Mini Debian

Proven on:

11 (bullseye)

well... duh...

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
  • These days, I'm running it as VMs under Proxmox
    • "Linux", "5.x - 2.6 Kernel"
    • 4 Cores, 4GB memory, 16GB storage
    • Pretty much leaving everything else default...
• 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...

Upon first boot up of your new system:

• sudo apt update
• sudo apt upgrade

(Because there're ALWAYS updates...)

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...

• vim ~/.vimrc

set mouse-=a
syntax on

Do the same for when you use it vi sudo...

• sudo vim /root/.vimrc

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

• Setting up NFS for file sharing
• Installing Samba from the command line
• Adding a new drive from the command line
• A better .bashrc for root

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)

OTOH...

ip a does similar & is a more modern replacement.