I don’t have spare peripherals like a monitor and a keyboard. How do you suggest I do a bare-metal install of Debian on a computer (meant to be a server)?
If you really, really, really don’t want to buy a keyboard and monitor, you can buy a USB KVM console, but it’ll likely cost more. Something like this: https://www.startech.com/en-us/server-management/notecons01
The traditional way is to use a serial console from another device.
I use a KVM over IP.
I made my own tiny pilot device for less than £100 and it has worked flawlessly for a few years.
This assumes your server has a hdmi output, if not you will need a VGA to hdmi or similar converter, danger of it becoming a bit of a hodge-podge of adapters, but hey, if it works, it works!
I’m planning to use a Raxda Zero 3W/Banana Pi Zero for this. Do you think this will suffice? I don’t need speed or power, it just needs to be usable.
I’ve no experience with either of those devices. So long as they’re comparable in terms of USBC features (otg) to emulate the keyboard and mouse then you should be good as the overhead of running the software seems to be minimal from my usage.
Without that, you’ll get video without keyboard and mouse support.
There’s a bunch of other variants like PiKVM and BIiKVM as well. Even some cheap knockoffs on Aliexpress that may do the job.
Buy a keyboard and monitor
If OP has a thrift store nearby it’s pretty likely they can get both for under $30.
I bought a 21 inch 1080p Viewsonic monitor from a thrift store just the other day for $6. I got it just for this use case.
I had a spare for this purpose up until about a month ago when the backlight went out on one of my daily drivers.
Also, a couple of days ago I got a pretty nice steelcase apex 3 keyboard with RGB lights for $5.
My go-to solution is to use a vm and pass it raw access to the os disk on my normal desktop. Then I just put the disk into the server.
Usually I want to see the BIOS settings at least once. So that’s enough reason to carry a keyboard + monitor there.
Otherwise that network boot option with a TFTP server comes to my mind. But I have never tried it on a new, empty machine.
PXE boot? It must be enable in the bios already. Then you could prep a image and deploy it that way.
When i was doing a headless install, i spend a hour or two trying to figure out how to pre setup configs for the debian installer or how to do it over network or what before i finally lugged the new machine to the other room and plugged it into the monitor and keyboard of the main rig, installed it all (and set up ssh so i can later get into from the main rig), and unplugged it.
My point is, even if it isnt trivial to have the keyboard and monitor, it may be much easier to get them than to really do an install without them.
Can you remove the boot disk?
Do you have a second computer running Linux? If you do install virtual manager and then pass though the disk. (LUN passthough)
Next boot the VM with the Debian installer and install. Finally shutdown the VM and plug it into the physical device.
Yes
Connect it to your PC or laptop and do a netinstall. Configure SSHD and a static ip. Plugin the disk to your server and then connect via ssh to admin it.
You could also set your laptop or PC to boot from the attached disk in the bios to test the services you want to start are starting
Planning to do that yes
Also, the word you’re looking for is: “headless”, as in, “headless install”
Plug drive in main computer, install Debian on it along with network config and SSH access, put drive back into server and power on.
I guess technically you can also make an ISO that will just auto wipe the drive and install upon booting it but you still need a keyboard to get into the boot menu.
If your computer can do HDMI out, you can use a television as display.
In all seriousness, unless this is some kind of super-exotic situation (like, you’re on a sailboat in the middle of the Pacific and are suddenly needing to set up a Debian server) I would probably get an inexpensive USB keyboard to keep around. Even if you don’t normally need it (like, you use a laptop or something) there are a number of situations that it solves, like “one of my laptop keys has just stopped working” or “I actually need to work on some kind of computer that doesn’t have an integrated keyboard”.
kagis
https://www.amazon.com/sgmedila-Waterproof-Foldable-Flexible-Dustproof/dp/B0CXTHH7QS/
That’s not gonna be a very pleasant typing experience, but it’s under $4, if you’re determined to spend as little as possible.
Here’s a small, 640x480 USB/HDMI display under $50:
https://www.amazon.com/Capacitive-Compatible-Raspberry-Resolution-Interface/dp/B0CFJDTM5X/
I’d probably get a larger display, maybe used – I mean, maybe you think that you’re never gonna need to look at a computer’s output again, but you might find yourself troubleshooting a machine like this one, and 640x480 is a kind of significant limitation – but that’s at least a baseline.
If you specifically don’t want a keyboard, and if you have some other device with a display and text input and USB (well, or serial) support, I’d bet that the Debian installer can probably handle an RS-232 serial console install.
kagis
Yup.
https://p5r.uk/blog/2020/instaling-debian-over-serial-console.html
But I’m guessing that you don’t have the serial hardware. Having a USB-to-serial adapter is another thing that I keep one of around because every now and then I need to work on headless devices that have a serial interface, but I’ll concede that the serial port is getting pretty elderly.
I’d probably get a USB-to-serial male and USB-to-serial female adapter if neither end has an existing serial port (which these days, with desktop hardware, may be very possible).
Debian also has a fully-automated installer, as long as you can set your machine up to boot into it without a keyboard or display:
That kind of thing is normally more used to set up VMs or manufacture hardware.
I would be very careful with that thing and probably wipe it after you use it, since it’s gonna be a USB key that wipes computers if you reboot and they’re set to boot off USB.
It almost certainly isn’t a great fit for your use case – like, the time you’re probably going to save setting it up isn’t going to be worth whatever you’d save spending on hardware – but mentioning it for completeness.
Ipmi interface?
You’ll waste more time trying to figure out how to do this than it would take to move a monitor and keyboard to the server, do the install, and plug the monitor and keyboard back into your main computer. Once the server is up, you can administer it over the network via ssh.
Definitely agree for a single install. If OP has a bunch of these installs to do, then editing an install USB to configure networking and enable sshd might be worth the effort. Do the install over ssh and hope the machine starts up as desired, but even then, if it doesn’t just magically appear on the network, he’s going to need a monitor to see where the startup failed.
Raspberry Pi’s disk imager will let you pre-configure networking, accounts, and ssh, so you just write the image to an SD card, plug it in, and go. That’s a great solutions for systems usually meant to be headless and removable media. If OP’s client hardware allows, he could plug in the M2 or SATA drive meant to be the server’s startup, install Deb there, and. transfer to the server hardware. That’s definitely more work that just swapping the keyboard & monitor, but it accomplishes OP’s stated goal. (Otherwise, a lot of this thread follows the linux meme of “How do I [X]?” “[X] is dumb, do [Y] instead.”)
Not sure about debian, but the archlinux iso has ssh on per default, so if you have no other bootable drives in your server other than the usb with the iso, just fire it up and try to connect to it via ssh.
Arch linux install wouldn’t be a problem really because the way the install is done. Pretty sure I could it all over SSH. Unfortunately, Debian isn’t exactly that…
