[TUTORIAL] Debian 14 (forky) LXC template build with Debian Appliance Builder (instruction)

[tsv0]

Debian 14 (forky) LXC template build with Debian Appliance Builder (instruction)

WARNING: You are doing it at your own risk !!!

Preparations:

dab (current version in PVE 9 is 3.7.0)

on proxmox host (pve-no-subscription repo should be installed/enabled) :

apt install -y dab

as second step you need to add debian 14 to DAB.pm file

you can do it two ways

Option 1: manually

by editing /usr/share/perl5/PVE/DAB.pm

after line 77, before trixie add this lines

    'forky' => {
    ostype => "debian-14",
    modern_apt_sources => 1,
    },

Option 2: patch it with diff patch attached.

/usr/share/perl5/PVE/DAB.pm can be patched with:

patch -p1 /usr/share/perl5/PVE/DAB.pm </path/to/saved/DAB.pm.debian14.patch.txt

Building the template:

get the latest dab-pve-appliances from git

git clone https://git.proxmox.com/git/dab-pve-appliances.git

enter the directory

cd dab-pve-appliances

copy the debian-13 appliance to debian-14

cp -ax debian-13-trixie-std-64/ debian-14-forky-std-64/

change debian-14-forky-std-64/dab.conf file to look like this:

Suite: forky
CacheDir: ../cache
#Source: http://deb.debian.org/debian SUITE main contrib
#Source: http://deb.debian.org/debian SUITE-updates main contrib
#Source: http://security.debian.org SUITE-security main contrib
Architecture: amd64
Name: debian-14-standard
Version: 14.0-1
Section: system
Maintainer: Proxmox Support Team <support@proxmox.com>
Infopage: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Linux_Container#pct_supported_distributions
Description: Debian 14 Forky (standard)
 A small Debian Forky system including all standard packages.

and finally build it.

cd debian-14-forky-std-64/
make

the result should be something like:

...
update available package list
detecting final appliance size: 557 MB
creating final appliance archive
detecting final commpressed appliance size: 124 MB
appliance archive: debian-14-standard_14.0-1_amd64.tar.zst

copy the debian-14-standard_14.0-1_amd64.tar.zst to your PVE host LXC templates/cache and then create a container via PVE GUI as usual using this template.

P.S. Debian 14 template LXC can be run only with nested=1 option enabled.
without nested=1 - LXC will still boot (well kinda...) but most of the systemd services will not start, agetty will constantly restart and as expected VM Console will not work at all

P.P.S. i've opened an enhancement request for dab to add debian 14 support - https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=6774

Enjoy

 

[t.lamprecht]

Thanks for posting this, do you want to submit the small changes required for DAB to accept Debian Forky as target release? If so, please see https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Developer_Documentation

It's fine if that's too much of a hassle for you, just wanted to ask as you already tested it anyway and made the post here.

 

[tsv0]

Hi, yes, i've tested every step of this guide.
additionally, i have a personal repo with debian/ubuntu lts custom templates which i'm using on my homelab projects

will check the dev docs, thanks.