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)?
Also, the word you’re looking for is: “headless”, as in, “headless install”
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters IP Internet Protocol SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage SSD Solid State Drive mass storage SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access
4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 3 acronyms.
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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.
Thanks, I’ll take a look!
https://github.com/philpagel/debian-headless
It is possible but I wouldn’t do it. Too much effort for too little result.
Just plug your main monitor / keyboard into the server, run the setup and don’t install a DE. Afterwards login, enable SSH, unplug the monitor and do whatever you need over SSH.
Let’s face it, you’ll have to do this procedure once every xyz years, there’s no point in complicating this stuff. Also depending on your motherboard you may or may not be able to boot into the installer without a screen / keyboard attached. Another option is to install the OS in another computer and the move the hard drive to the target server - this is all fine until you run into UEFI security or another detail and it doesn’t boot your OS.
All I have is a laptop. I’m getting these machines for free from a friend
I picked up a second hand monitor from a goodwill shop for like $7USD. It would be worth having a display of some sort for troubleshooting.
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.
