Install Proxmox VE on Debian 13 Trixie

Install a Standard Debian Trixie

Install a standard Debian Trixie (amd64), using the expert mode found in the advanced options in order to configure a static IP address during network setup. For details consider the Debian installation guide.

It is recommended to only install the “standard system utilities” and “SSH server” package selection, as Proxmox VE brings its own packages for QEMU and LXC. A desktop environment is not necessary.

Note: Installation of Proxmox VE on top of Debian is not supported when using the (experimental) systemd-boot method and Secure Boot enabled.

Ensure Hostname Resolves to Hosts IP Address

The hostname of your machine must be resolvable to an IP address. This IP address must not be a loopback one like 127.0.0.1 but one that you and other hosts can connect to.

The two main options for configuring this are either through an entry in /etc/hosts or through a record in matching DNS zone. This article will document the /etc/hosts entry as its independent of the specific DNS implementation and your domain/provider.

Resolve Node IP Address Through /etc/hosts Entry
For a /etc/hosts record you need one of the following entries for your hostname:

1 IPv4 or
1 IPv6 or
1 IPv4 and 1 IPv6

While you could keep the entry that maps the 127.0.1.1 loopback address to the hostname, as Proxmox VE’s cluster system cycles through all addresses until it finds a non-loopback one, it’s recommended to remove the hostname from that record if unsure as this avoids any ambiguity.

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
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 at least one non-loopback IP address here

Install Proxmox VE

Add Proxmox VE Repository
Add the Proxmox VE repository sources using the preferred deb822 style format:

cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pve-install-repo.sources << EOL
Types: deb
URIs: http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pve
Suites: trixie
Components: pve-no-subscription
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/proxmox-archive-keyring.gpg
EOL

Add the Proxmox VE repository key as root (or use sudo):

wget https://enterprise.proxmox.com/debian/proxmox-archive-keyring-trixie.gpg -O /usr/share/keyrings/proxmox-archive-keyring.gpg

# verify
sha256sum /usr/share/keyrings/proxmox-archive-keyring.gpg
136673be77aba35dcce385b28737689ad64fd785a797e57897589aed08db6e45 /usr/share/keyrings/proxmox-archive-keyring.gpg

md5sum /usr/share/keyrings/proxmox-archive-keyring.gpg
77c8b1166d15ce8350102ab1bca2fcbf /usr/share/keyrings/proxmox-archive-keyring.gpg

Note: To migrate pre-existing repository sources to the recommended deb822 style format, you can run:

apt modernize-sources

Update your repository and system by running:

apt update && apt full-upgrade

Install the Proxmox VE Kernel

First you need to install and boot the Proxmox VE kernel, as some packages depend on specific kernel compile flags to be set or feature extensions (e.g., for apparmor) to be available.

apt install proxmox-default-kernel

systemctl reboot

Install the Proxmox VE Packages
Install the Proxmox VE packages

apt install proxmox-ve postfix open-iscsi chrony

Note that you can replace chrony with any other NTP daemon, but we recommend against using systemd-timesyncd on server systems, and the ntpsec-ntpdate option might conflict with bringing up networking on boot on some hardware. Configure packages which require user input on installation according to your needs.

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 Proxmox VE to their final recipient.

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

Remove the Debian Kernel

Proxmox VE ships its own kernel and keeping the Debian default kernel can lead to trouble on upgrades, for example, with Debian point releases. Therefore, you must remove the default Debian kernel:

apt remove linux-image-amd64 'linux-image-6.12*'

Update and check grub2 config by running (not required if systemd-boot is used):

update-grub

Remove the os-prober Package

It is recommended to remove the os-prober package, as it scans all the partitions of the host to create dual-boot GRUB entries. However, the scanned partitions can also include those assigned to virtual machines, which should not be added as boot entries.

If Proxmox VE was not installed as dual boot option beside another OS, it is safe to remove the os-prober package by running:

apt remove os-prober

Src:
Install Proxmox VE on Debian 13 Trixie – Proxmox VE