In this guide, we will walk you through the installation of a Debian 9 (Stretch) Minimal Server, using the netinstall CD ISO image.This installation you will carry out is appropriate for building a future customizable server platform, without a GUI (Graphical User Interface).
Debian is a very popular Linux-based operating system, but its development does not exactly move at a breakneck pace. In other words, it tends to focus on stability rather than bleeding edge. In fact, the development of Debian 9 'Stretch' has been going on for over two years!
Today, Debian 9 'Stretch' finally sees release. It is chock full of changes from the prior version. While GNOME 3.22 is the default desktop environment, you can opt for plenty of others, such as Xfce, KDE Plasma, and MATE. Users will appreciate LibreOffice 5.2, which is included. Also of significance, MariaDB replaces MySQL.
'After 26 months of development the Debian project is proud to present its new stable version 9 (code name Stretch), which will be supported for the next 5 years thanks to the combined work of the Debian Security team and of the Debian Long Term Support team. Debian 9 is dedicated to the project's founder Ian Murdock, who passed away on 28 December 2015. Firefox and Thunderbird return to Debian with the release of Stretch, and replace their debranded versions Iceweasel and Icedove, which were present in the archive for more than 10 years,' says the Debian Team.
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The team further says, 'This new release of Debian again comes with a lot more software than its predecessor jessie; the distribution includes over 15346 new packages, for a total of over 51687 packages. Most of the software in the distribution has been updated: over 29859 software packages (this is 57 percent of all packages in jessie). Also, a significant number of packages (over 6739, 13 percent of the packages in jessie) have for various reasons been removed from the distribution. You will not see any updates for these packages and they will be marked as 'obsolete' in package management front-ends.'
Ready to download Debian 9 Stretch? You can do so here. Keep in mind, there are many options from which to choose, so make sure you choose the appropriate image. Before you install it, be sure to read about all of the extensive changes here.
Image Credit:Bobboz / Shutterstock
This tutorial exists for these OS versions
- Debian 9 (Stretch)
On this page
This tutorial shows how to install a Debian 9 (Stretch) minimal server. The purpose of this guide is to provide a minimal Debian setup that can be used as the basis for our other Debian 9 tutorials and the perfect server guides here at howtoforge.com.
1 Requirements
To install a Debian 9 server system you will need the following:
- the Debian Stretch network installation CD, available here:
32Bit: https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/i386/iso-cd/debian-9.5.0-i386-netinst.iso (i386) or
64Bit: https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-cd/debian-9.5.0-amd64-netinst.iso (x86_64 / amd64) - a fast Internet connection.
I will use the 64Bit installation media here.
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The Debian Download links change regularly. If the above links do not work anymore, then go here to fetch the latest Debian netinst image: https://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst.
2 Preliminary Note
In this tutorial, I will use the hostname server1.example.com with the IP address 192.168.1.100 and the gateway 192.168.1.1. These settings might differ for you, so you have to replace them where appropriate.
3 The Debian Base System
Insert your Debian 9 (Stretch) network installation CD into your system and boot from it. When you use a virtualization software like VMware or Virtualbox, then select the Debian 9 minimal iso file as source file for the DVD drive of the VM, you don't have to burn it to a CD or DVD for that first.
Select Install (this will start the text installer - if you prefer a graphical installer, select Graphical install):
Select your language:
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Then choose your location:
Choose a keyboard layout:
The installer checks the installation CD, your hardware and configures the network with DHCP if there is a DHCP server in the network:
Enter the hostname. In this example, my system is called server1.example.com, so I enter server1:
Enter your domain name. In this example, this is example.com:
Afterward, give the root user a password:
Confirm that password to avoid typos:
Create a Linux user account, e.g. your name or nickname. For this example installation, I will choose the name 'administrator' with the user name administrator (don't use the user name admin as it is a reserved name on Debian Linux):
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Now select the timezone for the server
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Now you have to partition your hard disk. For simplicity's sake I select Guided - use entire disk - this will create a large partition for the / file system and another one for swap (of course, the partitioning is totally up to you - if you know what you're doing, you can also set up your partitions manually). For hosting systems like the ISPConfig 3 perfect server tutorials you might want to choose e.g. 30GB for / and a large /var partition as all website and email data is stored in subdirectories of /var.
Select the disk that you want to partition:
Then select the partitioning scheme. As mentioned before, I select All files in one partition (recommended for new users) for simplicity's sake - it's up to your likings what you choose here:
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When you're finished, select Finish partitioning and write changes to disk:
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Select Yes when you're asked: 'Write changes to disk?':
Afterward, your new partitions are created and formatted. Now the base system is installed: