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)?
You’ll waste more time trying to figure out how to do this than it would take to move a monitor and keyboard to the server, do the install, and plug the monitor and keyboard back into your main computer. Once the server is up, you can administer it over the network via ssh.
Definitely agree for a single install. If OP has a bunch of these installs to do, then editing an install USB to configure networking and enable sshd might be worth the effort. Do the install over ssh and hope the machine starts up as desired, but even then, if it doesn’t just magically appear on the network, he’s going to need a monitor to see where the startup failed.
Raspberry Pi’s disk imager will let you pre-configure networking, accounts, and ssh, so you just write the image to an SD card, plug it in, and go. That’s a great solutions for systems usually meant to be headless and removable media. If OP’s client hardware allows, he could plug in the M2 or SATA drive meant to be the server’s startup, install Deb there, and. transfer to the server hardware. That’s definitely more work that just swapping the keyboard & monitor, but it accomplishes OP’s stated goal. (Otherwise, a lot of this thread follows the linux meme of “How do I [X]?” “[X] is dumb, do [Y] instead.”)
Agreed on all counts.
My reply initially had a “if you had a fleet of these things…” addendum, but OP’s post read (to me) as though he was converting commodity hardware into a makeshift home server, so I removed it because it was almost certainly not relevant.
True, it’s just that I’d like to avoid purchasing more useless stuff. I might move in a few months and maybe carry these computers but I definitely won’t be able to take my monitor. Just going to be a waste of money, and I’m trying to be frugal.
I am planning to build a small cheap DIY KVM using PiKVM and cheap Aliexpress parts (Raxda’s Zero 3W or the Banana Pi Zero, not sure if they are supported though) in about $25 which I can probably carry around
