ZimaOS installation on Proxmox VM (for testing)

[jwag59]

I thought I would document the procedure I used to get ZimaOS to work with Proxmox. It was really simple.

1. Define your VM in Proxmox as per normal. Make sure you select the UEFI BIOS option:
   
   

If you forgot to set UEFI on VM setup you can change it by going to the VM “Hardware” window and double click on the BIOS option and then in the dropdown option select the OVMF (UEFI) option.
You can forget about the warning to install an EFI disk, it is not needed.

Here is a sample of a test VM definition:

2. Download the installer image
   You should grab the latest ZimaOS installer image.
   

   

3. Burn it to a USB drive. I used Balena Etcher for that.

4. Plug the USB into the machine running the Proxmox hypervisor.

5. Assign the USB as a passthrough device to the VM you defined in step 1) above
   In the VM view select “Hardware” then choose “Add” and select USB device , then on the popup window (Add: USB Device) select “Use USB Port” and on “Choose Port” hit the down arrow, in the selection window, select the USB you just plugged in.
   

   

6. Now enable the USB in the boot order window and move it to the top of the list to make it the first boot device.
   To do this select the VM “Options”, double click “Boot Order” and in the popup window (Edit: Boot Order) look for the USB device (at first it will appear at the bottom of the window), click the Enabled option for the USB device and then drag the entry to the top of the list. Below is an example of the Boot Order window once you have completed this.

7. Now select the VM “Console” and click Start Now … and voila the ZimaOS installer should run.

Note: I could not get the 1.4.1-beta1 image to boot. The 1.4.0 image boots as does the 1.4.1-beta2 image.
However doing an OTA update from 1.4.0 to 1.4.1-beta1 worked.

[Zima-Giorgio]

Thanks for your detailed tutorial. I have marked this as a tutorial and moved it to the ZimaOS category.

Community users can gain from your knowledge! Please share more.

[Shark]

For those who had trouble accessing the NAS in Windows 10 (Win 11 and Linux Mint worked immediately for me)
The NAS has to be manually added in Windows 10 like this:

Explorer->this PC->map network drive->now the important one “connect using different credentials”->Finish

Then just type your credentials and you have access to the NAS via SMB

[Shark]

I’ve installed ZimaOS in Proxmox by using a simple Script

[vipper_666]

Any takes on how to get QEMU agent installed on ZimaOS?

[gelbuilding]

I’ve tried to get the QEMU Guest Agent working inside ZimaOS and it’s basically not doable with the stock system. ZimaOS is a locked-down Debian variant, the package manager is stripped out and you can’t install qemu-guest-agent directly.

I even built a custom Docker image with the agent, but the virtio channel that Proxmox uses (/dev/virtio-ports/org.qemu.guest_agent.0) doesn’t pass through properly into containers, so the agent just sits there getting EOF messages.

Proxmox expects the guest agent to run on the host OS itself, not in a container. On a normal Debian or Ubuntu VM you can just apt install qemu-guest-agent and it works instantly, but ZimaOS isn’t designed for that.

[vipper_666]

Gotcha, thanks for sharing that. I guess we’d really need to wait for icewhale’s team to come up with either that being pre-built as a feature that can be updated or some way to install safe installation tools such as QEMU agent and lm-sensors.

Any thoughts on the above? @Zima-Giorgio

[zeerox72]

This with the script is the easiest way, which I also used after trying for a long time to install it manually (not following @jwag59’s guide but from somewhere else), and it’s the simplest and safest method for people who don’t have much experience with VMs. If v1.4.1 gets installed for you as well, don’t panic—just update to the latest version after starting ZimaOS. Happy testing, and @Shark thank you for sharing the link!