Proxmox on a 2008 Mac Pro: A Weekend of Perseverance

by Cyborg Knight

⚙️ Proxmox on a 2008 Mac Pro: A Weekend of Perseverance

This weekend, I went to war with an old 2008 Mac Pro and (eventually) won.

🔌 The Setup Attempt That (Almost) Broke Me

Over the past week, I sank an embarrassing number of hours into trying to get Proxmox VE up and running on one of my old Mac Pros.

My first attempt was on a 2.8GHz model using a 120GB SSD that I had previously used in this machine. The install itself wasn’t too bad, but getting the thing networked was another story.

The Mac lives upstairs in my office, and Proxmox requires a wired connection (no built-in Wi-Fi support). That meant dragging an absurdly long Ethernet cable down the stairs and into the main Eero router—fun times on a weeknight.

While I was poking around, I also discovered that one of the hard drive bays had a bent SATA connector. I was able to carefully bend the metal behind the connector back into place—surprisingly, it worked. All four drive bays are now populated and functional.

🔄 The Swap That Backfired

By Friday night, I got ambitious. I had another identical Mac Pro with a 3.0GHz processor lying around, and I figured, “Why not use the faster one?”

I swapped over all the components and powered it on—nothing. No video output, even though I heard the chime and saw the fans spin.

I tried different SSDs (including a 512GB pulled from a dead Mac Mini), video cards, RAM configurations—nothing. I gave it a solid go, but eventually gave up and reverted everything back to the original 2.8GHz machine.

🧠 Back on the First Mac — and Still Fighting

Saturday morning, I finally got the original Mac to boot again. I had the bright idea of dual-booting with macOS, just in case I needed a fallback.

That led me down a rabbit hole—installing Debian 12 on a separate partition, manually configuring everything before adding Proxmox. Sounds smart in theory. In practice, it was a nightmare.

Debian and Proxmox refused to cooperate with my partitioning scheme, throwing errors at every turn. I wasted hours troubleshooting before I finally admitted defeat and wiped the SSD clean.

Full-disk Proxmox install. No fallback. No regrets.

After that, things actually started working.

☀️ Sunday: The Payoff

Once Proxmox was installed properly, I set a static IP for the server and started container installs. Here’s what I’ve got running so far:

• Pi-hole – up and blocking ads across the network
• Home Assistant – working, still need to dial in the integrations
• Plex – up and running as my main media server
• Tautulli – tracking Plex usage like a champ
• Plex Meta Manager – initial setup done, needs refinement

Each of these had their own quirks during install, but I’ll cover the specific setup processes and configs in another post.

💾 Storage Layout

With all four drive bays now usable, I set up the following configuration:

• 512GB SSD: Main boot drive running Proxmox
• 2×2TB HDDs: ZFS mirror pool for media storage (redundancy FTW)
• 1TB HDD: Local backup drive for the server itself

It’s not enterprise-grade, but it’s solid for a homelab—and the ZFS mirror should keep my media safe from single-drive failures.

🧵 TL;DR

• Proxmox does technically run on a 2008 Mac Pro, but it’s not plug-and-play.
• Forget dual-booting with macOS. Just dedicate the full SSD and save yourself the stress.
• Expect to spend a solid weekend troubleshooting if you go this route.

Once installed, Proxmox is solid—and now I’ve got a local homelab server chugging away.

ZFS mirror for media. Backup drive for peace of mind.

Next up: breaking down how I configured each container and what I’d do differently next time.