Unattended Deployment

Unattended deployments enable fully automated container provisioning without manual interaction. Perfect for CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and batch deployments.

Quick Start

The simplest unattended deployment:

var_hostname=myserver bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/community-scripts/ProxmoxVE/main/ct/debian.sh)"

Prerequisites

Proxmox VE Access

Verify root access and Proxmox version:

whoami  # Should return: root
pveversion  # Should be 8.0+ or 9.0-9.1

Network Connectivity

Test GitHub and internet access:

curl -I https://raw.githubusercontent.com/community-scripts/ProxmoxVE/main/ct/debian.sh
ping -c 1 1.1.1.1

Available Storage

Verify storage availability:

pvesm status
df -h

Deployment Methods

Environment Variables

Complexity: Low
Flexibility: High
Best for: Quick one-off deployments

App Defaults

Complexity: Low
Flexibility: Medium
Best for: Repeating identical deployments

Shell Scripts

Complexity: Medium
Flexibility: High
Best for: Batch operations and automation

Ansible/Terraform

Complexity: High
Flexibility: Very High
Best for: Enterprise Infrastructure as Code

Single Container Deployment

Basic Example

#!/bin/bash
# deploy-single.sh - Deploy a single container with full configuration

var_unprivileged=1 \
var_cpu=4 \
var_ram=4096 \
var_disk=30 \
var_hostname=production-app \
var_os=debian \
var_version=13 \
var_brg=vmbr0 \
var_net=dhcp \
var_ipv6_method=none \
var_ssh=yes \
var_ssh_authorized_key="ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQ... admin@workstation" \
var_nesting=1 \
var_tags=production,automated \
var_protection=yes \
var_verbose=no \
  bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/community-scripts/ProxmoxVE/main/ct/debian.sh)"

echo "✓ Container deployed successfully"

Automatic IP Assignment

Use IP range scanning to automatically assign the first available IP:

#!/bin/bash
# deploy-with-ip-scan.sh - Auto-assign first free IP from range

var_unprivileged=1 \
var_cpu=4 \
var_ram=4096 \
var_hostname=web-server \
var_net=192.168.1.100/24-192.168.1.150/24 \
var_gateway=192.168.1.1 \
  bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/community-scripts/ProxmoxVE/main/ct/debian.sh)"

# The script will:
# 1. Ping 192.168.1.100 - if responds, skip
# 2. Ping 192.168.1.101 - if responds, skip
# 3. Continue until first IP that doesn't respond
# 4. Assign that IP to the container

IP range format is START_IP/CIDR-END_IP/CIDR. Both sides must include the same CIDR notation.

Using Saved Defaults

Step 1: Create Defaults
Step 2: Deploy Unattended

Run once interactively to save your configuration:

bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/community-scripts/ProxmoxVE/main/ct/pihole.sh)"
# Select "Advanced Settings" → Configure → Save as "App Defaults"

Future deployments use saved defaults automatically:

#!/bin/bash
# deploy-with-defaults.sh

# App defaults are loaded automatically from:
# /usr/local/community-scripts/defaults/pihole.vars
bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/community-scripts/ProxmoxVE/main/ct/pihole.sh)"

Batch Deployments

Simple Loop

Deploy multiple containers sequentially:

#!/bin/bash
# batch-deploy-simple.sh

apps=("debian" "ubuntu" "alpine")

for app in "${apps[@]}"; do
  echo "Deploying $app..."
  var_hostname="$app-server" \
  var_cpu=2 \
  var_ram=2048 \
    bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/community-scripts/ProxmoxVE/main/ct/${app}.sh)"
  
  echo "✓ $app deployed"
  sleep 5  # Wait between deployments
done

Advanced Configuration Array

Deploy multiple containers with individual configurations:

