[pdm-devel] [PATCH proxmox/datacenter-manager 00/13] initial auto-installer integration

Christoph Heiss c.heiss at proxmox.com
Thu Dec 4 13:51:09 CET 2025


This series adds integration with our automated installer [0] for all our
products. With this, Proxmox Datacenter Manager can be used for serving
answer files via HTTP(S) in an automated fashion.

It provides two new panels:

- Automated Installations: List all past and currently ongoing
  installations.
- Prepared Answers: Enables users to do the whole CRUD cycle for
  prepared answers, i.e. create new answers (from scratch or based on
  existing ones), edit and delete.

Permission-wise, everything is currently scoped on
/system/auto-installation.

UI
==

Happy about feedback regarding the UI, especially the editing dialog! By
the nature of it, the auto-installer has a lot more options than the
standard GUI/TUI installer, and it's kind of hard to not fully cramp up
the UI while still providing all options.

TOML API
========

The auto-installer (currently) only supports TOML as input format for
the answer, so we need to hack around a bit to serve TOML in the API.
This is done in patch #12, by implementing the api method
directly. 

Serving TOML from an endpoint under /api2/json/ obviously is rather
wrong, so I'm definitely open for suggestions. 
We probably also don't want to implement `/api2/toml/` if I'd have to
guess (or would that be possible selectively, i.e. just for this one
endpoint?).

Adding JSON support to proxmox-fetch-answer is on my list, but this
would still be needed if we want to keep compatibility with older ISOs.

Other future work
=================

- Switch the installer to use the `proxmox-installer-types` crate too
  Left this out for now (though I have a mostly-done branch locally
  already), to ease review.

- Target filter selection by dropdown.
  Based on the system information schema, a list of all possible
  JSON pointers could be generated and displayed to the user, in a form
  consisting of the key, a text input for the value/glob to match and a
  set of add/remove buttons for each filter.

- Display/saving the installation progress/log. The progress log
  generated by the auto-installer can be sent to PDM, showing it there
  similar to tasks.
  Requires changes to the auto-installer, so this would not be
  backwards-compatible with older ISOs.

- Implement a "wait for answer"-ish system. Core idea here is that the
  installer waits for PDM to provide in answer by implemented e.g. an
  retry system. The use case is for to be able to effectively install
  systems on demand, without the need for preparations.
  Again requires changes to the auto-installer and wouldn't be
  backwards-compatible.

[0] https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Automated_Installation

Diffstat
========

proxmox:

Christoph Heiss (8):
  api-macro: allow $ in identifier name
  network-types: move `Fqdn` type from proxmox-installer-common
  network-types: implement api type for Fqdn
  network-types: cidr: add family-independent constructor and access
  network-types: add api wrapper type for std::net::IpAddr
  installer-types: add common types used by the installer
  installer-types: add types used by the auto-installer
  installer-types: implement api type for all externally-used types

 Cargo.toml                                   |    1 +
 proxmox-api-macro/src/util.rs                |    2 +-
 proxmox-installer-types/Cargo.toml           |   26 +
 proxmox-installer-types/debian/changelog     |    5 +
 proxmox-installer-types/debian/control       |   67 ++
 proxmox-installer-types/debian/debcargo.toml |    7 +
 proxmox-installer-types/src/answer.rs        | 1017 ++++++++++++++++++
 proxmox-installer-types/src/lib.rs           |  183 ++++
 proxmox-installer-types/src/post_hook.rs     |  239 ++++
 proxmox-network-types/Cargo.toml             |    3 +-
 proxmox-network-types/debian/control         |    2 +
 proxmox-network-types/src/fqdn.rs            |  262 +++++
 proxmox-network-types/src/ip_address.rs      |   98 +-
 proxmox-network-types/src/lib.rs             |    1 +
 14 files changed, 1909 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 proxmox-installer-types/Cargo.toml
 create mode 100644 proxmox-installer-types/debian/changelog
 create mode 100644 proxmox-installer-types/debian/control
 create mode 100644 proxmox-installer-types/debian/debcargo.toml
 create mode 100644 proxmox-installer-types/src/answer.rs
 create mode 100644 proxmox-installer-types/src/lib.rs
 create mode 100644 proxmox-installer-types/src/post_hook.rs
 create mode 100644 proxmox-network-types/src/fqdn.rs

proxmox-datacenter-manager:

Christoph Heiss (6):
  api-types: add api types for auto-installer integration
  config: add auto-installer configuration module
  acl: wire up new /system/auto-installation acl path
  server: api: add auto-installer integration module
  ui: auto-installer: add installations overview panel
  ui: auto-installer: add prepared answer configuration panel

 Cargo.toml                                    |   6 +
 debian/control                                |   5 +
 lib/pdm-api-types/Cargo.toml                  |   3 +
 lib/pdm-api-types/src/acl.rs                  |   4 +-
 lib/pdm-api-types/src/auto_installer.rs       | 441 +++++++++
 lib/pdm-api-types/src/lib.rs                  |   1 +
 lib/pdm-config/Cargo.toml                     |   2 +
 lib/pdm-config/src/auto_install.rs            |  85 ++
 lib/pdm-config/src/lib.rs                     |   1 +
 lib/pdm-config/src/setup.rs                   |   7 +
 server/Cargo.toml                             |   4 +
 server/src/api/auto_installer/mod.rs          | 654 ++++++++++++++
 server/src/api/mod.rs                         |   2 +
 ui/Cargo.toml                                 |   4 +
 ui/src/auto_installer/add_wizard.rs           | 142 +++
 ui/src/auto_installer/answer_form.rs          | 849 ++++++++++++++++++
 ui/src/auto_installer/edit_window.rs          | 105 +++
 ui/src/auto_installer/installations_panel.rs  | 289 ++++++
 ui/src/auto_installer/mod.rs                  |  15 +
 .../auto_installer/prepared_answers_panel.rs  | 233 +++++
 .../configuration/permission_path_selector.rs |   1 +
 ui/src/lib.rs                                 |   2 +
 ui/src/main_menu.rs                           |  22 +
 23 files changed, 2875 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 lib/pdm-api-types/src/auto_installer.rs
 create mode 100644 lib/pdm-config/src/auto_install.rs
 create mode 100644 server/src/api/auto_installer/mod.rs
 create mode 100644 ui/src/auto_installer/add_wizard.rs
 create mode 100644 ui/src/auto_installer/answer_form.rs
 create mode 100644 ui/src/auto_installer/edit_window.rs
 create mode 100644 ui/src/auto_installer/installations_panel.rs
 create mode 100644 ui/src/auto_installer/mod.rs
 create mode 100644 ui/src/auto_installer/prepared_answers_panel.rs

-- 
2.51.0





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