Ludus on Proxmox: installation and templates

Before installing

Backup

Ludus touches the host network and packages. Before running it, save the network configuration and anything you do not want to lose.

$ cp /etc/network/interfaces /root/interfaces.bakvzdump <container-ID> --storage <storage> --mode stop

Disk space

Ludus and GOAD are heavy. My root partition was 96 GB and was not enough for GOAD, so I put it on the 1 TB disk. Pick a place with enough space before cloning it.

Installing Ludus

Download the official installer, read it and run it on the Proxmox host as root.

$ curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -fsSL https://ludus.cloud/install -o /root/ludus-install.shless /root/ludus-install.shbash /root/ludus-install.sh

Among other things, the installer asks for:

• Accepting the licence
• The storage for VMs (I used local-lvm) and for ISOs (local)
• The web admin email (it can be a made-up one such as lab-admin@local.invalid)

It takes a good while. It downloads firmware and a new Proxmox kernel, installs Ansible and configures WireGuard and the internal network. It is not stuck, this is normal.

To follow the progress and see the initial credentials and the API key it generates:

ludus-install-status

Save the API key somewhere safe the first time you see it. The output itself warns that if you run ludus-install-status again, the API key is regenerated and the previous one stops working. When the installation finishes, two Ludus services are running.

If ludus later answers No Ludus API key found in system keyring, that session does not have the key loaded. Fix it by exporting the key you saved in the current session, or by storing it with the apikey command:

$ export LUDUS_API_KEY='<your-api-key>'

VM templates

Ludus builds the VMs from templates that are created once. GOAD-Light needs three.

ludus templates listludus templates build -n debian-12-x64-server-template,win2019-server-x64-template

Windows Server 2019 is the slowest. With a 6-core i5, build them one at a time.

There is a third template I missed: the lab router uses Debian 13. If it does not exist, the GOAD deployment stops before creating the VMs.

ludus templates build -n debian-13-x64-server-template

Check that all three show as built before moving on.

ludus templates list