#!/bin/bash
# batch-deploy-advanced.sh

declare -A CONTAINERS=(
  ["pihole"]="2:1024:8:vmbr0:dns,network"
  ["homeassistant"]="4:4096:20:vmbr1:automation,ha"
  ["docker"]="6:8192:50:vmbr0:containers,docker"
)

for app in "${!CONTAINERS[@]}"; do
  # Parse configuration
  IFS=':' read -r cpu ram disk bridge tags <<< "${CONTAINERS[$app]}"
  
  echo "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━"
  echo "Deploying: $app"
  echo "  CPU: $cpu cores"
  echo "  RAM: $ram MB"
  echo "  Disk: $disk GB"
  echo "  Bridge: $bridge"
  echo "  Tags: $tags"
  echo "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━"
  
  # Deploy container
  var_unprivileged=1 \
  var_cpu="$cpu" \
  var_ram="$ram" \
  var_disk="$disk" \
  var_hostname="$app" \
  var_brg="$bridge" \
  var_net=dhcp \
  var_ipv6_method=none \
  var_ssh=yes \
  var_tags="$tags,automated" \
    bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/community-scripts/ProxmoxVE/main/ct/${app}.sh)" 2>&1 | tee "deploy-${app}.log"
  
  if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
    echo "✓ $app deployed successfully"
  else
    echo "✗ $app deployment failed - check deploy-${app}.log"
  fi
  
  sleep 5
done

echo ""
echo "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━"
echo "Batch deployment complete!"
echo "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━"

Parallel Deployment

Deploy multiple containers simultaneously:

#!/bin/bash
# parallel-deploy.sh

deploy_container() {
  local app="$1"
  local cpu="$2"
  local ram="$3"
  local disk="$4"
  
  echo "[$app] Starting deployment..."
  var_cpu="$cpu" \
  var_ram="$ram" \
  var_disk="$disk" \
  var_hostname="$app" \
  var_net=dhcp \
    bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/community-scripts/ProxmoxVE/main/ct/${app}.sh)" \
    &> "deploy-${app}.log"
  
  echo "[$app] ✓ Completed"
}

# Export function for parallel execution
export -f deploy_container

# Deploy in parallel (max 3 at a time)
parallel -j 3 deploy_container ::: \
  "debian 2 2048 10" \
  "ubuntu 2 2048 10" \
  "alpine 1 1024 5"

echo "All deployments complete!"

Infrastructure as Code

Ansible Playbook

Basic Playbook
Advanced Playbook

---
# playbook-proxmox.yml
- name: Deploy ProxmoxVE Containers
  hosts: proxmox_hosts
  become: yes
  tasks:
    - name: Deploy Debian Container
      shell: |
        var_unprivileged=1 \
        var_cpu=2 \
        var_ram=2048 \
        var_disk=10 \
        var_hostname=debian-{{ inventory_hostname }} \
        var_net=dhcp \
        var_ssh=yes \
        var_tags=ansible,automated \
        bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/community-scripts/ProxmoxVE/main/ct/debian.sh)"
      args:
        executable: /bin/bash
      register: deploy_result
    
    - name: Display deployment result
      debug:
        var: deploy_result.stdout_lines

---
# advanced-playbook.yml
- name: Deploy Multiple Container Types
  hosts: proxmox
  vars:
    containers:
      - name: pihole
        cpu: 2
        ram: 1024
        disk: 8
        tags: "dns,network"
      - name: homeassistant
        cpu: 4
        ram: 4096
        disk: 20
        tags: "automation,ha"
      - name: docker
        cpu: 6
        ram: 8192
        disk: 50
        tags: "containers,docker"
    
    ssh_key: "{{ lookup('file', '~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub') }}"
  
  tasks:
    - name: Ensure community-scripts directory exists
      file:
        path: /usr/local/community-scripts/defaults
        state: directory
        mode: '0755'
    
    - name: Deploy containers
      shell: |
        var_unprivileged=1 \
        var_cpu={{ item.cpu }} \
        var_ram={{ item.ram }} \
        var_disk={{ item.disk }} \
        var_hostname={{ item.name }} \
        var_brg=vmbr0 \
        var_net=dhcp \
        var_ipv6_method=none \
        var_ssh=yes \
        var_ssh_authorized_key="{{ ssh_key }}" \
        var_tags="{{ item.tags }},ansible" \
        bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/community-scripts/ProxmoxVE/main/ct/{{ item.name }}.sh)"
      args:
        executable: /bin/bash
      loop: "{{ containers }}"
      register: deployment_results
    
