Debian 13 trixie

Installing using a bootable USB stick based on the Install DVD the easiest way is to erase the entire drive.

This is done by choosing: Guided - use entire disk and setup encrypted LVM.

There is no option to do encrypted drive without LVM, but it might be because of how Debian boots with Grub.

To make sure everything is decrypted, it is easiest to only have 1 physical volumes. And that is achieved by having everything in an encrypted LVM:

• Loads Grub from EFI partition
• Grub loads from /boot partition.
• The main encrypted LUKS partition is unlocked, which is the LVM Physical volume.
• Root is mounted from a Logical volume in the Volume group.
• And so is the swap volume.

If installing from Live CD the installer complains that the /boot partition should also be encrypted, but the Install DVD doesn’t seem to care about that.

Installing Debian on disk that cannot be entirely erased

If for some reason the entire disk cannot be erased, we have to build the entire setup of partitions, LUKS, LVM pvs, LVM vgs and LVM lvs manually.

The most common reason is that the EFI partition needs to be preserved.

Fortunately that is actually possible in the installer on the Install DVD, it just requires a few steps in a very particular order.

1. EFI partition

• If there are other OS’es you want to keep, DO NOT TOUCH the EFI partition.
• Just make sure it is set to Use as: EFI System Partition.
• Otherwise create a 1 GB EFI System Partition at the beginning of the area.

2. /boot partition

• Create a 1 GB partition at the beginning of the free space.
• Ensure that: Use as: Ext4 journaling file system.
• Choose Mount point: /boot.
• Choose Done setting up the partition.

4. encrypted partition

• Create a partition using the rest of the free space, or as much as you feel like.
• Change to Use as: physical volume for encryption.
• Switch Erase data: no otherwise the setup will take forever erasing all data.
• Done setting up the partition.

5. encrypted volume

Yes an encrypted partition is not enough.

• Go to Configure encrypted volumes.
• Choose Yes to write changes to disks.
• Choose Create encrypted volumes.
• Chose the encrypted partition from above. IMPORTANT to choose the right one.
• Choose Continue.
• Choose Finish.
• It will now prompt for the password.

6. Setup LVM

• Go to Configure the Logical Volume Manager.
• It is easier to have root and swap partition in on encrypted volume when booting. So we use LVM to achieve that.
• Choose Yes to write changes to disks, even though there shouldn’t be any.
• Choose Create volume group.
• Give it a name. Standard is <hostname>-vg.
• Select the encrypted device for this volume group.
• Typically named /dev/mapper/<some device name>_crypt.
• Choose Continue.
• Now choose Create logical volume for the root filesystem. . Chose the Volume group from above.
  • Give it a name. Standard is <hostname>-<volume group name>-root.
  • Set the size.
    • It should be sized to whatever the free space is, minus what you intend to use for swap.
• Choose Create logical volume for swap. Same as above, but use the rest of the free space.
• Choose Finish.

7. / (root) volume

Back in the partitioner the now logical volumes should show up.

• Find the Logical volume for root.
• Change to Use as: Ext4 journaling file system.
• And Mount point: / (root).
• Done setting up the partition.

8. swap volume

• Find the Logical volume for swap.
• Change to Use as: swap area.
• Done setting up the partition.

9. All done

There should now be volumes for / (root), /boot and swap.

So cross your fingers and choose:

• Finish partitioning and write changes to disk.

A summary is displayed. Check it and choose Yes to write changes to disk and continue.

The installer will complain (loudly) and not let you continue if anything is missing.

Now the install should continue as normal. And Grub should be configure to boot and prompt for the encryption password for the disk.

Steam

The best option is to install Steam with deb packages. Don’t ask why, Wendel says so!

Debian Wiki on Steam.

First of, Steam is 32 bit, so we need som 32 bit libraries and things…

Enable i386 packages (32 bit):

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt-get update

Install the Steam installer. Yes it sounds weird, but the deb package contains the installer…

sudo apt-get install steam-installer

If on Nvidia some more nvidia libs are needed. (Assuming you have already installed the driver, see below).

sudo apt-get install nvidia-driver-libs:i386

Recommended (not sure if needed):

sudo apt-get install vulkan-tools:i386

The documentation says to install:

sudo apt-get install mesa-vulkan-drivers libglx-mesa0:i386 mesa-vulkan-drivers:i386 libgl1-mesa-dri:i386

But when I installed steam-installer and included recommended packages, these were already installed.

A reboot (Just in case. Windows habits die hard.) and run the steam-installer.

Nvidia drivers

Are you 100% sure you want to do this? How about buying an AMD card instead?

Ok… you are warned. Misery and crying might come next!

So main article is here, but there are things I don’t agree with.

First of the article says to install linux-headers-$(uname -r) which I get. This gets around architectures, but it also ONLY installs headers for the current version of the kernel. Next kernel upgrade the Nvidia drivers will fail to compile, and be missing on the following reboot. (Ask me how I know!?).

So I recommend:

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-amd64

Huh, they changed the document. Now it says:

apt install linux-headers-$(dpkg --print-architecture)

Which translates to linux-headers-amd64 so all is good!

Which is a meta-package that ensures you get linux-headers for new kernels when upgrading. Obviously adjust ... -amd64 to whatever architecture you run.

Then install the drivers:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-kernel-dkms nvidia-driver firmware-misc-nonfree

The article talks about an open flavour, but if your aim is to game a bit you want the proprietary one.

This was all I had to do.