I've just reinstalled an old gaming PC with Debian 10.9 netinst that I want to use as a headless server. I planned to only use the Nvidia graphics card for the installation then disconnect it and use the SSH server only, connecting no display (no display ports available on mother board). I chose to install only basic system utilities and SSH server, no desktop environment. Network was configured successfully with a DHCPv6 lease from my router.
The installation succeeds and I remove the USB installation media (but not the graphics card, so I can check the first boot), but first boot on installed HDD fails to go any further than "/dev/sdax clean, XXXX blocks..." even after waiting over half an hour. Rebooting using GRUB's second option, "Debian recovery" gives me extra info on where it failed to go any further:
...
[...] [TTM] Initializing DMA pool allocator
[...] nouveau 0000:04:00.0: DRM: VRAM: 896 MiB
[...] nouveau 0000:04:00.0: DRM: GART: 1048576 MiB
[...] nouveau 0000:04:00.0: DRM: TMDS table version 2.0
[...] nouveau 0000:04:00.0: DRM: DCB version 4.0
_ (ever blinking underscore character)
I can't open a tty and it seems the keyboard is unresponsive (no numlock change). I'm unfamiliar with the boot process, so I don't know if I have any options to solve this issue without using another operating system.
I've tried turning it off, disconnecting the graphics card, turning it on, waiting then trying to connect to SSH, no connection can be acquired. I'm sure Debian doesn't need nouveau to boot in a headless setup, could I maybe use a live Ubuntu or Arch bootable USB to fix something on the installed disk, or remove nouveau's configuration so even a headless boot could succeed? Or reinstall Debian using advanced mode so I can have extra options and prevent this issue from showing up.
