Configuring Proxmox for Free Use

I installed Proxmox on my second server last night, and tonight when I ran apt update I ran into the error you get when you haven’t bought a license.

Err:5 https://enterprise.proxmox.com/debian/pve bullseye InRelease             
  401  Unauthorized [IP: 103.67.14.50 443]
Reading package lists... Done                                                  
E: Failed to fetch https://enterprise.proxmox.com/debian/pve/dists/bullseye/InRelease  401  Unauthorized [IP: 103.67.14.50 443]
E: The repository 'https://enterprise.proxmox.com/debian/pve bullseye InRelease' is not signed.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.

Even though I guess it was only a month ago (let that sink in people who think the raspberry Pi they just bought is going to be the last homelab hardware they buy 😊) since I set up my first Proxmox server, I’d already forgotten there’s a step to enable it to get updates without a subscription.

There’s a couple of little steps for this. They are both here on the Proxmox wiki .

1. edit /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pve-enterprise.list to comment out the single repository listed in there.
2. edit /etc/apt/sources.list to look like this:

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye main contrib
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye-updates main contrib

# PVE pve-no-subscription repository provided by proxmox.com,
# NOT recommended for production use
deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pve bullseye pve-no-subscription

# security updates
deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security bullseye-security main contrib

Then you’ll be good to go.