Mini Debian

So...

A full desktop system as a server VM really is a bit silly.

Let's do something different.

Installing a minimal Debian

Installer Menu

Software selection

Installation Complete

Boot Screen

Great Success!

• Insert the CD/ISO/whatever & boot the machine/VM from it.
  • I'm running it as VMs under ESXi
    • "ESXi 6.7 VM", "Linux", "Debian GNU/Linux 10 (64-bit)"
    • 4 CPUs, 4GB memory, 16GB storage
• When the installer menu appears, select "Install" rather than the default "Graphical Install" option
• Cruze along configuring the system to your liking until you reach the screen titled "[!] Software selection"
• Make sure that only SSH server and standard system utilities are selected, then continue
• Keep cruzing along until it tells you Installation complete
• When you tell it to continue, the system will reboot.

All done

The sequence in pictures...

Configuring the minimal Debian

Install & configure sudo

By default, root account is not enabled for login (other than directly at the console) to Debian. As a result, sudo authentication is needed. (But it doesn't seem to be installed by default...)

1. Log in to the Debian machine and switch to root using the su command.
   • su -
   • (remember that root pasword you picked during install?)
2. If sudo is not installed, install the sudo package using the following command:
   • apt install sudo
3. Add an existing user with id=USER to group=sudo:
   • adduser USER sudo
4. Log into the USER shell, and type the following command to verify that the user is authorised:
   • sudo -v

You have successfully configured sudo in Debian.

Install & configure vim

• sudo apt install vim

Then fix the Visual Mode silliness...

• sudo vim ~/.vimrc

set mouse-=a
syntax on

Aliases for ls

ls needs it's aliases set. (Who in heck doesn't use ll for ls -l???)

• vi ~/.bashrc

Scroll down & you'll see:

# some more ls aliases
#alias ll='ls -l'
#alias la='ls -A'
#alias l='ls -CF'

Un-comment those aliases!

• source ~/.bashrc

More Configurations

Samba

Basic Samba install & minimal configuration

Create a test folder & file to be shared. (Assuming you'll replace USER with your own username...)

• mkdir ~USER/share
• touch ~USER/share/Foo

Install Samba

• sudo apt install samba -y

Configure the test share

• sudo vi /etc/samba/smb.conf

[New_share]
    comment= my share
    path = /home/USER/share
    browseable  = yes
    Read only = no
    guest  ok = no
    valid users = USER

• sudo systemctl restart smbd

Set up username & password for Samba acess

• sudo smbpasswd -a USER

Additional bits to install (Client & utils & such...)

• sudo apt install cifs-utils samba-client -y

NOTE: At this point, the share can be accessed, but you need to know where it is because Samba does not advertise it's presence.

You can see the shares from the machine by entering smb://MACHINENAME/ into the address bar of your file browser.

Usage notes

Missing commands

If you're used to Ubuntu-derived Linuxes, you may note that a lot of commands cannot be found while signed in as a regular user. Before attempting to install them, check with sudo or while signed in as root. The root user account has a different search path that includes the programs that are normally not allowed to regular users anyhow.

One good example:

ifconfig results in-bash: ifconfig: command not found

but...

sudo ifconfig results in details about your network connection(s)