possiblylinux127 , 7 months ago

The simplest solution would be to install Debian. The thing to note is that the Debian installer is designed to be multipurpose so it will default to installing a GUI.

Assuming you can boot off of a live USB with the Debian installer, you can follow the steps until you get to tasksel software selection from there uncheck gnome and check system utilities and ssh server. Also Debian defaults to separate root and user accounts. I would recommend disabling root (see steps below)

On a different machine, ssh into the server (I’m using debian.local but you should replace that with a hostname or IP)

<span style="color:#323232;">ssh [email protected]
</span>

Once you have access run the following commands to switch to root.

<span style="color:#323232;">su - 
</span>

Install sudo and give yourself access

<span style="color:#323232;">sudo apt update
</span><span style="color:#323232;">sudo apt install sudo
</span><span style="color:#323232;">sudo usermod -aG sudo username 
</span>

Now type exit twice to exit the shell entirely. Once that’s done log back in.

<span style="color:#323232;">ssh [email protected]
</span>

Lock root

<span style="color:#323232;">sudo passwd -l root
</span>

Now you have a system to set things up. I would start by enabling automatic updates and installing docker compose. (Docker compose allows you to deploy software very quickly in co trainers via a yaml spec)

<span style="color:#323232;">#enable automatic updates
</span><span style="color:#323232;">sudo apt install unattended-upgrades
</span><span style="color:#323232;">sudo dpkg-reconfigure unattended-upgrades
</span><span style="color:#323232;">sudo systemctl start unattended-upgrades #probably not needed
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">#install updates and install docker and docker-compose
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">sudo apt update
</span><span style="color:#323232;">sudo apt upgrade 
</span><span style="color:#323232;">sudo apt install docker.io docker-compose
</span><span style="color:#323232;">sudo systemctl start docker
</span><span style="color:#323232;">sudo usermod -aG docker username
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span>

You will need to log out and then back in to apply the docker permission.

I hope that gets you started.