Debian 12 Bookworm Minimal Install w/BTRFS
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- čas přidán 4. 08. 2024
- Installing Debian 12 with 2 partitions and zram swap.
The goal is to install Debian with a minimal install. No desktop environment.
The minimal install is so I can use the scripts written to tiling windows managers mostly, but maybe custom desktop or two in the future.
Software:
Distro: Debian 12 Bookworm (Stable)
www.debian.org/download
=== Contents of this Video ===
0:00 - Intro
1:16 - Getting started with Expert Install
3:40 - Opting to use User Login
4:31- Partitioning the SSD with BTRFS
13:35 - Installing the rest of the base system
16:41 - Choosing firmware OR not
18:44 - Installing Desktop Environment OR NOT
21:39 - Installing Zram Swap
Github:
github.com/drewgrif/
Twitter:
/ justaguylinux - Věda a technologie
Your video are great; however how do I know what you are saying is correct, how long have you been using linux, what's your background?
Not an expert. Just a Guy. It's free... which is what it's worth. 😉
What do any of us know about linux? I have been a serious linux sys admin for 10 years, and every day I feel like a noob. Certifications are irrelevant. The “experts” tend to be closed minded. Max flex is my rule of thumb.
I can confirm.I installed debian this way and its working
Are you some kind of journalist or something? Actually watch more than one of his videos.
You can always look up information to verify, just because someone throws credentials at you doesnt mean they are 100% correct ALL the time. This sort of question has very little merit in the grand scheme of things
A few observations/suggestions about the mount options for the btrfs partitions as Debian 12 ships with BTRFS version 6.2:
- rw -> is really not needed. By default it will mount in rw mode.
- space_cache=v2 has been a default option since btrfs version 4.5 - no need to specify it.
- discard=async is the default as of version 6.2, but only as long as the SSD drive AND storage controller supports it, and this is important. You don't want to enable async otherwise as it can cause issues. It's better to be safe and let btrfs decide.
- ssd = nowadays btrfs can autodetect SSDs and enable this options so no longer necessary to specify it. It was only needed on 1st generation SSDs due to how they reported to the Os.
Thanks. Always happy when a pro helps out.
@@JustAGuyLinux Does this mean we don't have to do what you did with the mount of the drives in the terminal or the editing of the files using nano?
@@sceafa8370 If you want to have compression enabled or use timeshift for btrfs snapshots later, then yes. The specific options of RW, and space_cache are now defaults in btrfs
This is one of those videos I'll always refer to over the years, super usful calling out the options as you were doing them allowed me to just follow along audibly
Thank you for the videos, I find them very easy, simple and straight forward to learn from. I have been using DietPi for a while now to setup small servers but have always wanted to learn to do it manually. I usually just need a minimal install with ssh, samba/NFS, some security, backup and maybe a minecraft server or two running on the machine. Thanks to videos like yours I am edging ever closer to being able to do it manually. Thank you again.
I love your videos Drew. I am such a Debian fanatic, and I am very open to learning. Your content assumes nothing and has great depth. Personally, I prefer you walking through things (like your manual partition setup with BTRFS), so if people are "bored", they can fast forward.....
Thank you!
Wow, thanks
Thank you so much I've been using linux for a little bit now and your video has taught me a bit more of what btrfs is capable of! Im definitely adding this to my notes in the future.
This was one of the top things that I was hoping that Debian would fix or adopt to get working out of the box when btrfs was chosen at install. But now is the perfect time for me to learn this, so your timing is perfect. I know that drive compression on things like Steam games can increase drive space. Thanks so much for this video, I'm going to watch it now and finally learn this. Edit: Yeah.......I'm never going to remember that.
Was literally looking a guide for this yesterday thanks for making this video
Another great video, Drew. It seems Bookworm is getting a really good reviews from the community, probably the best a Debian release has received in a long time, if not the best. I think Flatpak's acceptance has helped with the popularity. Thanks for showing us the BTRFS setup again.
Flatpak tomorrow. Thanks Larry.
Sehr, sehr gut erklärt. Kann jeder komplett nachvollziehen. Uneingeschränkte Empfehlung! Super! Vielen Dank.
