Installing DietPi on your SBC
DietPi is an easy way to install a minimal “Deb-Ian” Debian 11 or 12 OS on to a Single Board Computer. The chief advantage of DietPi is that it offers simple TUI Terminal (text) User Interfaces (menus) to manage the install process of the Debian OS as well as popular software packages. You can spin up a home media server, VPN, backup servers … in minutes.
Many Operating System “OS” distibutions include lots of software packages in their base distribution. In my experience this results in a bloated OS. The DietPi philosophy is a minimal OS install, onto which you install only those applications you need.
A few pitfalls and tips.
DietPi does not succesfully complete the “first run” script until the board is connected to the internet. If the board has an Ethernet connection it runs without problem and all steps can be completed over SSH. If it is a wireless only model you have to run the first boot with a monitor and keyboard and setup wifi. When you reboot, the first-run script will probably successfully run. An alternative is to have a USB to Ethernet adapter.
Wireless only boards should have the Ethernet turned off. A disconnected but active Ethernet port will sometimes hang the boot while it searches for a connection.
Nmap is your friend. It can help you locate the IP number of a new board so that you can connect via SSH. Run Nmap before you power-up the board and run Nmap again after powering-up the board. Look for a new IP on your LAN. For my LAN with a router IP of 10.0.0.1 I run the following.
Nmap 10.0.0.1/24 -p 22
The “/24” means look for all IPs between 1 and 256 and “-p 22” restricts the search to only the port SSH uses.
The default users for DietPi are root and dietpi with passwords of dietpi for both.
Remember to set the timezone for all your SBCs. An incorrect time on one of your boards can mess up backups and other server to server communication.
I prefer to name all my servers with a short meaningful name and setup Avahi so that each server appears on my network with a name.