🚀 Customized Debian Cloud Image for Proxmox

• 🛑 This repository is currently in development mode and is not for production use.
• 🚧 It is intended for testing and development purposes only. Use it at your own risk.

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🧪 Features

• 🌐 Timezone Configured: Sets system timezone to Asia/Tehran
• 🛠️ APT Proxy Setup: Configures apt proxy for faster package management
• 📦 Essential Packages Installed: Includes curl, wget, nano, htop, rsync, net-tools, dnsutils, tcpdump, mc, git, unzip, unar, bash-completion, and more
• 🤖 QEMU Guest Agent: Installed for Proxmox VM integration
• ⚡ Performance Tuning: Installs and enables tuned with custom profiles
• 💽 ZRAM Swap: Configures ZRAM swap for optimized memory usage
• 📂 lsd File Manager: Installs and configures lsd for enhanced directory listing
• 🔒 sing-box Proxy Server: Adds repository, installs, and configures sing-box
• 🕸️ Proxychains4: Configured for flexible network routing
• 📝 Systemd Configuration: Custom settings for journald, system, and user services
• 🖥️ Command Aliases: Adds convenient shell aliases
• ♻️ System Update & Cleanup: Updates all packages, removes unnecessary files, and cleans caches
• 🔑 Machine Initialization: Empties machine-id and prepares SSH keys regeneration on first boot

🛠️ Getting Started

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/MahdiAkrami01/debian-cloud-image-config.git && \
cd debian-cloud-image-config

2. Install libguestfs-tools

libguestfs is a set of tools, such as virt-customize and qemu-img, for accessing and modifying virtual machine (VM) disk images.

⚠️ Warning: Do not install libguestfs-tools on the PVE host! it has conflicts with PVE packages.

sudo apt update && \
sudo apt install libguestfs-tools -y

3. Download the Debian cloud image

wget -4 \
  https://cloud.debian.org/images/cloud/trixie/latest/debian-13-genericcloud-amd64.qcow2

If you encounter a 403 error or a timeout, you can use a proxy:

wget -4 \
  -e use_proxy=yes \
  -e https_proxy=127.0.0.1:1080 \
  https://cloud.debian.org/images/cloud/trixie/latest/debian-13-genericcloud-amd64.qcow2

4. Apply Customizations to the image

virt-customize \
  -x \
  --verbose \
  --no-selinux-relabel \
  --commands-from-file debian-configs.conf \
  --add debian-13-genericcloud-amd64.qcow2

5. Build the final qcow2 image

qemu-img \
  convert \
  -p \
  -c \
  -f qcow2 \
  -O qcow2 \
  -o preallocation=off \
  debian-13-genericcloud-amd64.qcow2 \
  debian-13-genericcloud-amd64-final.qcow2

6. Move the image to the Proxmox host

First install rsync using sudo apt install rsync -y.

rsync \
  --progress \
  --compress \
  --partial \
  --verbose \
  -e "ssh -p 22" \
  debian-13-genericcloud-amd64-final.qcow2 \
  [email protected]:/path/to/destination/

📥 import qcow2 image into Proxmox

qm importdisk [vm-id] debian-13-genericcloud-amd64-final.qcow2 [storage-name]

Example:

qm importdisk 200 debian-13-genericcloud-amd64-final.qcow2 local-lvm

🎯 Next Steps: Start Automating and Scaling

This repository provides a simple and easy way to create a customized Debian cloud image using virt-customize. Once you have your VM image ready, you can explore tools to automate, manage, and scale your infrastructure:

🔧 Configuration Management

• Ansible – Automate configuration, software installation, and system updates across multiple VMs.
• SaltStack – Alternative for infrastructure automation and configuration management.
• Puppet / Chef – Enterprise-grade configuration management tools for larger environments.

🏗️ Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

• Terraform – Provision and manage VMs, storage, and network resources declaratively.
• Pulumi – Use programming languages like Python or TypeScript to define infrastructure.

📦 Image & VM Tools

• Packer – Automate building VM images for multiple platforms.
• Vagrant – Quickly spin up reproducible development VMs for testing your images.
• cloud-init – Automate VM initialization tasks such as creating users, configuring networking, and running scripts on first boot.

🐳 Containers & Orchestration

• Docker / Podman – Containerize applications for lightweight deployment.
• Kubernetes / K3s – Orchestrate multiple containers or VMs for scalable environments.
• Helm – Manage Kubernetes applications via charts and packages.

🔁 CI/CD & Automation

• GitHub Actions – Automate build, test, and deployment pipelines.
• GitLab CI/CD – Integrated CI/CD for your infrastructure and apps.
• Jenkins – Flexible automation server for pipelines and deployment workflows.

📊 Monitoring & Logging

• Prometheus / Grafana – Monitor VMs and container metrics.
• ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) – Centralized logging and analysis.

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✨ Good luck on your automation journey!