    - name: Report deployment status
      debug:
        msg: "Deployed {{ item.item.name }} - Status: {{ 'Success' if item.rc == 0 else 'Failed' }}"
      loop: "{{ deployment_results.results }}"

Run with:

ansible-playbook -i inventory.ini advanced-playbook.yml

Terraform

# main.tf
terraform {
  required_providers {
    proxmox = {
      source = "telmate/proxmox"
      version = "2.9.14"
    }
  }
}

provider "proxmox" {
  pm_api_url = "https://proxmox.example.com:8006/api2/json"
  pm_api_token_id = "terraform@pam!terraform"
  pm_api_token_secret = var.proxmox_token
}

resource "null_resource" "deploy_container" {
  for_each = var.containers
  
  provisioner "remote-exec" {
    inline = [
      "var_unprivileged=1",
      "var_cpu=${each.value.cpu}",
      "var_ram=${each.value.ram}",
      "var_disk=${each.value.disk}",
      "var_hostname=${each.key}",
      "var_net=dhcp",
      "bash -c \"$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/community-scripts/ProxmoxVE/main/ct/${each.value.template}.sh)\""
    ]
    
    connection {
      type = "ssh"
      host = var.proxmox_host
      user = "root"
      private_key = file("~/.ssh/id_rsa")
    }
  }
}

variable "containers" {
  type = map(object({
    template = string
    cpu = number
    ram = number
    disk = number
  }))
  
  default = {
    "pihole" = {
      template = "pihole"
      cpu = 2
      ram = 1024
      disk = 8
    }
    "homeassistant" = {
      template = "homeassistant"
      cpu = 4
      ram = 4096
      disk = 20
    }
  }
}

CI/CD Integration

GitHub Actions

# .github/workflows/deploy-container.yml
name: Deploy Container to Proxmox

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]
  workflow_dispatch:
    inputs:
      container_type:
        description: 'Container type to deploy'
        required: true
        type: choice
        options:
          - debian
          - ubuntu
          - docker

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Deploy to Proxmox
        uses: appleboy/[email protected]
        with:
          host: ${{ secrets.PROXMOX_HOST }}
          username: root
          key: ${{ secrets.SSH_PRIVATE_KEY }}
          script: |
            var_unprivileged=1 \
            var_cpu=4 \
            var_ram=4096 \
            var_disk=30 \
            var_hostname=${{ github.event.inputs.container_type }}-ci \
            var_net=dhcp \
            var_ssh=yes \
            var_tags=ci-cd,automated \
            bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/community-scripts/ProxmoxVE/main/ct/${{ github.event.inputs.container_type }}.sh)"
      
      - name: Notify deployment status
        if: success()
        run: echo "✓ Container deployed successfully"

GitLab CI

# .gitlab-ci.yml
stages:
  - deploy

deploy_container:
  stage: deploy
  image: alpine:latest
  before_script:
    - apk add --no-cache openssh-client curl bash
    - eval $(ssh-agent -s)
    - echo "$SSH_PRIVATE_KEY" | tr -d '\r' | ssh-add -
    - mkdir -p ~/.ssh
    - chmod 700 ~/.ssh
    - ssh-keyscan $PROXMOX_HOST >> ~/.ssh/known_hosts
  script:
    - |
      ssh root@$PROXMOX_HOST << 'EOF'
        var_unprivileged=1 \
        var_cpu=4 \
        var_ram=4096 \
        var_disk=30 \
        var_hostname=gitlab-ci-container \
        var_net=dhcp \
        var_tags=gitlab-ci,automated \
        bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/community-scripts/ProxmoxVE/main/ct/debian.sh)"
      EOF
  only:
    - main
  when: manual

Error Handling

Deployment with Retry Logic

#!/bin/bash
# deploy-with-verification.sh

APP="debian"
HOSTNAME="production-server"
MAX_RETRIES=3
RETRY_COUNT=0

deploy_container() {
  echo "Attempting deployment (Try $((RETRY_COUNT + 1))/$MAX_RETRIES)..."
  
