Installing Debian Bookworm on Dell PowerEdge R630

Debian is not a supported operating system on the Dell PowerEdge R630. However it is possible to install it successfully.

Server settings before install

• Make sure the server has boot mode as UEFI instead of BIOS. This is typically the default. Press F2 to get into System Setup to review and confirm.
• You can also review / update UEFI Boot sequence, if needed

Steps to install Debian on PowerEdge.

• Create a bootable USB drive with Rufus
  • At the time of this writing rufus-4.6.exe was available
• Boot via UEFI
• Create the following partitions - only the top 3 are required, the rest depends on your specific needs
  • 1.2 GB of biosgrub
  • 1.2 GB of FAT32 with mount /boot/efi
  • 1.2 GB of ext4 with mount /boot
  • 24 GB of ext4 for each of the following mounts: /, /var, /data, /tmp, etc.
  • 24 GB of swap
  • x.x TB of /home
  • etc.
• When Debian asks if it should “Force UEFI mode” - say Yes
• Complete the install and reboot

If you get an error saying “Windows Boot Manager could not load OS”, etc. then boot via the USB again and go into recovery mode and follow these steps

• Reinstall GRUB making sure this is installed on the correct hard disk
• Force UEFI mode (again)

Hopefully you can now reboot and be able to log into the OS.

I had to temporarily switch to Boot mode instead of UEFI mode to get to log into the system. Then installed efibootmgr and did some clean up. However, efibootmgr will not work while in Boot mode.

• Once you log in, run apt. If you get an error to insert cdrom, update /etc/apt/sources.list by deleting cdrom as a source.
• Install efibootmgr with apt and delete / change old outdated boot entry/order - Ref Use Linux efibootmgr Command to Manage UEFI Boot Menu such as “Windows Boot Manager”

Don't run the install_racadm.sh command for Debian as it will require you to install rpm, etc. This is not required as the required deb packages are included in the downloaded file.

• You may have to install libargtable2-0 as this is required.
• Download and extract the tar file from Dell
• cd in iDRACTools/racadm/UBUNTU20/x86_64 directory
• Run dpkg -i *.deb (as root)
• If wanting to connect to remote systems you also may have to install libssl-dev