How to setup Proxmox Virtual Environment (PVE) community repository

Last Updated on November 13, 2023 by Thiago Crepaldi

Recently I discovered Proxmox and learned about its Community vs Enterprise versions. As I am just getting started with it, I don’t want to commit with a paid version, but who knows when I finally get the hang of it. If you think like me, this post will describe how to configure Proxmox PVE package repositories to use the Community (free) version as opposed to the paid Enterprise one.

Once you have installed Proxmox, go to its Web UI page and login using root username. A scary dialog entitle “No valid subscription” will show up, which also says “You do not have a valid subscription for this server. Please visit www.proxmox.com to get a list of available options.”. Click Ok to close it.

Next, on the top left corner, you should select Folder view and select your server under Datacenter >> Nodes panel. Once you select your PVE node, a new panel to the right will open; click on Shell button to open the good and old bash terminal.

The first thing to do is to remove the enterprise APT repository file and update the system to the latest version available

# rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pve-enterprise.list
# apt update
# apt -y full-upgrade

Once the update finish, you may need to reboot the system. Click on the Reboot button on the top right corner.

Next, we have to add an APT file with the community repository info and then update the system again

# echo "deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian bookworm pve-no-subscription" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pve-community.list
# apt update
# apt -y full-upgrade

Click the Reboot button again to make sure all updates are applied and you are good to go.

Disclaimer about the annoying nag

There are posts around the web about mechanisms to remove the initial alert, informing you don’t have a subscription. Although I agree it is kind of annoying, these posts ask you to perform search and replace in important files, which change from one version to the next. I don’t recommend removing it (and risking breaking your installation), therefore, I will not show how to do it.