  var_unprivileged=1 \
  var_cpu=4 \
  var_ram=4096 \
  var_disk=30 \
  var_hostname="$HOSTNAME" \
  var_net=dhcp \
  var_ssh=yes \
    bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/community-scripts/ProxmoxVE/main/ct/${APP}.sh)" 2>&1 | tee deploy.log
  
  return ${PIPESTATUS[0]}
}

verify_deployment() {
  echo "Verifying deployment..."
  
  # Check if container exists
  if ! pct list | grep -q "$HOSTNAME"; then
    echo "✗ Container not found in pct list"
    return 1
  fi
  
  # Check if container is running
  CTID=$(pct list | grep "$HOSTNAME" | awk '{print $1}')
  STATUS=$(pct status "$CTID" | awk '{print $2}')
  
  if [ "$STATUS" != "running" ]; then
    echo "✗ Container not running (Status: $STATUS)"
    return 1
  fi
  
  # Check network connectivity
  if ! pct exec "$CTID" -- ping -c 1 1.1.1.1 &>/dev/null; then
    echo "⚠ Warning: No internet connectivity"
  fi
  
  echo "✓ Deployment verified successfully"
  echo "  Container ID: $CTID"
  echo "  Status: $STATUS"
  echo "  IP: $(pct exec "$CTID" -- hostname -I)"
  
  return 0
}

# Main deployment loop with retry
while [ $RETRY_COUNT -lt $MAX_RETRIES ]; do
  if deploy_container; then
    if verify_deployment; then
      echo "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━"
      echo "✓ Deployment successful!"
      echo "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━"
      exit 0
    else
      echo "✗ Deployment verification failed"
    fi
  else
    echo "✗ Deployment failed"
  fi
  
  RETRY_COUNT=$((RETRY_COUNT + 1))
  
  if [ $RETRY_COUNT -lt $MAX_RETRIES ]; then
    echo "Retrying in 10 seconds..."
    sleep 10
  fi
done

echo "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━"
echo "✗ Deployment failed after $MAX_RETRIES attempts"
echo "Check deploy.log for details"
echo "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━"
exit 1

Security Best Practices

Secure Deployment Script

#!/bin/bash
# secure-deploy.sh - Production-ready secure deployment

set -euo pipefail  # Exit on error, undefined vars, pipe failures

# Configuration
readonly APP="debian"
readonly HOSTNAME="secure-server"
readonly SSH_KEY_PATH="/root/.ssh/id_rsa.pub"
readonly LOG_FILE="/var/log/container-deployments.log"

# Logging function
log() {
  echo "[$(date +'%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')] $*" | tee -a "$LOG_FILE"
}

# Validate prerequisites
validate_environment() {
  log "Validating environment..."
  
  # Check if running as root
  if [ "$EUID" -ne 0 ]; then
    log "ERROR: Must run as root"
    exit 1
  fi
  
  # Check SSH key exists
  if [ ! -f "$SSH_KEY_PATH" ]; then
    log "ERROR: SSH key not found at $SSH_KEY_PATH"
    exit 1
  fi
  
  # Check internet connectivity
  if ! curl -s --max-time 5 https://github.com &>/dev/null; then
    log "ERROR: No internet connectivity"
    exit 1
  fi
  
  log "✓ Environment validated"
}

# Secure deployment
deploy_secure() {
  log "Starting secure deployment for $HOSTNAME..."
  
  SSH_KEY=$(cat "$SSH_KEY_PATH")
  
  var_unprivileged=1 \
  var_cpu=4 \
  var_ram=4096 \
  var_disk=30 \
  var_hostname="$HOSTNAME" \
  var_brg=vmbr0 \
  var_net=dhcp \
  var_ipv6_method=disable \
  var_ssh=yes \
  var_ssh_authorized_key="$SSH_KEY" \
  var_nesting=0 \
  var_keyctl=0 \
  var_fuse=0 \
  var_protection=yes \
  var_tags=production,secure,automated \
  var_verbose=no \
    bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/community-scripts/ProxmoxVE/main/ct/${APP}.sh)" 2>&1 | tee -a "$LOG_FILE"
  
  if [ ${PIPESTATUS[0]} -eq 0 ]; then
    log "✓ Deployment successful"
    return 0
  else
    log "✗ Deployment failed"
    return 1
  fi
}