Nooice! Just installed Debian 12. Now I am going to go back and do a minimal install. Thanks for the great video.
Have fun!
Well done! Best I've seen on this subject. Thank you.
Wow, thanks!
Just found this channel today! Subscribed instantly! Thank you for your time and detail
I just installed a minimal install of debian12. I was about to go through this procedure, however i took a gamble. I found on a website that the key thing is that debian will install gnome by default even if you uncheck it. However, because i didn't uncheck the first box "debian graphical ...." i still got gnome. I tried again, and voila, with out the expert mode, i have created a minimal debian12.
Thanks for the info though. Its very well presented and i like your very precise way of showing how to do something! Keep it up!
Hey Drew, good to see you posting videos again!
Hey, thanks!
Thanks to your tutorial I am finally able to use Debian with BTRFS. I’ve done it before with other Debian based distros but never able to achieve it in Debian. So, thank you so much.
Nice work!
Fascinating details. Good to have some insight into how this is is all put together.
As a busy dad I used Spiral Linux to install a beautifully configured Debian 12.5 including btrfs & snapper. Saved me *hours*
Thanks for sharing!
Great video! I immediately subscribed :D Thanks for showing how to setup BTRFS. I was trying Bookworm in a VM, and was kind of lost when I had to set up subvolumes.
Thanks for the sub!
Love your videos, Drew! Keep going.
Thanks so much!
Thank you! Im running debian testing with snapshots in case something goes wrong now thanks to this guide.
Thank you so much! I've looking for this. So appreciated.
I'm struggling to unmelt my brain, but I will be using this guide with much appreciation.
Waiting for the next part. And my kind recommendation to you, make tutorial about server installation of Debain (minimal) like web server, mail server and how to create user credentials to several employees. Hopefully waiting for it.
Just did this, great vid thanks a lot
One tip to those who are installing this on vm's, don't forget to activate the EFI option on the machine settings so you get the EFI system option
Very nice and informative.
Thank you for your efforts! Looks clear and very useful. By the way, ctrl+alt+F2 is not convinient, and ctrl+alt+F1 too. Use alt+→ and alt+← accordingly.
Well explained and simple to follow. Thanks!
It would be nice to have an in-depth look into btrfs snapshots administration as a follow up to this video.
I kinda did on the next vid when I installed KDE minimal, but something I intend to address in the relatively near future.
@@JustAGuyLinux Great. There is not much good btrfs related content on CZcams, so you'd be doing the Linux community a favour. In case you're doing something like that, please maybe include a segment for administering snapshots from the CLI.
Great video, well informative message thanks
Just starting a bookworm journey myself.
I have used different distros in the past, Fedora, CentOS, and Mint mostly.
Time for a change and refresh. Looking to build a custom workstation setup that includes a DE and possibly sway.
If you are going to make this into an ongoing series I am subbed to come along for the ride.
Good video. It can make sense to create more subvolumes, perhaps /var/cache, /var/log/, /var/spool, /var/tmp. Doing so, you can exclude these directories from the snapshot.
nice!
@deterdamel7380 Very good idea
Thank you for this guide
Hey, great video. If you have a separate /home partition, what would be the changes in setting up BTRFS? My SSD is tiny so I generally have /home on Hard Disk.
GREAT VIDEO-- I have this and LOVE IT-- I have added KDE to mine myself-- to build it the way I wanted. SUPER system-- rock solid- FASTER than the arch junk I was trying.. and just SUPER GOOD!!! I get RID of swap too... Today- I'm running SPARKY LINUX 7--- which is a GREAT distro - based on DEBIAN 12, and has good tool, is SIMPLE- light- VERY FAST- and GREAT-- with the stability of Debian 12.... LOVE IT-- Sparky has been my MAIN system for a LONg time-- and I ALWAYS go back to it when I hop-- ALWAYS-- it's just that GOOD... for beginners too!!!
Thanks for sharing. Sparky is a distro I have not tried.
