I just got an APU1D4 made by PC Engines. I bought it from a German retailer called VARIA System GmbH. They are also located in Chemnitz, so at least I could support the local economy. I purchased a bundle consisting of mainboard, case, power supply and 16GB SSD. The board has 4GB RAM and three network adapters and shall replace my old PC that I use as router to the internet.
As there is no VGA/HDMI output, the first hurdle was organizing a null-modem cable. Of course I could have prepared the SSD on another PC, but I wanted to try PXE. After finding the cable on the ground of a box, deeply buried under other boxes, I could start.
The DHCP server got an entry
host apu1d4 {
hardware ethernet 00:0d:b9:42:a0:e8;
fixed-address apu1d4;
option broadcast-address 10.42.255.255;
option routers 10.42.10.1;
next-server 10.42.10.1;
filename "pxelinux.0";
}
and the TFTP server got a file …/tftp/pxelinux.cfg/01-00-0d-b9-42-a0-e8
default install
label install
menu label ^Install
menu default
kernel debian-installer/amd64/linux
append initrd=debian-installer/amd64/initrd.gz --- vga=off console=ttyS0,115200n8
The files debian-installer/amd64/linux and debian-installer/amd64/initrd.gz are the normal debian installer files obtained from the official Debian servers.
That’s it, the installer starts, spits its output over the serial line and I can install the system. Great! Thanks DebianInstaller team. Why couldn’t everything be always so easy?