Connect to internet with minimal debian linux

16 Jun 2020 | ପ୍ରୋ ନିୟନ ୨୬୭(proneon267)

The other day, I wanted to install Debian on my old machine. But past experiences have taught me, downloading the full iso image will be a wastage of bandwidth & space. So, I went for the net installer image. But here is the twist, I didn’t connect to the internet while installing. And hence, I ended up with a minimal system.

I didn’t have an ethernet cable, so I decided to use USB tethering from my phone. This minimal system hadn’t been configured to connect to use this network interface. So, here’s how I connected to the internet with minimal Debian installation.

List the available network interfaces:

  ip link list

Then plug in your device and re-run the above command. You will see a new interface added to the list. Note the device id. As an example, let the device id be ens0.

Now edit

 /etc/network/interfaces 

Add the following to the file:

iface ens0 inet dhcp

Then as root, run the following:

ifdown ens0
ifup ens0

To check your connection, run ping on google

ping google.com

Now you are connected and ready to install what you want on the minimal Debian installation.