@@JustAGuyLinux Put it on usb and give it a shot-- like the old Coca cola comercial use to say- "Try it , you'll LIKE it!!".. :)
Thanks to for this nice tutorial! 😀
Legit content.
As an Arch user, I approve this.
Jokes aside, this is a bless. Recently I test lmde, and use command line to do the partition in conjunction with gui installer. I just grab arch-install-script to setup fstab fast.
I like this video I can't wait to see what have for us with hyperland on Debian that will be the best on how to configure it
Thanks for the post. Apart from your UEFI/EFI changes, I am asking myself why you not use the default BTRFS settings to install the Debian base system out of the box using the installer? Did you do it just to assign your a home subvolume and add your specific BTRFS mount options to fstab? Do you have indications, that the default mount options would not do the job installing the base system? Just curious and to understand what's the downside of not doing it the standard way using the standard expert BTRFS install procedure.
Perfect, Thx Sir.
Could you explain what exacly you have done in the chang partition part and why you think that is the better setup?
Do you achieve the same as a seperate home partition with the terminal stuff?
Thanks for the video ! I tried timeshift istall on 3 different machines, on general install with KDE and could not get it to work, it would not even start, noticed there is a program called backup in the system. I need to get into more advanced installs with BTRFS and select my prefered software from the start !
I really would like to know which sources of reference we could use to understand what is being doing here. Too many concepts I don't know. There are things I never imagined we could do.
Hello! I'm new, and I think you're good. Why, at 18:16, did you not enable automatic updates?
Question:
I wanna install Debian in the way you described (alongside the suggestions from @jhboricua) on my machine (ergo, on metal), but I do have a Windows partition on it as well that I REALLY don't wish to lose.
What are some things I need to do differently here aside from the obvious like not formatting my entire drive? What do I do with the EFI partition that already exists on my machine (it allows me to boot into Windows)?
@JustAGuyLinux Should the ssd option within the fstab be set to something else if it's a mechanical drive or just omitted completely?
Omitted. I believe you can omit the discard=async too
Hi there Drew, thank you for the nice video! I'm currently trying to follow, but my PC is not UEFI but BIOS. What would the differences be in my case? I'm struggling specially to establish the boot position, since an EFI partition doesn't apply for me.
Thanks a lot!
Excellent thank you. If only you could enlarge text display in your terminal input . I'll be watching this video many times till I can wright out the instructions in a note book, I keep notes for different distros, apps & processes🤣 Will the printer work work, It does in POP_OS out of the box, configuring printers has always been a breaking point for me. I just skip it most times. The PC I'll be installing Debian on will have 2 SATAs for storage & 1 NVME ssd . Can't just throw away those old hdds How & where do you buy debian install media to support it? Are there printed official manual like slackware?
Hello Drew. I enjoyed this install. I have a question if you feel it's in the scope of your channel. When your setting the options on your subvolume mounts these two were changed from your previous install demonstrations. rw was added and space_cache was changed to space_cache=v2. I'm just curious why you made the change. I'm just another guy using linux.
It was recommended to me for better hard drive performance
@@JustAGuyLinux Thanks
Can you made one fresh install video explaining the same but for a disk with partition root and partition home separated? Thanks.
Why BTRFS vs EXT4? Currently running WattOS R12 love its clean simplicity, Was thinking if I could use it for my base template . Just learning I'm installing on an older laptop sata so I'll add swap .
This is pretty much how I did my install a few days ago. I wish the Debian installer had more functionality for btrfs partitions, its annoying having to switch tty and do it all yourself. Especially when they let you configure pretty much everything else in the expert install.
Drew, will this perticular partition setup mess up dual boot that is already setup? I have Fedora 38 and Windows 11 setup already on REfind boot manager.
Not sure. I am thinking yes, but can't guarantee
Perhaps you could do a separate video where you configure this system with snapper to do snapshots. It's more complicated to setup but also more flexible than timeshift.
don’t want mess up the @rootfs, can we just skip those commands and install? does that make any difference? does Nvme differ from sata ssd?
Hi.
Getting trouble with snapper, could you help me?
When I make a snapshot as default, then reboot, does not boot with the snapshot mark as default. How I can resolve this?
