Nico

[sm100327]

Hi

i checked, [a-zA-Z0-9-] thats it, we retried the migration (offline) and i can not see any log output
Do you have a hint where to check/look ?

Cheers
Soeren

[MrMasterbay]

Do you have by any chance a underscore _ in there?
That there is also 0 log output is quite concerning. Is SSH enabled on both sides?

Regards

[MrMasterbay]

Hi @sm100327 ,

just wanted to check it out?
Regards,
Nico

[sm100327]

Hi, sorry, very busy.

Yes, there are "_" unterscores in the datastore names on VMWare side.

The logoutput is not 0, it just does not say anything about the failure

[sm100327]

small addition, the "_" is not in the datastore we tested the VM on, but in another datastore

[MrMasterbay]

Hi thanks for letting know.
We well look into it.

[sm100327]

If i can do anyhthing, help somewhere, test something - let me know, we are happy to help

[larryd-ops]

Have the exact same issue. ESX datastore name in VMS.

[19:15:27] Phase: planning
[19:15:27] Planning migration of 'W25' from 192.168.10.50
[19:15:27] VM has 1 disk(s), 40.0 GB total
[19:15:27] Testing SSH to 192.168.10.50...
[19:15:29] SSH OK: Unknown command: `hostname'
[19:15:29] Auto-detecting datastore...
[19:15:31] FAILED: Could not determine ESXi datastore. Please specify it manually.
[19:15:31] Phase: failed

[jaapvliere]

I've also a problem with migrating from VMware to Proxmox.
The new VM is placed on local root-volume (homedir of the root-user) of the Proxmox node, which in most cases is too small. The result is that the Proxmox-nodes crashes
The error is: "400 too many arguments...."

[12:51:42] Creating VM 107: fcv016, 16384MB RAM, 2 cores, win11, disk=scsi, net=e1000e
[12:51:44] VM shell created
[12:51:44] Phase: pre_sync
[12:51:44] === PRE-SYNC: VM continues running on VMware ===
[12:51:44] Mounting ESXi datastore via SSHFS...
[12:51:46] SSHFS mounted: /tmp/v2p-f2201a24
[12:51:46] VMDK files via SSHFS: 3
[12:51:46] === TRANSFER MODE: Offline Copy ===
[12:51:46] Stopping VM first, then full disk copy via SSH
[12:51:46] VMware VM already off
[12:51:46] Copying disk 0: fcv016.vmdk (70.0 GB)
[12:51:46] Source: fcv016-flat.vmdk (70.0 GB)
[12:51:47] Datastore: ds_fc2
[12:51:54] Allocated: Formatting '/mnt/pve/ds_pxm02/images/107/vm-107-disk-0.qcow2', fmt=qcow2 cluster_size=65536 extended_l2=off preallocation=metadata compression_type=zlib size=75161927680 lazy_refcounts=off refcount_bits=16
[12:51:54] Target: 400 too many arguments pvesm path
[12:51:54] URL: .../fcv016/fcv016-flat.vmdk?dsName=ds_fc2
[12:51:55] Establishing ESXi session...
[12:51:55] Testing 1MB download...
[12:51:55] Test result: HTTP=206 DL=1048576 FSIZE=1048576
[12:51:56] HTTPS test OK (1048576B) - full download 70.0 GB...

[larryd-ops]

This is probably a stupid question, but I am a Linux novice and new to Pegaprox. How do I replace the updated files in PegaProx? I have tried to WinSCP in to the server and upload but get a permissions error that I cannot over write the files. Thank you for any help.