How to setup Proxmox Backup Server (PBS) community repository

Last Updated on November 29, 2023 by Thiago Crepaldi

Recently I’ve 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 PBS package repositories to use the Community (free) version as opposed to the paid Enterprise one.

Once you have installed Proxmox Backup Server, go to its Web UI page and login using root username. A scary dialog entitled “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 left side menu, you should click on Administration >> Shell button, which will 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/pbs-enterprise.list
# apt update
# apt -y full-upgrade

Once the update finish, you may need to reboot the system. Click Administration followed by Reboot button on the left side menu, near the shell button from before. Confirm by clicking Yes when the “Reboot backup server?” dialog appears.

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

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

Reboot your PBS 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, sorry.