Installing Proxmox and setting up Windows 11 VM

Installing Proxmox and setting up a Windows 11 VM

This is a digest on all the steps I took to install Proxmox in my new workstation and set up a Windows 11 VM.

Installing Proxmox VE

• Prepare executable USB and adjust BIOS boot sequence of the host machine
• Install using GUI, but change the boot command before - simply delete everything after quiet/splash and replace with:

nomodeset nouveau.blacklist=1 modprobe.blacklist=nouveau i915.modeset=0 intel_iommu=off

Post-Install Tasks

• Create additional user to connect to the node (adduser), give sudo permissions to this newly created user.
• Adjust sshd_config to disable root login, accept only public-key login.

Create VM with Windows 11

• It’s possible to export/import an activation key, provided it’s a RETAIL type key (not OEM).
• To figure out the type of key, use slmgr /dli

The following steps work only on RETAIL licenses, which are associated to a Microsoft account. Other license types are linked to hardware and it’s not possible to transfer them to another machine (no matter if physical or virtual).

• Create system image of the physical machine with Windows 11.
• Save activation key and unload it from the physical machine with slmgr /upk
• Download Windows 11 .ISO from Microsoft’s Official Download Site and the .ISO with VirtIO’s drivers (link). These drivers are needed to avoid hardware compatibility issues on the VM.
• Upload both ISOs to Proxmox Server and create a new VM with Windows 11 with the following specs:

VM Specifications

• ISOs: Windows 11 and VirtIO
• Graphic card: Default, type q35
• BIOS: OVMF (UEFI), add TPM Module, SCSI Controller: VirtIO
• CPU: 4 cores
• RAM: min. 4 GB, activate ballooning, 2 GB increment
• HDD 100 GB

• Network card model: VirtIO paravirtualized

• Change the boot sequence (first should be ISO with Windows 11) and power on the VM

• To install the operating system, just follow Decatec’s Tutorial

Installing XRDP

• Once Windows 11 is installed, we can use RDP to connect to a Linux machine. In this case, the destination of this RDP connection is a Debian with KDE Plasma.
• On the destination machine, install XRDP, allow autostart and check that it’s started

sudo apt install xrdp
sudo systemctl is-enabled xrdp
sudo systemctl status xrdp

• Create certificate and save in /etc/xrdp/certs (create directory if it doesn’t exist yet), change ownership: sudo chown -R xrdp:xrdp /etc/xrdp/certs
• Adjust permissions for the certificate and the private key

sudo chmod 0644 /etc/xrdp/certs/certificate.pem
sudo chmod 0600 /etc/xrdp/certs/privatekey.pem

• Adjust parameters in /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini:

security_layer=tls
certificate=/path/to/certificate.pem
key_file=/path/to/privatekey.pem
ssl_protocols=TLSv1.2, TLSv1.3

• Create file ~/.xsession with the following contents:

!/bin/sh
export XDG_SESSION_TYPE=x11
export KDE_FULL_SESSION=true
unset WAYLAND_DISPLAY
unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
exec dbus-run-session startplasma-x11

• Make .xsession executable: sudo chmod +x ~/.xsession
• Backup file /etc/xrdp/startwm.sh and change the contents of the original file as follows:

#!/bin/sh
if [ -r ~/.xsession ]; then
  exec ~/.xsession
else
  exec startplasma-x11
fi

• Restart XRDP: sudo systemctl restart xrdp, start RDP session from the Windows machine
• In case you experience connection problems, check contents of ~/.xsession-errors in the destination Linux machine