Debian-Based Server Setup

Debian 12 with Desktop

Run update and upgrade distro first. Install NTP package is there are errors with that. Reboot

Setup powertop and powersaving features

sudo apt install powertop
powertop --auto-tune

Powersave governor and at reboot. Remember to run the command again

@reboot echo "powersave" | tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor >/dev/null 2>&1

Ensure these packages are installedi

powertop htop iotop fio curl gnupg wget ntfs-3g neofetch ca-certificates lsb-release hdparm hd-idle openssh-server

HDD

lsblk and blkid to get the ntfs hard drive /dev name and the /dev/by-uuid/...

Edit the fstab to mount the drive, same entry for nvme drive

UUID=CC34294F34293E38 /mnt/data ntfs-3g 0 0

If the mounted device is HDD array, need to spindown disk with hdparm

hdparm -B 120 /dev/sdb # set the APM level
hdparm -S 241 /dev/sdb

For the -S spindown, 0-240 is multiple of 5s, 241-255 is multiple of 30 min. The above command set spindown every 30min.

If hdparm does not work, hd-idle can be used. Edit the file in /etc/defaults/hd-idle

-i 60 -a disk/by-uuid/xxx -l /var/log/hd-idle.log

Sudo without password, go to visudo and add the lines to the bottom, replace $USER with the actual username.

$USER ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

Edit shortcuts in bashrc

source .bashrc

OpenSSH with Keys

Generate the key using the terminal

ssh-keygen

give a location to put the key pair
this generate a public (.pub) and private key pair

ssh-copy-id -i key.pub username@server

key.pub is the public key that was generated

The key is ready to use for authorization.

Generate keys using PuTTY software

Copy the red part and use nano to add it in the server ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
Make sure permissions are correct

mkdir -p ~/.ssh
chmod 700 ~/.ssh
chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
nano ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Save private key as ppk file on the root ssh folder.
If the client with private key is Linux machine, need to change the permission of the private key.
```
chmod 600 private.key
```
Convert the private key Conversion > Export OpenSSH Keys and save the file to a folder OpenSSH Keys

Setting Up SMB

Refer to Samba(SMB) Setup to setup SMB server.

Desktop Environment Setup

Firefox

The location of firefox profile is at /home/$USER/.mozilla/firefox/xxxxx.default

Make a tarball and copy it and extract it in destination.

In the profile folder, look for compatibility.ini, go to a random profile in the dest machine and copy the compatibility.ini settings to the one that is copied over. This ensure compatibility so that the new profile works without warning.

Check the profile.ini with the name and the location of the new profile folder, firefox should be the same as before.

[Profile0]
Name=karis
IsRelative=1
Path=ims58kbd.default-esr-1

Themes

To backup/restore settings of cinnamon

Icons

The icons are located at these locations.

/usr/share/icons
~/.icons

Scripts

Copy the scripts and put it into ~/script for organization and copy the old crontab for executing these scripts.

Debian-Based Server Setup

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