[TUTORIAL] HiveStation — Developer Workstation for Proxmox Virtual Environment

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HiveStation — Developer Workstation for Proxmox Virtual Environment​


Formerly "Proxmox VE Developer Workstation" — renamed to HiveStation for Proxmox trademark compliance.
HiveStation is an independent community project. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH. Proxmox is a registered trademark of Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH.

What is HiveStation?​


HiveStation is a set of 8 bash scripts (S1 → S8) that automate the installation of a developer workstation based on Proxmox Virtual Environment 9 on Debian 13 (Trixie).

Inspired by the Proxmox VE wiki article "Developer Workstations with Proxmox VE and X11".

Features​


  • Btrfs RAID1 on 2 disks with dedicated subvolumes for Proxmox VE services
  • UEFI HA: two EFI partitions kept in sync — system boots if one disk fails
  • SWAP failover: automatic switch from SWAP1 to SWAP2 if primary disk is absent
  • Automatic disk replacement: detects a missing RAID1 member and replaces it
  • Bootable snapshots: Snapper + grub-btrfs — snapshots visible in GRUB menu
  • VM/LXC networking: vmbr0 bridge with dynamic NAT toward WAN interface (ethernet or Wi-Fi)
  • Graphical interface: GNOME, KDE, XFCE, LMDE7 Cinnamon, or COSMIC with Flatpak + Flathub
  • NVIDIA driver: open kernel modules (recommended Turing+, required Blackwell) or proprietary (legacy GPUs) with automatic iGPU/dGPU detection, Wayland/X11 PRIME configuration
  • Optional XanMod kernel: BBRv3, ThinLTO optimizations
  • Themes and tools: Custom GRUB/Plymouth boot themes, asusctl/supergfxctl (ASUS ROG/TUF), GNOME monitoring widget, custom logo support

Installation overview​


ScriptPhase
S1Debian base install (debootstrap) + GRUB HA + network
S2HA scripts (EFI sync, SWAP failover, auto disk replace) + SSH
S3.1Proxmox kernel + PVE subvolumes
S3.2Proxmox VE + optional PCI(e) Passthrough
S4Graphical interface + Flatpak (optional)
S5Snapper + grub-btrfs (bootable snapshots)
S6Firmware + NVIDIA driver (optional)
S7vmbr0 + DHCP + NAT + boot optimization
S8Themes, tools, monitoring widget (optional menu)

NVIDIA driver options (S6)​


OptionDescriptionGPU compatibility
5 ★NVIDIA Open (official NVIDIA repo) — suspend OK, any kernelTuring+ (RTX 20xx+)
6NVIDIA Proprietary (Debian non-free) — suspend brokenMaxwell, Pascal, Volta
7XanMod kernel only (independent of NVIDIA choice)All

Version​


Current version: V17 — 2026-04-03

All scripts are bilingual (French / English).

Download​


See attachment below.
 

Attachments

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Why btrfs instead of zfs? Wouldn't it make sense to be able to use ZFS-only features?
 
Johannes S said:
Why btrfs instead of zfs? Wouldn't it make sense to be able to use ZFS-only features?
Click to expand...
I've been trying to do this with ZFS for a while now, but I'm running into bugs that aren't currently solvable. For example, zfsbootmenu doesn't work when used with the pre-compiled Void EFI image; no snapshot is visible at boot due to modifications made by the Proxmox VE installation. Creating the EFI image from scratch makes it even worse. Zfsbootmenu was developed primarily for Void; it works with other distributions, but I haven't found a solution for this particular problem.

Another point: I'm using this configuration on a laptop, and ZFS is extremely slow at startup, shutdown, and during daily use. The CPU load is between 5 and 10% higher. The same issue with RAM persisted. Even after trying to modify the ARC cache to minimize RAM usage, I experienced crashes. I had to allocate a minimum of 4GB to ARC for it to function, so ultimately, whithout any VM, RAM usage quickly climbed to around 8GB.

I couldn't get the laptop to boot even if a disk failed. If you use ZFS with Proxmox tools, it won't boot if the boot disk is faulty; you have to use the command line to resolve the problem. Without Proxmox tools, it's also impossible because once the ZFS partition is degraded, there's no way to boot from a mirror (it works on a RAIDZ1 array with three disks, but not in a mirror configuration, I don't know why).

There are other issues as well, but basically, that's why I chose BTRFS instead of ZFS.

If someone manages to solve the three biggest problems I mentioned, I would obviously use ZFS, but currently it's not possible in my case.

The reason I started this project, in case anyone asks, is that I had a problem with an SSD in late 2025 (both the boot and system SSD), and I wasted time reinstalling everything (no data loss).
 
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