Install Proxmox VE on Debian Buster

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Introduction

The installation of a supported Proxmox VE server should be done via Bare-metal_ISO_Installer. In some case it makes sense to install Proxmox VE on top of a running Debian Buster 64-bit, especially if you want a custom partition layout. For this How-To we used the 10.8 Debian Buster netinst ISO[1], but any official Buster installation medium should work.

Install a standard Debian Buster (amd64)

Install a standard Debian Buster, for details see Debian, and configure a static IP. It is recommended to only install the "standard" package selection, and nothing else, as Proxmox VE brings its own packages for qemu, lxc. A desktop environment is not necessary.

Add an /etc/hosts entry for your IP address

Please make sure that your machine's hostname is resolvable via /etc/hosts, i.e. you need an entry in /etc/hosts which assigns an address to its hostname.

Make sure that you have configured one of the following addresses in /etc/hosts for your hostname:

  • 1 IPv4 or
  • 1 IPv6 or
  • 1 IPv4 and 1 IPv6

Note: This also means editing or rather removing the address 127.0.1.1 that might be present as default.

For instance, if your IP address is 192.168.15.77, and your hostname prox4m1, then your /etc/hosts file could look like: 

127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain localhost
192.168.15.77   prox4m1.proxmox.com prox4m1

# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1     localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters

You can test if your setup is ok using the hostname command: 

hostname --ip-address
192.168.15.77 # should return your IP address here

Install Proxmox VE

Adapt your sources.list

Add the Proxmox VE repository: 

echo "deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pve buster pve-no-subscription" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pve-install-repo.list

Add the Proxmox VE repository key: 

wget http://download.proxmox.com/debian/proxmox-ve-release-6.x.gpg -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxmox-ve-release-6.x.gpg
chmod +r /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxmox-ve-release-6.x.gpg  # optional, if you have a non-default umask

Update your repository and system by running: 

apt update && apt full-upgrade

NOTE: If you have enabled other another arch (typically, i386 to run some older software) and apt complains about not being able to find /binary-i386: "Unable to find expected entry 'pve/binary-i386/Packages'" you need to remove other arch or use instead the row: 

deb [arch=amd64] http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pve buster pve-no-subscription

this is because Proxmox repository does not have any other arch besides amd64; more info about multiarch on debian at: https://wiki.debian.org/Multiarch/HOWTO.

Install Proxmox VE packages

Install the Proxmox VE packages 

apt install proxmox-ve postfix open-iscsi

Configure packages which require user input on installation according to your needs (e.g. Samba asking about WINS/DHCP support). If you have a mail server in your network, you should configure postfix as a satellite system, your existing mail server will then be the relay host which will route the emails sent by the Proxmox server to their final recipient.

If you don't know what to enter here, choose local only and leave the system name as is.

Finally, reboot your system, the new Proxmox VE kernel should be automatically selected in the GRUB menu.

Note: If you have a subscription key don't forget to switch to the enterprise repository after installation, see Package repositories.

Recommended: remove the os-prober package

The os-prober package scans all the partitions of your host, including those assigned to guests VMs, to create dual-boot GRUB entries. If you didn't install Proxmox VE as dual boot beside another Operating System, you can safely remove the os-prober package. 

apt remove os-prober

Connect to the Proxmox VE web interface

Connect to the admin web interface (https://youripaddress:8006). If you have a fresh install and didn't add any users yet, you should use the root account with your linux root password, and select "PAM Authentication" to log in.

Once logged in, create a Linux Bridge called vmbr0, and add your first network interface to it.

Adapt vmbr0 settings

Troubleshooting

resolv.conf gets overwritten

The PVE GUI expects to control DNS management and will no longer take its DNS settings from /etc/network/interfaces. Any package that auto-generates (overwrites) /etc/resolv.conf will cause DNS to fail, e.g. packages 'resolvconf' for IPv4 and 'rdnssd' for IPv6.

ipcc_send_rec[1] failed

If you see 

ipcc_send_rec[1] failed: Connection refused

then you should review your /etc/hosts file according to the instructions above.

Optional Steps

Optional: Remove the Debian kernel

apt remove linux-image-amd64 'linux-image-4.19*'

Update and check grub2 config by running: 

update-grub
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