Changing System Language to English

After a minimal Debian installation with Chinese locale selected, you may encounter garbled characters in error messages and system prompts. Switch the default language to English using root privileges:

export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
dpkg-reconfigure locales

During the locale configuration:

• Select en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 using the spacebar
• Navigate with Tab to reach OK and Cancel buttons
• Press Enter to confirm
• Select en_US.UTF-8 as the default locale when prompted

Restart the system to apply changes:

reboot

Enabling Root SSH Access

By default, Debian minimal installations disable root login via SSH. Enable it by modifying the SSH daemon configuraton:

cat >> /etc/ssh/sshd_config << EOF
PasswordAuthentication yes
PermitRootLogin yes
EOF
systemctl restart sshd

This configuration enables password-based authentication and permits root login. The SSH service must be restarted for changes to take effect.

Configuring Static IP Address

First, identify the network interface name:

ip a

Sample output:

1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: ens33: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:0c:29:05:f4:b8 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.0.104/24 brd 192.168.0.255 scope global dynamic ens33
       valid_lft 5559sec preferred_lft 5559sec

The active network interface in this example is ens33. The interface configuration file uses the following syntax:

auto ${interface_name}
iface ${interface_name} inet static
address ${ip_address}
netmask ${subnet_mask}
gateway ${router_ip}

Edit the network configuration file at /etc/network/interfaces:

# Primary network interface
allow-hotplug ens33
auto ens33
iface ens33 inet static
address 192.168.0.155
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.0.1

The allow-hotplug directive enables automatic interface activation on hotplug events, while auto ensures the enterface starts at boot time. The static method replaces DHCP for manual IP assignment.

Apply the new network configuration:

systemctl restart networking

Or bring the interface down and up:

ifdown ens33 && ifup ens33