Creating Your Own ProxCP KVM Templates

This tutorial covers how to create a custom KVM template for use with ProxCP and Proxmox.

Required: at least 1 Proxmox node

Assumption: The desired operating system ISO is already downloaded onto your Proxmox node.

The commands covered here are relevant to Debian and RHEL-based operating systems however the process can be applied to any other operating system.

Create VM

• Create a new VM in Proxmox with the following settings:
  • VMID: anything
  • Name: operating system description (i.e. centos-8-amd64)
  • OS: your chosen ISO image
  • Hard Disk: use VirtIO SCSI (scsi0) with 10GB storage and no caching
  • CPU & Memory: 1 kvm64 CPU core, 1GB memory
  • Network: VirtIO (virtio0), vmbr0 bridge, no firewall
• After creation, go to the Hardware tab and delete the CDROM ISO. Add a cloud-init drive on ide2. Add the CDROM ISO back as ide0.

Base OS

• Boot the new VM and complete the base operating system installation. Generally, templates should use most default settings and minimal packages. There are a few things to keep in mind during installation:
  • Partitions: create 1 ext4 root "/" partition (no LVM, no SWAP)
  • Networking: use a generic hostname (i.e. localhost or centos-8-amd64)
  • Packages: use minimal packages, however the OpenSSH server is required

OS Setup Stage 1

• Once the base OS installation is complete, shutdown the VM
• In Proxmox, go to Options and set the boot order to scsi0 only (1 option)
• Go to the Hardware tab and remove the ide0 CDROM. Verify the network device is net0 using vmbr0 bridge
• Power on the VM
• Login as root
• If you created a user during installation, remove that user with deluser [username] && rm -rf /home/[username]
• Complete updates apt update && apt upgrade && apt install setserial or yum update && yum install setserial