Install Proxmox VE on Debian 9 – Stretch

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 Stretch 64-bit, especially if you want a custom partition layout. For this HowTO the following Debian Stretch ISO was used:

Install a standard Debian Stretch (amd64)

Install a standard Debian Stretch, for details see Debian, and select a fixed IP. It is recommended to only install the “standard” package selection and nothing else, as Proxmox VE brings its own packages for qemu, lxc.

Add an /etc/hosts entry for your IP address
Please make sure that your hostname is resolvable via /etc/hosts, i.e you need an entry in /etc/hosts which assigns an IPv4 address to that hostname.

Note: Make sure that no IPv6 address for your hostname is specified in `/etc/hosts`

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

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

# 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 here your IP address

Install Proxmox VE

Adapt your sources.list. Add the Proxmox VE repository:

echo "deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pve stretch 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-5.x.gpg -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxmox-ve-release-5.x.gpg

Update your repository and system by running:

apt update && apt dist-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 stretch pve-no-subscription

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

Install Proxmox VE packages

apt install proxmox-ve postfix open-iscsi

Accept the suggestion to remove Exim and configure postfix according to your network. If you have a mail server in your network, you should configure postfix as a satellite system, and your existing mail server will be the ‘relay host’ which will route the emails send by the proxmox server to the end recipient. If you don’t know what to enter here, choose local only.

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

Recommended: remove the os-prober package
The os-prober package scans all the partitions of your host including those of you guests VMs to create dual-boot GRUB entries. If you didn’t install Proxmox VE as a dual boot besides 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.

Configure apt to use the new packages repositories as below:

Proxmox VE No-Subscription Repository

As the name suggests, you do not need a subscription key to access this repository. It can be used for testing and non-production use. Its not recommended to run on production servers, as these packages are not always heavily tested and validated. We recommend to configure this repository in /etc/apt/sources.list.
File /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian stretch main contrib
# PVE pve-no-subscription repository provided by proxmox.com,
# NOT recommended for production use
deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pve stretch pve-no-subscription
# security updates
deb http://security.debian.org stretch/updates main contrib

Proxmox VE Test Repository

Finally, there is a repository called pvetest. This one contains the latest packages and is heavily used by developers to test new features. As usual, you can configure this using/etc/apt/sources.list by adding the following line:
sources.list entry for pvetest

deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pve stretch pvetest

the pvetest repository should (as the name implies) only be used for testing new features or bug fixes.

SecureApt

We use GnuPG to sign the Release files inside those repositories, and APT uses that signatures to verify that all packages are from a trusted source. The key used for verification is already installed if you install from our installation CD. If you install by other means, you can manually download the key with:

# wget http://download.proxmox.com/debian/proxmox-ve-release-5.x.gpg -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxmox-ve-release-5.x.gpg

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.

Optional Steps
Optional: Remove the Debian kernel

apt remove linux-image-amd64 linux-image-4.9.0-3-amd64

Check grub2 config by running:

update-grub

On my system Proxmox 5.1-52 was installed. Check the screenshot picture below:

Src:
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Package_Repositories
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Install_Proxmox_VE_on_Debian_Stretch