Thanks.
I don't recall Debian 11 taking nearly as long to update as the regular Debian 12, so am hoping minimally-installed is a lot better. Sure wish antiX was easier to use, because I love how minimal it is.
i have a bit of a general question about linux.
i'm probably misunderstanding something, but if the instructions on how to mount the FS are stored on the FS itself in the fstab file, then how does the system read the fstab file without knowing how to access the FS in the first place?
Thanks for the question. This may be a little beyond my skill set.
Great video. I mounted the root partition with:
mount -o rw,noatime,space_cache=v2,compress=zstd:3,ssd,discard=async,subvol=@ /dev/mmcblkop2 /target
and the install isn't compressed.
I den decided to change the compress option to: compress=ztsd:6 still nothing is compressed during install.
So the question is. How can I have the installer compress while installing the system?
Another person who prefers Micro. 😀
I wonder how you can install Debian with an encrypted device and set up all of the kde and gnome package software installers.
I followed along and successfully completed the minimal install. Thanks for the info.
Since completing the install I have added cups, vim and tmux. I am trying to stay away from a gui as long as I can.
Could you do a follow up video showing how to expand the install without adding a gui?
Or could you or any readers suggest useful text only tools?
good suggestion. thought about it myself but never able to get a productive workflow.
I installed Debian 12 a few days ago from the minimal install CD but I did pick a desktop as I wanted to make sure I got all of the hardware and drivers. I started with Gnome Flashback as it is one of the most minimal ones and is easy to remove once you have installed another desktop. Then I installed the Cinnamon desktop then removed Gnome Flashback and I am now running Cinnamon. I installed Cinnamon Core which gives you the desktop but not all of the unwanted bloatware like LibreOffice and other's I don't want. I must say that I am finding the Debian Cinnamon lighter and better than Linux Mints LMDE as Debian's one does not come with so much heavy stuff. Where as Linux Mints Cinnamon for some reason comes with the Mate Panel half of the Mate Desktop which I don't like. Because if I wanted that I would just install Mate Desktop and I don't seen the point in having a Panel from another desktop which kind of looks out of place on Cinnamon. Also Debian Cinnamon is not using much disk space at all only where as Mints version was using much more. Probably because of all of the apps and packages that get installed when you first use it. All of my drivers work out of the box so I did not have to configure anything. So yes this version of Debian is worth trying and I think the desktops are lighter than the Ubuntu versions as they don't have any Snaps or Flatpaks. Unless you want to install then that is. When I used Debian 11 it was not so user friendly as the network and some of the other settings were turned off but in 12 they have added support for drivers for the first time. Which makes it easier for users like myself who are coming over from Windows. The only thing I don't like is the Firefox ESR which is an out of date version but that you can change that by adding the repositories of the updated Firefox. Which is something you would have to do on Ubuntu as they only have the Snap version. These things are easily fixed. I am quite liking Debian and I may try another desktop on my other laptop as it does seem to be a lot lighter than Ubuntu. Although I like Ubuntu and Linux Mint as well.
How would you do this on arm64 pi 4?
Do you have a Timeshift setup video to follow on from this video?
Wrong timestamp but it's at 3:06. I'm on mobile rn, sorry
What was the point in renaming the @rootfs subvolume to @ ? Could @ not coexist with @home? Or does @rootfs somehow imply that there are no additional subvolumes?
I tend to not use btrfs because of its complexity, and subvolumes are one of the reasons for that. Yet, they are actually one of its most interesting features.
Getting timeshift to work correctly.
Hello, i'm new on linux so this could be an stupid question. i used opensuse for a while and iirc it creates 9 subvolumes by default like @, @tmp, @var, @home etc. but you created only @ and @home. what are differences between what you did and opensuse's default subvolumes?
no idea. sorry.
Opensuse and ArchInstall both had those additional subvol. For instance, it’s important to create @var subvol so that when you restore @root snapshot, it doesn’t wipe your logs. And having @logs on a separate subvol, it helps you with checking for error messages whenever you need it.
Great video! But what if i windows partitions and stuff?
