I have found that the MyBookLive operating system is very basic, which for most users it is plenty good! But I’m sure most of you are like me, or I’m like you. But you are always looking to enhance stuff you already have. Well I decided to venture down the route of making the MyBookLive do more for me rather than just sit there being a simple NAS. Well it starts with having your environment correct to make that happen.
I built this guide to show you the steps to prepare a virtual machine on your Windows machine.
It helps to know a bit about how Linux operates to get through this.
Installing Debian 8
I downloaded the network install ISO to minimize on the download and installation size.
I installed Debian 8 to a VirtualBox with the following setup.
2 CPU
2GB Ram
20 GB HD (This is the minimum amount that you should use.)
Mount the ISO of Debian 8 as a CD-ROM device
Once you power on the VirtualBox it will boot into the Debian 8 installer.
For speed I just choose the text installer, uncheck Graphical I.
You can accept most of the defaults.
Assign the machine a name, I just used “debian”.
Assign the root password, I suggest making this something super easy like “password”. Create a “standard” user account as well, I made mine “user” with a password just as easy as password, but not the same as the root password.
When it asks what to install, I only install the “Base system” no graphical interface, no print server. This system has only one goal and everything will be done from the terminal.
Once the installation of Debian 8 is completed there are some packages that you will need to install to allow the bootstrapping process to work.
Installation of additional packages
You will need to login as the root user for the following command
root@debian:~# apt-get install sudo git autoconf build-essential gperf bison flex texinfo libtool libncurses5-dev wget gawk libc6-dev python-serial libexpat-dev libtool-bin parted debootstrap binfmt-support qemu qemu-user-static help2man
Add user to SUDO group
Once the install of sudo is completed then you will need to add the regular user that you created during the install to the sudo group
root@debian:~# usermod -aG sudo (username)
If you used my example account from above then the command would be
root@debian:~# usermod -aG sudo user
Logout and login as the “regular” user to test that SUDO works as that user.
Now you can continue following the guides to either install Debian 7 (Wheezy) or Debian 8 (Jessie) – Coming Soon!.