In this post, I am going to cover how to configure Proxmox 8 for the non-enterprise subscription update repository. This will be required when you do not have an enterprise subscription for Proxmox and your automatic Proxmox updates are failing to fetch the enterprise repository.

---

1. SECTION I – Default Configuration
   1. FIGURE 1 – Failed to fetch Proxmox 8 Enterprise REPO
2. SECTION II – Configure Free Repository
   1. Example 1 – pve-enterprise.list
   2. Example 2 – ceph.list
3. SECTION III – Carry out Proxmox 8 Update
   1. FIGURE 2 – apt-get update
   2. FIGURE 3 – apt dist-upgrade
4. SECTION IV – Confirm Update Package Configuration
   1. FIGURE 4 – Proxmox Host Repository Status
5. SECTION V – Footnotes

---

SECTION I – Default Configuration

By default, when you configure Proxmox 8 it will be set to look at the enterprise repo (repository)¹ for any updates. This means that you will require an enterprise subscription to be able to authenticate and then download the latest updates from the repo.

You will be able to see the error of Proxmox being unable to connect to the repo if you connect to the CLI (Command Line Interface) of the proxmox server.

FIGURE 1 – Failed to fetch Proxmox 8 Enterprise REPO

SECTION II – Configure Free Repository

To change the repo that Proxmox 8 is looking at for updates:

1. Navigate to the pve-enterprise.list file:

vi /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pve-enterprise.list

2. Use the # to comment out the enterprise repo line in the text file and then replace it with the following – deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pve bookworm pve-no-subscription. The text file should be similar to the one in example 1.

# deb https://enterprise.proxmox.com/debian/pve bookworm enterprise
deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pve bookworm pve-no-subscription

Example 1 – pve-enterprise.list

3. Save and exit the file.
4. Next, navigate to the ceph.list file:

vi /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ceph.list

5. Use the # to comment out the enterprise repo line in the text file and then replace it with the following – deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pve bookworm pve-no-subscription. The text file should be similar to the one in example 2.

# deb https://enterprise.proxmox.com/debian/ceph-quincy bookworm enterprise
deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian/ceph-quincy bookworm no-subscription

Example 2 – ceph.list

6. Save and exit the file.

SECTION III – Carry out Proxmox 8 Update

Now that both of the repo file have been updated to look at the no subscription repo we can force Proxmox to update.

1. Carry out update using the following command:

apt-get update



FIGURE 2 – apt-get update

2. Carry out a distribution upgrade:

apt dist-upgrade

FIGURE 3 – apt dist-upgrade

SECTION IV – Confirm Update Package Configuration

1. Navigate to the Proxmox Web GUI (Graphical User Interface).
2. In the left hand pane select ‘nodes’ and then select your Proxmox host.
3. Under the ‘Summary’ tab of your host you will see a ‘Repository Status’. This should have a green tick by ‘Proxmox VE Updates’ as in figure 4.

FIGURE 4 – Proxmox Host Repository Status

SECTION V – Footnotes

1. Repositories are a centralised place where software packages can be kept, manipulated, and distributed. ↩︎