It's nice video . But i have a question . Can i dual boot with your way ? I am just a new with debian.
I am not sure, but I think the best way would be to install Windows first and then Debian.
Wouldn't it be prudent to HAVE a swap partition available, and configure Zram to use it if you ever DO run out of memory by
adding a backup swap partition or file?
That would cause the swap to be on the same location of the SSD every time it writes and would wear out the drive quickly. Having a swap file, lets the SSD manage where to write.
Put "nosgx" in to /etc/default/grub" kernel line :D P.S. Can you make video of adding minimal install of KDE/Gnome of top of this?
nice vid very informative.. but why not to set up swap on ssd?
Using swap on SSD can cause unnecessary wear to the SSD from what I understand. That's why I use zram swap.
Is there any security risk by using EFI instead of BIOS stemming from the fact that an extra ESP partition is required that cannot be encrypted via LUKS, etc?
If I'm not mistaken, with BIOS boot you can use a single partition for everything and that is encryptable via LUKS. In EFI boot you have the bootloader and kernel on an unencrypted (as in: does not work with encryption) partition, right?
Would that enable an adversary (i.e. thief of a laptop) to "simply" put a modified boot loader and/or kernel on the unencrypted /boot partition?
I was always curious about this since EFI is supposed to be more secure than BIOS but the requirement of having a part of your system unencrypted sounds more like a security risk. Or did I understand something wrong?
If the thief replaced the bootloader and or kernel, the LUKS partition would still be encrypted and he would have gained nothing. As far as just wiping out the partitions and starting from scratch, he would have no problem there.
@@act.13.41 Right, so the only situation where my data wouldn't be safe in that situation is when the thief is not interested in the physical laptop but the data on it and "returns/abandons" it after installing the root kit in which case I might unlock the LUKS partition myself and then use a compromised system without my knowledge? That would be prevented if all partitions were encrypted?
@@goldibollocks Correct. If you are RKed and unlock the partition, you would be vulnerable.
My suggestion would be regular backup of the data on the the drive and if the laptop went missing and was returned would be an immediate wipe and re-partition/load with a restore of the backed up data.
@@act.13.41 that sounds good and would definitely be a good idea to regard a laptop as compromised once it had been missing or stolen & returned.
Only scenario I can think of now is the installation of a root kit not by a thief but by someone who doesn't physically move the laptop to install the RK, i.e. a spouse, parent or sibling who installs it without moving the laptop at all. In that case, one wouldn't have any idea the laptop is compromised and likely just unlock the LUKS on the next boot.
Is there any chance to guard against that? I guess a BIOS level password would not prevent anyone from removing the HDD/SSD, installing the RK on the drive on another computer and then re-inserting it back into the original laptop? Basically only having unencrypted partitions read only or having no unencrypted partitions at all?
@@goldibollocks Technically, if anyone has physical access, you cannot assure safety of data. I would guess that if you have an unencrypted / drive, and you were suspicious, you could boot from a live USB and run rkhunter on it.
So I inferred that the Debian installer automatically created a BTRFS sub volume called @rootfs, but how did YOU figure that out?
fstab
How would we install Debian on RAID1 btrfs?
Needing a network connection for netinstall is the major downside. I heard or read the other day that there is a version between regular Debian and the netinstall that already has the network files on it and I think it is contrib and non-free, but those can be commented out after install. Gawd, I hope I made a good note of where to find that .iso
Too bad setting up subvolumes is still how I would do it on arch. Hopefully it would be made easier in the future
5:26 for some reason the menu shows everything except efi partitioning. does anyone have an idea why?
i fixed it by forcing uefi mode in the bios menu
it's going to be wonderful if you can showcase a snapper rollback mechanism. With your current subvolume setup, it always fails for me
Great suggestion!
wow, advance video, advance tutorial thanks
is the install the same for NVME drives?
I believe so. I do remember doing this, but it has been a while.
Yes it's the exact same, you just have to keep in mind that it will be called `nvme0n1p1 and nvme0n1p2` instead of SDA1 and SDA2
Maybe you should experiment with Linux LVM?
