The machine I’m using for FBX doesn’t like img files or something. I tried burning the fbx img via balena and also via terminal using dd. No errors but the USB stick wouldn’t boot.
Burned Debian to the USB stick and it booted and installed just fine. Then I installed FBX as a package.
Do you think it would be a good idea to remove the desktop now via tasksel or would I break something?
This is likely because it is an AMD/Intel machine with UEFI booting disabled (and legacy BIOS booting enabled). FreedomBox images on AMD/Intel only support UEFI booting and not BIOS booting where as Debian installer supports both modes. You can change this in BIOS/UEFI setup screen by enabling UEFI booting. Then FreedomBox image should work fine.
There is fine mostly. There are some differences as noted here.
It is safe to remove the desktop. It is also safe to keep it and use it (or disable it).
Learn something new every day. It’s a fairly new mini PC so I figured EUFI would be enabled by default. It can be enabled but isn’t. It’s BIOS.
I let debian “use the entire disk” to do the partitions and formatting instead of doing it manually and it did ext4.
I did address the NetworkManager issue from that page and everything’s working fine. First Wizard secret was no biggie.
I could do it again with EUFI, Btrfs and FBX with no desktop. Then if I want, I could install a desktop.
Or I might just leave it as is. It boots a little slow but it’s a server and meant to be on 24/7/365. Once it’s running, it’s fast, including WordPress. One thing I have changed in the bios was to turn on auto-boot after loss of power.
Got a question. If I make a backup in this installation, can I restore from it to a new installation?
That would sure make it easy to enable EUFI and install just FBX from the img and end up with everything in FBX as it currently is via restore of backup.
On Plinth>System>Backups>Upload and restore a backup page I see this;
Upload a backup file downloaded from another FreedomBox to restore its contents. You can choose the apps you wish to restore after uploading a backup file.
Sure sounds like it. Also sounds like I’d want to restore the backup before installing any apps.
Only things I’d need restored are;
Dynamic DNS Client
Let’s Encrypt
WordPress
Date & Time (because why not)
@poorboy, it usually takes three OS installations for me to be satisfied. I think it’s some kind of pathology. Let me gently suggest that it’s okay to boot using BIOS, unless you really want the UEFI experience (which is exactly the same, by the way.)
I think there are some threads on here about backup and restore somewhat recently.
If you installed the GUI from Debian instead of FreedomBox you’d remove that with apt. If you used the installer you probably selected task-desktop. apt remove task-desktop would probably get all of that. apt purge task-desktopif you want to be more thorough. I’d probably use remove and be done with it. Anything with a dependency on Wayland or X would get removed by that operation.
Yes. Backup/restore functionality is designed with use case in mind.
If you restore an app that is already installed, then existing data for the app is lost. So, restoring from backup is the best way to setup (this installs and configures the apps as well).
Sounds like the restore process is working well overall, with only the Let’s Encrypt issue needing attention.