Some silly omissions/quirks in Proxmox I decided to document for the next time I install.
When installing it asks for Hostname (FQDN)
Proxmox requires a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) like pve.handshake.co.za during installation for internal purposes like certificate generation and service identification, but if you don’t have a real domain, you can use a made-up one (e.g., proxmox.local, proxmox.home.local or pve.test) or even just a short hostname if you only access via IP (e.g., https://<IP>:8006), though setting a proper FQDN in /etc/hostname and /etc/hosts is recommended for stability and features.
This can be changed after installation.
On first login it wants a Username, huh, I didn’t set one, is it my email address, nope. It’s root, you can change this or better yet add another user and leave root for if you have issues. The password is whatever you set during installation.
Realm: Make sure it’s set to Linux PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules).
You login via web browser by going to the IP you set in the network settings e.g. https://192.168.1.200:8006
Proxmox Subscription
You don’t need a subscription for homelab use.
For Learning/Home Labs: Start without a subscription or get the Community tier for access to tested updates.
Repositories
You can just run the PVE Post Install Helper Script & it will do the below and more automatically
You will need to add the No-subscription repository and disable the enterprise repositories or you will keep getting error messages. You can do this under Updates>Repositories, click on Add, click OK when the No valid subscription pops up, then select the No-Subscription repository and click Add, also add the Ceph Squid No-Subscription. You will get a pop-up The no-subscription repository is NOT production-ready which you can ignore for homelab use.
To disable the Enterprise/Paid repositories select the http://enterprise.proxmox.com/… and then click Disable
Updating Proxmox
To update Proxmox, use the web GUI for simple updates select proxmox under Datacenter in the left-hand menu then Updates and click Refresh & then Upgrade and follow the prompts or from the command line for more control, running apt update && apt dist-upgrade, ensuring you’re on the right repository (Enterprise/No-Subscription) and rebooting if needed, especially after kernel updates, after backuping up first.
Reboot if you installed a kernel update.