[Durham] Debian on a 2011 macmini

[Richard Mortimer]

For a number of years I had a Mac Mini in co-lo with Mythic Beasts. They
still offer that service and have some useful configuration information
on their site.

https://www.mythic-beasts.com/support/servers/colo/macmini
https://www.mythic-beasts.com/sales/colo/macmini

>From what I remember it was just a standard Debian install that they
used. Indeed I'm pretty sure it was a fairly bog standard kernel because
I compiled my own to run IPv6 back in the days before they had gone big
into IPv6. At the time they had their own kernel package but I do have a
feeling that everything was eventually pushed into the mainline kernel.
Obviously the Debian pages you linked reflect that too but are a little
light on detail.

I never had a need to install the machine from scratch so I don't know
the procedure with booting the thing. Mythic Beasts provided a net boot
environment that got you far enough to be able to ssh in and tweak the
installed OS if things went astray.

Overall the machine served me well as my main web/mail server from 2009
to 2017.

Richard


On 14/08/2019 16:45, Dougie Nisbet via Durham wrote:
> Toying with the idea of wiping OSX and installing Debian instead.
> Mid-2011 Macmini with external 'superdrive' (CD drive) and 2TB Bufallo.
> 8GB memory (I upgraded it years ago).
> 
> I've had a browse of https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Apple
> but couldn't work out where to start.
> 
> I've no real interest in running OSX. Is Debian doable? What boot image
> do I need?
> 
> Dougie
>