Hardware#

OSM is Debian 13 underneath. Whatever Debian 13's kernel drives, OSM drives. The image includes Debian's firmware for common network cards and Wi-Fi adapters and, on PCs, the processors' microcode. Other firmware from Debian's non-free-firmware section, for graphics among others, is installed from Settings > System Info > Hardware once the server has a network. This page covers what a server needs, how to tell whether a computer works, what has been checked so far, and how to choose parts and set up the firmware.

What a server needs#

• Processor: 64-bit x86 (amd64), or arm64 with UEFI firmware.
• Firmware: UEFI, with or without Secure Boot (OSM starts through Debian's signed shim, GRUB and kernel), or a legacy BIOS on amd64.
• Memory: 4 GB or more. Container apps want 8 GB; virtual machines want 16 GB or more.
• Disks: one or more. OSM puts itself on every disk you choose (12 to 24 GB each), on some of them only, or on a separate system disk. Data volumes use the rest.
• USB stick: 4 GB or more, for the installation (or a DVD and a DVD drive, with the installer ISO).
• Network: a wired network card with a driver in Debian's kernel. Wi-Fi works for setting up and as a link, but a server is better on a cable.
• Optional: a TPM 2.0, which unlocks an encrypted system by itself; a UPS that speaks USB HID, which shuts the server down cleanly; a BMC, which OSM sees through IPMI.

Does this computer work? The hardware report#

Start the computer from the OSM stick and open its page. The Hardware card says, before anything is installed, which devices have no driver and which firmware is missing. Save a hardware report there writes everything OSM sees of the computer into one file: the model, firmware, processor, memory (and whether it is ECC), TPM, IOMMU, Secure Boot, every PCI and USB device with its driver, the network cards, the disks with their SMART health, the sensors and the power controls. An installed server saves the same report from Settings > System Info > Hardware.

The report holds nothing that identifies a person or a place: no serial numbers, MAC addresses, IP addresses, or names of the server or its accounts. It is readable text, with the same data in a machine-readable form at its end. Attach it when you ask for help or report a problem with a computer. To have a computer added to the list below, send its report, with what works and what does not, in an issue at github.com/oliver503303-hub/Osm/issues.

What has been checked#

So far, virtual machines. Every release is checked on them, feature by feature:

Not checked yet, even in a VM: NVMe disks, Intel e1000 and Realtek network cards, the older i440fx machine.

The OSM download has virtual disks for Proxmox VE (qcow2), VirtualBox (vdi), VMware (vmdk) and Hyper-V Generation 2 (vhdx). Of these platforms, only QEMU/KVM (which Proxmox VE uses) has been tested.

Real computers: none confirmed yet. OSM is new. Each computer will be listed here once a hardware report confirms it: the computer or board, its processor, the OSM version, its firmware and Secure Boot, what works and what does not.

Choosing parts for a server#

These are general points, true of Debian 13's kernel. They are not results of OSM's own tests.

• Processor and board. A low-power x86 platform (the recent Intel N-series, a Ryzen embedded or mobile chip) idles at a few watts and runs containers and light virtual machines. For virtual machines, check that the processor offers VT-x or AMD-V (the report says so), and for passing a device to a VM, that the board has an IOMMU (VT-d or AMD-Vi) with sensible groups (the report lists them). ECC memory needs a processor and a board that support it. The report says whether the memory runs with ECC.
• Network. Intel's i210/i211 (igb) and i225/i226 (igc) cards, and Realtek's RTL8111/8168 and RTL8125 (r8169, with firmware from firmware-realtek, which the image includes) all have drivers in Debian's kernel. For 10 GbE, Intel X540/X550/X710 and Mellanox ConnectX-3/4 are common choices with in-kernel drivers.
• Disks. For RAID, prefer CMR hard disks to SMR ones: rebuilding an array onto an SMR disk can take days. NVMe or SATA SSDs suit apps, virtual machines and the system. Self-healing volumes (dm-integrity, on RAID 1, 5, 6 and 10) write at about half the speed, and keep about 1 % of each disk for their checksums.
• More SATA ports. PCIe SATA cards with the ASMedia ASM1166 or JMicron JMB585 use the kernel's standard ahci driver. SAS HBAs such as Broadcom/LSI 9207 or 9300 cards in IT mode (mpt3sas) give each disk to the system as is, which RAID and ZFS need. Avoid hardware RAID cards: OSM wants the disks themselves.
• A UPS. Most UPSs with a USB port speak USB HID (usbhid-ups in NUT), and OSM sets that up in Settings > Power and Hardware > UPS.
• A TPM 2.0. Most boards made since 2017 have one in the processor's firmware (Intel PTT, AMD fTPM), often turned off in the firmware's setup. OSM uses it to unlock an encrypted system without a passphrase.
• Power. An efficient power supply sized for the server, not for a gaming PC, saves more watts at idle than anything else. OSM's power profiles (Settings > Power and Hardware) and spinning disks down do the rest. The Server Status widget and Settings > Power and Hardware show the watts where the processor or a UPS measures them.

Building one: the firmware's settings#

A computer built or bought for OSM wants a few settings in its firmware (the setup screen behind Del, F2 or Esc at power-on) before the stick is put in. None of them is required to install; each one is for something OSM does.

Then write the stick and start from it (Installation guide), save a hardware report from the stick's page before installing, and install.

Arm computers#

OSM is also made for arm64. It starts by UEFI: on EDK2 firmware, or on U-Boot's UEFI. The same arm64 stick image is for every arm64 computer whose firmware speaks UEFI. It has been tested in QEMU (the virt board with EDK2's firmware: the stick, an installation, the server started from its disk), not yet on a real board.

Virtual Machines is made for x86-64 servers: its virtual machines are PCs (x86-64), which an Arm processor cannot run with KVM. It has not been tried on an Arm computer.

What Debian 13's own kernel (6.12, linux-image-arm64, looked into on 2 October 2026) has for the boards people buy for a home server:

None of these boards has been tried yet: QEMU emulates neither an RK3588 nor a Pi 5. The release notes say where that stands.