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New guests

 ❯ Create a Debian VM on pve1.example.com
 ❯ Leg einen neuen LXC auf pve1 an

VMs from cloud images​

Hostwarden creates VMs and containers on Proxmox VE, libvirt, Incus, LXD and classic LXC, with the platform's own tools. A VM starts from the distribution's official cloud image, checked against its checksum and, where the distribution signs one, its signature, and gets the baseline as cloud-init user-data at its first boot, so there is no golden image to go stale. The rendered user-data is kept, numbered, in memory/baseline/, and each guest records the version it got. On Proxmox VE, containers come from a baseline template Hostwarden builds from the official container template; housekeeping says when it is due for a rebuild.

Guests without cloud-init​

A guest that reads no cloud-init gets the same baseline in the form its system does read: Butane and Ignition for Fedora CoreOS and Flatcar, a kickstart, preseed, autoinstall or AutoYaST file where the guest has to be installed rather than copied from an image, and a seed written into the root filesystem or the disk image before the first start for everything else. On Incus the baseline lives in a profile of its own per version, so it is written once rather than on every command line. Whichever form it takes, it is applied only to a guest that has never run: the SSH server of a machine that is already up is never touched, in the guest or through its host.

Logging in​

You log in with your SSH keys from the first boot on. If you have no key and want a password, the guest generates one and shows it only on its console, where you change it at the first login; a container from the Proxmox VE baseline template gets no generated password, and you set one at its console. Hostwarden then checks the baseline on the guest, asks about adding it to a backup job, and the guest goes through the usual first connection and is registered with its host like every other guest.

Appliances whose UI has no field​

On Unraid, ZimaOS and TrueNAS you get the steps for the web UI and a small seed ISO that carries the configuration, since their UIs have no field for it; on XCP-ng you get the user-data to paste into Xen Orchestra's cloud-init field. Replacing the OS of a machine that already exists is Installing an operating system, not this one.