How to install Proxmox Backup Server (PBS) on debian 12

February 5, 2024

I just bought a new VPS with 2 terabytes of storage for only backup purposes. I decided to format the storage using LVM. Feel free to checkout my guide for Getting started with LVM.

Prerequisites

A server with debian 12
Storage configured at some mountpoint. I use /pbs-data.
root access

Add the repository GPG keys

Don't worry about the enterprise url. It's still free to use without a license. Keep in mind that you won't receive any official support.

sudo wget https://enterprise.proxmox.com/debian/proxmox-release-bookworm.gpg -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxmox-release-bookworm.gpg

Make sure that the sha512 matches. At the time of writing (05-02-2024) it is that one. Latest ones can be viewed in the documentation

sha512sum /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxmox-release-bookworm.gpg
7da6fe34168adc6e479327ba517796d4702fa2f8b4f0a9833f5ea6e6b48f6507a6da403a274fe201595edc86a84463d50383d07f64bdde2e3658108db7d6dc87  /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxmox-release-bookworm.gpg

md5sum /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxmox-release-bookworm.gpg
41558dc019ef90bd0f6067644a51cf5b /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxmox-release-bookworm.gpg

Add repositories

Add the following to /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pbs bookworm pbs-no-subscription

Update repositories

sudo apt update

Install proxmox-backup-server package

This will download the latest release and start the configuration process. It may ask for you to configure postfix (for sending emails) but that will be skipped in this guide. To disable postfix for now, you can select the “Local Only” option.

sudo apt install proxmox-backup-server

Conclusion

The Web UI should be accessible at https://<your server ip>:8007. Please note the https protocol and you may need to open your firewall for that port.

Next Up

I definitely recommend configuring SSL with Let's Encrypt in the Web UI. You will need to create new “datastore” which uses your mountpoint on disk for the actual backup storage. Also create new accounts and restrict their permissions to a specific datastore for every proxmox host you're going to add.