Lenovo ThinkStation P330 Debian Linux Setup Guide [en, ar, bg, cs, da, de, el, es, es, fi, fr, he, hr, hu, it, ja, ko, nb, nl, pl, pt, pt, ro, ru, sh, sk, sl, sr, sv, th, tr, uk, zc, zh]

Debian Linux Setup Guide

For ThinkStation P330

Guidelines for Debian 9.5 and later

Section 1 - BIOS Setup and Pre-Installation Steps

The first step before installing Linux is to make sure BIOS is setup correctly

• For UEFI/GPT installations (recommended):

• Boot into BIOS by pressing the F1 function key at the “Lenovo” splash screen

• Tab over to the Exit menu tab, and set OS Optimized Defaults to Enabled

• Select Yes at the confirmation screen indicated below

• Tab over to the Security menu tab, select Secure Boot, and set the option to

“Disabled”

• Select F10 to “Save and Exit” BIOS.

• Insert the Debian installation media (either through USB or CD/DVD)

• Power on the system and press the F12 function key whenever the following

Lenovo splash screen appears

• Select the Linux bootable installation media UEFI option from the F12 boot menu

• For Legacy/MBR installations (not recommended):

• Boot into BIOS by pressing the F1 function key at the “Lenovo” splash screen

• Tab over to the Exit menu tab, and set OS Optimized Defaults to “Disabled”

• Select Yes at the confirmation screen indicated below

• Select F10 to “Save and Exit” BIOS

• Insert the Debian installation media (either through USB or CD/DVD)

• Power on the system and press the F12 function key whenever the following

Lenovo splash screen appears

• Select the Linux bootable installation media Legacy option from the F12 boot
menu

Section 2 – Installing Debian Linux 9.5

Please refer to the following instructions and screenshots on how to install Debian 9.5 on the
ThinkStation P330 workstations

• Select Graphical Install from the Debian GNU/Linux UEFI Installer menu

• Select a language

• Select your location

• Configure the keyboard

• Detect network hardware: Select no ethernet card and press continue

• A similar window will pop up after the above step, ignore it and move forward by pressing

continue

• Configure the network by entering a hostname

• Set up a root password

• Set up a user account and password

• Set up a username

• Set up a password for the username created above

• Configure the clock according to your time-zone

• Select disks partition

▪ Guided – use entire disk option has been selected in this document
▪ Selection can be made according to the user’s need and/or convenience

• Select disk to partition

• Choose how to partition the disk

• Select Finish partitioning and write changes to disk and press continue to confirm

partitions

• Select Yes to confirm partitions again

• Configure the package manager: Select Yes to use a network mirror

• Configure the package manager: Select your country for Debian archive mirror

• Configure the package manager: Select a Debian archive mirror

▪ ftp.us.debian.org is used in this document

• Configure the package manager: Enter a HTTP proxy or leave blank if not needed

▪ Note: This option is left blank in this document

• Let the installer start the base installation

• Configure the package manager: Select No to scan another CD or DVD

• Popularity contest: Select Yes/No according to the user’s choice

▪ No has been selected in this document
▪ This choice will not affect the performance of your operating system

• Select software to install

• Let the installer start the installation

• Press continue to reboot the system

• At the boot grub menu, select *Debian GNU/Linux and press “e” to edit the boot

parameters

• Add nomodeset at the end of the boot parameter line, and press F10 to boot

• Log in to the system by using your credentials

• Debian desktop screen

• Remove the installation media

Section 3 – Updating the Source List to use the Debian Repositories

Use the debian repositories to download quick driver and/or software package releases
Step 1:

• Log in as root: su

• Edit the following file ‘/etc/apt/sources.list’ and add the following lines:

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian stretch main
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian stretch main
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian stretch-updates main
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian stretch-updates main
deb http://security.debian.org/ stretch/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ stretch/updates main

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian stretch main contrib non-free
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian stretch main contrib non-free
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian stretch-updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian stretch-updates main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ stretch/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ stretch/updates main contrib non-free

• Uncomment the deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 9.2.0 _Stretch_ - Official amd64 DVD

Binary-1 20171007-12:11]/ stretch main line from /etc/apt/source.list

Step 2:

• Run the following command: ‘apt-get update’

Step 3:

o Install gcc: apt-get install gcc
o Install make: apt-get install make
o Install linux-headers: apt-get install linux-headers*

• Log in as root: su

• Installing gcc

• Installing make

• Installing linux headers

o Run command: apt-get install linux-headers* to install linux headers
o Run command: make install to make the file executable

• Use the make install command to compile files in the above package

Section 4 – Installing the Ethernet Driver

▪ Note: There won’t be an internet connection as we have not selected any Ethernet

card driver during the installation. Let us first install an appropriate driver for the
same

▪ In this document a driver package e1000e- 3.4.2.1 is copied and unzipped on the

system using a USB

▪ Mentioned below is a direct link to the Ethernet driver used here:

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/15817/Intel-Network-Adapter-Driver-for-PCIe-Intel­Gigabit-Ethernet-Network-Connections-Under-Linux-

• Locate the Ethernet card package on your system using terminal

• Install linux headers: cd into the src directory and install linux-headers using the following

steps

• Execute following steps to load modules for enabling internet from the above Ethernet
package

• Install net-tools package to have the ifconfig utility

• Check your IP address using ifconfig command

Section 5 – Installing the Nvidia Graphics Driver

In order to get optimal performance out of the Nvidia GPU, it is a good idea to install the Nvidia
graphics driver

To install the Nvidia driver from Debian repository, use command: apt-get install nvidia-driver
To install the latest Nvidia driver (manually), follow the steps below:

• Download Nvidia driver

o At last, download Nvidia driver for your graphic card from the below link-

https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-in

o Fill in the details like Product Type, Product Series, Product, Operating System, and

Language as per the graphic card in use and search an appropriate driver

o After the download is complete, open the terminal and log in as root: su, and locate

the Nvidia driver

o Execute the driver using: sh NVIDIA–Linux–x86_64–390.87.run

o Accept the Nvidia driver license

o Ignore the warning and press OK to continue

o Select No

o Select Yes to update your X configuration file

o Driver installation is now complete

• Reboot and log in to the system, open the terminal window and ensure if the Nvidia driver

is running properly by using nvidia-smi command