Frequently Asked Question
When we are managing a remote system, we need a user that we can login with to perform this function, and we DO NOT want to use the root password as is traditional in a basic proxmox installation.
First we need to install some prerequisites that we need to be able to function correctly:
apt install -y sudo net-tools iotop sysstat iftop btop htop traceroute mtr lsof strace lshw The default username is gensupport, so it will need adding to each node as follows:
adduser --gecos "GENSupport,,," gensupport
** SELECT A STRONG PASSWORD **
usermod -aG sudo gensupport Now we'll add the role to proxmox
pveum role add GEN --privs "Datastore.Allocate,Datastore.AllocateSpace,Datastore.AllocateTemplate,Datastore.Audit,Group.Allocate,Mapping.Audit,Mapping.Modify,Mapping.Use,Permissions.Modify,Pool.Allocate,Pool.Audit,Realm.Allocate,Realm.AllocateUser,SDN.Allocate,SDN.Audit,SDN.Use,Sys.AccessNetwork,Sys.Audit,Sys.Console,Sys.Incoming,Sys.Modify,Sys.PowerMgmt,Sys.Syslog,User.Modify,VM.Allocate,VM.Audit,VM.Backup,VM.Clone,VM.Config.CDROM,VM.Config.CPU,VM.Config.Cloudinit,VM.Config.Disk,VM.Config.HWType,VM.Config.Memory,VM.Config.Network,VM.Config.Options,VM.Console,VM.Migrate,VM.PowerMgmt,VM.Snapshot,VM.Snapshot.Rollback"
pveum user add gensupport@pam
pveum aclmod / --roles GEN --users gensupport@pam
This concludes the setup for a PAM user on proxmox for GEN HelpDesk use. Be sure to communicate the strong password you selected above to the HelpDesk securely and we recommend this is done through your Account Manager.
Proxmox support from the engineers who wrote this article
This article came out of a real case resolved by GEN engineers, not from upstream documentation. GEN have run Proxmox in production in our own UK data centres since 2015, and have been in enterprise IT for 37 years. If this one has not solved your problem, we can.
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