Proxmox Virtual Environment is an awesome virtualization solution for your business or home lab, and in this series, you’ll learn everything you need to know in order to fully utilize it. In this class, we take a look at creating virtual machine templates.

Commands used in this video

Install cloud-init into the virtual machine (if not already installed):
sudo apt install cloud-init

Remove the OpenSSH host keys, so that they’ll be regenerated when cloud-init runs:
cd /etc/ssh
sudo rm ssh_host_*

Empty the machine-id file, so it too will be regenerated:
sudo truncate -s 0 /etc/machine-id

Ensure the symbolic link for the machine-id file exists:
ls -l /var/lib/dbus/machine-id
It should show up as a symbolic link to /etc/machine-id

If not, create the machine-id file:
sudo ln -s /etc/machine-id /var/lib/dbus/machine-id

Clean the template (optional):
sudo apt clean
sudo apt autoremove

Power down the VM:
sudo poweroff

Convert the VM to a template:
Right-click the VM, and click “Convert to template”