# Main execution
main() {
  validate_environment
  
  if deploy_secure; then
    log "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━"
    log "Secure deployment completed successfully"
    log "Container: $HOSTNAME"
    log "Features: Unprivileged, SSH-only, Protected"
    log "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━"
    exit 0
  else
    log "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━"
    log "Deployment failed - check logs at $LOG_FILE"
    log "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━"
    exit 1
  fi
}

main "$@"

Security Reminders:

Never store passwords in defaults files - use SSH keys
Always use unprivileged containers when possible
Enable container protection for production deployments
Use static IPs for critical infrastructure
Disable unnecessary features (FUSE, TUN, etc.)

Common Deployment Patterns

Docker Host

var_unprivileged=0 \
var_nesting=1 \
var_keyctl=1 \
var_cpu=4 \
var_ram=8192 \
var_disk=50 \
var_hostname=docker-host \
  bash docker-install.sh

VPN Gateway

var_tun=yes \
var_cpu=2 \
var_ram=1024 \
var_disk=10 \
var_hostname=wireguard \
var_tags="vpn;network" \
  bash wireguard-install.sh

Media Server with GPU

var_gpu=yes \
var_unprivileged=1 \
var_cpu=6 \
var_ram=8192 \
var_disk=100 \
var_hostname=plex \
var_tags="media;transcoding" \
  bash plex-install.sh

Environment Variables

Complete variable reference

Defaults System

Save reusable configurations

Troubleshooting

Common deployment issues

Getting Started

Core Concepts

Using Scripts

Configuration

Guides

Troubleshooting

Quick Start

Prerequisites

Deployment Methods

Environment Variables

App Defaults

Shell Scripts

Ansible/Terraform

Single Container Deployment

Basic Example

Automatic IP Assignment

Using Saved Defaults

Batch Deployments

Simple Loop

Advanced Configuration Array

Parallel Deployment

Infrastructure as Code

Ansible Playbook

Terraform

CI/CD Integration

GitHub Actions

GitLab CI

Error Handling

Deployment with Retry Logic

Security Best Practices

Secure Deployment Script

Common Deployment Patterns

Docker Host

VPN Gateway

Media Server with GPU

Environment Variables

Defaults System

Troubleshooting

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love

Getting Started

Core Concepts

Using Scripts

Configuration

Guides

Troubleshooting

​Quick Start

​Prerequisites

​Deployment Methods

Environment Variables

App Defaults

Shell Scripts

Ansible/Terraform

​Single Container Deployment

​Basic Example

​Automatic IP Assignment

​Using Saved Defaults

​Batch Deployments

​Simple Loop

​Advanced Configuration Array

​Parallel Deployment

​Infrastructure as Code

​Ansible Playbook

​Terraform

​CI/CD Integration

​GitHub Actions

​GitLab CI

​Error Handling

​Deployment with Retry Logic

​Security Best Practices

​Secure Deployment Script

​Common Deployment Patterns

​Docker Host

​VPN Gateway

​Media Server with GPU

​Related Resources

Environment Variables

Defaults System

Troubleshooting

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love

Quick Start

Prerequisites

Deployment Methods

Single Container Deployment

Basic Example

Automatic IP Assignment

Using Saved Defaults

Batch Deployments

Simple Loop

Advanced Configuration Array

Parallel Deployment

Infrastructure as Code

Ansible Playbook

Terraform

CI/CD Integration

GitHub Actions

GitLab CI

Error Handling

Deployment with Retry Logic

Security Best Practices

Secure Deployment Script

Common Deployment Patterns

Docker Host

VPN Gateway

Media Server with GPU

Related Resources