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Description:

proxmoxdeploy 0.4.0

Use this tool to deploy cloud-init enabled images from various Linux
distributions on Proxmox.
Proxmox does not support cloud-init enabled images out of the box. It’s
possible to create template from manually installed VMs. However, with the
availability of ready to deploy images from most major Linux vendors, why
should you install a VM manually?

How it works
cloud-init depends on two things:

A minimal base installation of the distribution, usually in the form of a
raw or qcow2 image. I call this a cloud image.
The cloud-init package installed in the image.

cloud-init was originally made for Amazon EC2 and OpenStack. These platforms
have native support for cloud-init, and provide a datasource that cloud-init
can use to configure the VM. However, there are few alternative datasources
available that will work, even if the platform itself has no native support for
cloud-init.
proxmox-deploy uses the NoCloud datasource. For this approach, the VM
must have a copy of the cloud image as the first disk, and a read-only vfat or
iso9660 filesystem as the second disk. On this second disk, there must be two
files: user-data and meta-data.
proxmox-deploy takes care of generating the user-data and meta-data
files based on user input. proxmox-deploy also takes care of creating a
Proxmox VM and uploading the cloud image and cloud-init image into the
proper datastore. All that’s left afterwards is turning on the VM.

How to install
All dependencies are installable using pip. To install globally, execute as
root:
# pip install proxmox-deploy
Or to install into a virtualenv (as a normal user):
$ virtualenv env
$ . env/bin/activate
$ pip install proxmox-deploy
Make sure to activate your virtualenv before using or upgrading the tool later:
$ . env/bin/activate
To later upgrade it:
$ pip install --upgrade proxmox-deploy

How to use
After installing, simply use:
$ proxmox-deploy --proxmox-host <hostname> --cloud-images-dir <images directory>
And answer the interactive questions.

Tested cloud images
I have tested proxmox-deploy with the following cloud images:

Distribution
Version
Status

Ubuntu
14.04
15.10
16.04
The -amd64-disk1.img images work.

Fedora Server
23
The qcow2 image works.

openSUSE
13.2
The -OpenStack-Guest.x86_64.qcow2 image works,
provided the VM has at least 512 MB RAM. The
minimal disk size is 10 GB. However, the first
NIC is called eth1, so make sure to select
eth1 to configure. There is no suse user,
login as root.

CentOS
6
7

The CentOS 6 image fails to boot, hanging at
“Booting from hard disk”.
The CentOS 7 -GenericCloud.qcow2.xz image
works. The minimal disk size will be 8G.

Debian
8
Neither the qcow2 nor the raw image works. The
first boot results in a kernel panic and
subsequent boots won’t run cloud-init,
rendering the VM unreachable.

FreeBSD
10.1 cloud
10.1 vm

Does not work, cloudbase-init-bsd has no
support for the NoCloud datasource.
The official VM images boot at least, but
cloud-init is not available. It will boot with
with DHCP and a default user/password.

All distributions provide a default user with the name of the distro (ubuntu,
fedora, centos, debian, freebsd), except openSUSE which only has a
root user.

Dependencies

Proxmox VE 4.1 or later
Python 2.7
proxmoxer as Proxmox API client
openssh-wrapper for communicating with the Proxmox API and
executing commands.
Jinja2 for generating the user-data and meta-data files.
configobj for reading configuration files.
pytz for timezone names.
genisoimage (Linux) or mkisofs (FreeBSD) command.

Do note that we need to access the Proxmox server via SSH, to perform the
various tasks. We also use the pvesh and pvesm commands over SSH to
interface with the Proxmox API and datastores respectively. proxmox-deploy
will not ask for passwords to login, so a proper SSH agent and SSH key access
must be configured before hand.

Changelog

0.4.0

Support for volumes on zfspool stores.
Allow specifying an empty VLAN id.
Allow specifying a different SSH port for connecting to Proxmox.

0.3

Support for volumes on nfs and lvm-thin data stores.
Always enable serial console on new VMs. This fixes deploying
Ubuntu 16.04 cloud images.

0.2

Support for cloud-init Chef handoff (no autorun yet).
Improve EnumQuestion output by listing and sorting options.
Add option for automatically starting VMs after deployment.
Choose defaults for node and storage selection.
Support FreeBSD mkisofs command.

0.1

Initial release

License
proxmox-deploy is licensed under the GPLv3 license.