How did you manage to record a bare metal installation?!
I use a test machine and an external capture card hooked up to my production machine.
As an aside at 16:41, I’ve always wondered what the proportion of people who refuse the non-free firmware and how does that ultimately work out for them? In practice, you and other CZcamsrs say to just go ahead and accept the non-free. When it gets down to it, who really SHOULD refuse the nonfree?
Not sure but think a server is unlikely to need it. Desktop not so much
I ❤ your vids. Watch the all.
However, today I wanted to make a request if you allow.
Can you please mske a vid/tutorial for lmde6 btrfs install, preferably in expert install (for the mount options of the subvols).
Thanks in advance in anticipation of a positive response.
done
I try to install it and Debian did not Recognize me ?
Debian did not recognize you, because you've had random relationships with other distros which is not well appreciated by Debian. Sorry mate.
@@marculix man that killed me lol!
To my understanding btrfs is nothing but trouble. I'll stick with LVM
Never had any big issue with btrfs, but yeah LVM is fine too
btrfs- and of course zfs- are way better than using LVM + some-fs. If you're still using LVM today, your should try the modern approach. But do not use btrfs as RAID 5/6 right now.
I prefer SUN's ZFS (or OpenZFS) for enterprise level data storage. This is unfortunately not easy to use in Debian for the root filesystem, so as an alternative BTRFS should do the job if you e.g. want to snapshot your installation quickly for business continuity (BCP) and recovery. For the OS, however, for data storage I still use ZFS which is the worlds largest enterprise storage champion.
you have to use nano...
close video
:P
I don't know why I'm watching this video and why youtube recommended to me but thanks.
It's a good video!
Did everything until unable to install grub in dummy😮 wasted my time 30 minutes
Please help
Debian 12 might have been okay (with me) had it not abandoned python2. Although there are ways around to have python2 back, Debian *officially* abandoning python2 is a total disaster for a 70-some old computer nut. I hope there would be a Debian derivative still keeping python2 alive. Otherwise, I might abandon Debian, et. al. altogether and go back to Slackware.
Debian did not "abandon" python2. Everyone did. Is there any reason why you can't use python3? Also, nice to see senior linux users :) .
what is all this USB drives and burning? wtf is that?? someone said it was "image"? are
you kidding me??? Debian hasnt gone past that yet? seriously, like on usb drives or cd? like in
the 1990's? it doesnt have digital self-storage or can install itself from the cloud??
seriously thats so old. in the digital cloud storage world, who the hell uses USB drives or Cd's.
New computers do not even have cd drives anymore. now yes computers do have USB slots for
a mouse, but USB drives???? I mean how mny hundreds of USB drives whould you have putting
everything on USB drives like a freaking 80s floppy disc????? seriously booting from usb
drive or cd, well thats like saying you want to watch a hd
movie: like, avatar 2 on your vhs vrc?? i mean cant we get away from the way microsoft
makes us do things??? is it no so: most people want to use linux software like redhat or
Debian to get away from that????? and the first thing you do to get linux is to take a page of
downloading and installing is right out of the microsoft playbook??? isnt that what you
do when you haveone windows and want to get the new windows, because MICROSOFT MAKES YOU DO IT??
LINUX CANT DO A DIGITAL INSTALL?? So lets copy the way we install windows to install Linux?
can we get past that? am i wrong here? is
there something im missing??
Yeah, you’re missing a lot. Macs can install from the cloud but that’s because it has embedded code in the hw of the Macs that loads network drivers, a network stack and connects to the designated servers online. USB boot contains that same code for generic hw (and usually more to provide options). The Debian netinstall image contains the minimum amount of code and will connect to Debian online servers and install from there. Other images are available for different needs, eg offline install. So in order to boot and install from the cloud the system would need to be vertically integrated with a single company/entity controlling hw and sw. As far as I know the only vertically integrated consumer oem is Apple/Mac. Others might exist but likely only for enterprise solutions.
@@carlnakamura4861wow cool. why doesnt Debian say that up front then?
@@AccountClosed2024 it’s not Debian specific. It’s a foundational concept on how computers work.