How I installed Debian on an Oracle Cloud Instance

A lot of VPS providers don’t provide the option to either select your distro/upload ISO for your distro. On the VPS I have, provided by Oracle Cloud, Debian is not provided as an option. I have hence installed Ubuntu 20.04, but need to install Debian on it.

This is an easier way to do that using iPXE. All you need is the ability to have a console connection/VNC connection to the VPS, and the .efi image of the OS/or the OS is available via netboot.xyz

This has been written with help from the Tip post on LowEndSpirit by username ehab, and this post on LowEndTalk by username djn. Thanks!

Getting the netboot .efi file

netboot.xyz is a great utility for installing an OS from the BIOS, without having to download the ISO file for it every time.

Downloading the .efi file

Download the .efi file from below:

For arm64 processors:

wget https://boot.netboot.xyz/ipxe/netboot.xyz-arm64.efi

For others:

wget https://boot.netboot.xyz/ipxe/netboot.xyz.efi

Copy the .efi file to /boot/efi

sudo mv <.efi file> /boot/efi

Establish a console connection to your VPS.

Create a console connection to your VPS either via VNC/IP-KVM/your provider’s control panel.

~~To-do: Will add a post on creating a console connection to Oracle Cloud instances.~~ Live Now!: Creating a Console Connection to Oracle Cloud Instances

Reboot your instance and keep pressing the Escape Key to get the boot menu.

Reboot the VPS either by sudo reboot now or from the VPS control panel. In the console, get into the BIOS screen (by pressing Esc key repeatedly on Oracle Cloud). You’ll get something similar to this: