How to install sarge with the new debian-installer -------------------------------------------------- This documents describes how to perform an installation with the new debian-installer, which will be released together with the upcoming Debian release, codename: sarge. For the most current version of this document or more information on the debian-installer project: http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer Last change to this document: December 22nd, 2003 1. Preliminaries Debian-installer images are currently only available for the i386, powerpc, alpha, and ia64 architectures. Ports to other architectures are of course welcome. Please see section 6 if you want to help developing. The debian-installer is still in a beta state. If you encounter bugs during your install, please refer to section 5 on how to report them. If you have questions which cannot be answered by this document, please direct them to the debian-boot mailing list (debian-boot@lists.debian.org) or ask on irc (#debian-boot on the freenode network). Recently the debian-installer has switched to ask only the important questions and configure the rest automatically. This also means that you won't get to see the main menu anymore, except when something goes wrong. If you want to restore the old configuration with more questions asked, set DEBCONF_PRIORITY=medium at the boot prompt. If you do so, refer to section 3.1. for installing rather than section 3. 2. Getting images The debian-cd team provides builds of CD images for debian-installer here: http://people.debian.org/~manty/testing/ The other kinds of images, including floppy images are in the Debian archive, in the main/installer- directories. For example: ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/unstable/main/installer-i386/current/images/ Daily builds of all non-ISO debian-installer images, including floppy images and initrd's are available -- for i386: http://people.debian.org/~sjogren/d-i/images/daily/ for powerpc: http://people.debian.org/~tsauter/d-i/images-powerpc/daily/ (cdrom and netboot only) The subsections below will give the details about which images you should get for each possible means of installation. 2.1 CDROM There are two different netinst images at the location above which can be used to install sarge with the debian-installer. These images are intended to boot from CD and install additional packages over a network, hence the name 'netinst'. The difference between the two images is, that on the full netinst image the base packages are included, whereas you have to download these from the web if you are using the business card image. Download whichever type you prefer and burn it to a CD. 2.1.1 SCSI CD drives If you have a SCSI CD drive, then you will also currently need one driver floppy to let the installer see your CD drive. See section 2.2 for information about floppys, and download the scsi_drivers floppy image and write it to disk. You will be given an opportunity to load drivers from the floppy after the installer fails to see your SCSI CD drive, and after loading the floppy, the installer will see your CD ROM. 2.2 The dreaded floppies If you can't boot from CD, you can download floppy images to install Debian. You need the bootfloppy-image.img, the floppy-image.img and possibly one of the driver disks. - net_drivers To do an install over the network with a few common ethernet cards, you do not need this driver floppy. If you have a less common ethernet card, or pcmcia, you will need it. - cd_drivers If you have a cdrom, but cannot boot from it, you can boot from floppies, and use this driver disk to complete the install using the cdrom. Floppy disks are one of the least reliable media around, so be prepared for lots of bad disks. Each .img file you downloaded goes on a single floppy; you can use the dd command to write it to /dev/fd0 or some other means. It's a good idea to them use cmp to compare what ended up on the unreliable floppy disk with the image. If it fails throw that floppy away and try again. Since you'll have more than one floppy, it's a good idea to label them. The boot floppy is the one with bootfloppy-image on it. This floppy, when booted, will prompt you to insert a second floppy -- use the one with floppy-image on it. 2.3 USB memory stick It's also possible to install from removable USB storage devices. For example a USB keychain can make a handy Debian install media the you can take with you anywhere. The easiest way to prepare your USB memory stick is to download hd-media-image.img.gz, and use gunzip to extract the 128 MB image from that file. Write this image directly to your memory stick, which must be at least 128 mb in size. Of course this will destroy anything already on the memory stick. Then mount the memory stick, which will now have a FAT filesystem on it. Next, download a Debian netinst CD image, and copy that file to the memory stick; any filename is ok as long as it ends in ".iso". Alternatively, if you're using linux and familiar with loopback mounting, it can be quicker to loop mount the disk image, copy the iso into it, and only then write the complete image to the memory stick. There are other, more flexible ways to set up a memory stick to use the Debian installer, and it's possible to get it to work with smaller memory sticks. This web page has more complete directions for using debian-installer and a bootable USB stick: http://d-i.pascal.at/ 2.3.1 Booting directly from USB storage Some BIOSes can boot USB storage directly, and some cannot. You may need to configure your BIOS to boot from a "removable drive" or even a "USB-ZIP" to get it to boot from the USB device. The web site above has more information and some helpful hints about booting. 2.3.2 Using USB storage and a boot floppy The debian-installer can be booted off a single floppy, which will be able to access your USB memory stick. To boot the installer this way, you will need to put the bootfloppy-image.img on a floppy (see section 2.2). Now boot from the floppy with the bootfloppy-image on it. It should detect your USB device and proceed with booting from it. 2.4 Booting from Network It's also possible to boot debian-installer completely from the net. The various methods to netboot depend on your architecture and netboot setup. They are not explaind here. Joe Nahmias sent an explanation on how to do PXE netbooting on debian-testing. You will find it at: http://lists.debian.org/debian-testing/2003/debian-testing-200311/msg00098.html The "netboot-initrd.gz" is needed to netboot debian-installer. It contains only essential d-i modules to get the network up and running, everything else (d-i components and base packages) will be retrieved from network. If you don't have a netboot setup, you can also make a bootable CD with this image and have a minimal netinst CD. 3. Installation From here on, I assume you have downloaded and burnt the 'netinst' CD. Put it into your CD-drive and make your system boot from CD. You will be greeted by a welcome screen. Hit ENTER to boot. After a while you will be asked to select your language. This will affect translation of debian-installer (if already available for your language) as well as the choice of a keyboard layout. Select your language and press ENTER to continue. Sit back while debian-installer detects some of your hardware, and loads additional installer modules from the cd. Next the installer will try to detect your network hardware and set up networking by DHCP. If you are not on a network or do not have DHCP, you will see an error message. You do not need a network to continue the install so this can be easily worked around. Select continue and watch the main menu which will appear everytime if something went wrong, so you have more control over the situation. Proceed to "Partition a hard drive". Now it is time to partition your harddisks. Select the disk you want to partition and a partitioning program suitable for your architecture will be started. Partition the harddisk to your needs and quit the program. Select "Finish" to proceed. On the next screen you have to configure and mount your partitions. Select the partitions you want to use in the system you wish to install and select a filesystem and a mount point for them. Remember to assign at least one partition for swap space and to mount a partition on "/". Please note the debian-installer will do no changes to your harddisks until you select "Finish". Do this when you are sure that you have found a suitable setup for your partitions and answer the next question with "Yes". Now debian-installer starts to install the base system which can take a while. That is followed by installing a kernel. The last step is to install a boot loader. You will be prompted for the bootblock, where LILO should be installed. It defaults to the boot record of the first harddrive which is generally a good choice. Debian-installer will now tell you that the installation has finished. Remove the cdrom from your drive and hit ENTER to reboot your machine. Make sure it boots from harddisk, cross your fingers and wait until base-config is started. Stepping through base-config is not within the scope of this document as it is not part of debian-installer. 3.1. Installation with DEBCONF_PRIORITY=medium From here on, I assume you have downloaded and burnt the 'netinst' CD. Put it into your CD-drive and make your system boot from CD. You will be greeted by a welcome screen. Type "linux DEBCONF_PRIORITY=medium" and hit ENTER to boot. After a while you will be presented with the main-menu of the debian-installer. Some general remarks: The main-menu is not static. New entries are added when new installer modules are loaded. However main-menu tries to resolve the next best choice and presents that as default selection. If that selection does not suit your needs just select another entry. If you select an entry that requires the configuration of an entry you did not yet choose, the main-menu will try to resolve these dependencies automatically. This can be used to automate the install process, by selecting always the last visible step. When main-menu first is shown, the default will be "Choose language". Hit return and choose your language from the list that now is presented. You will be taken back to main-menu and the next item will be the default, which is "Detect a keyboard and select layout". Select that entry and observe that the installer tries to set a reasonable default based upon your language selection. Select your preferred keymap and continue. The next step is "Detect CDROM devices and mount the CD". This step does not require user interaction, everything happens automatically. Now we are able to load the rest of the installer. Select the corresponding entry "Load installer components". Since the modules we want to access are on the CD, select "cdrom-retriever". The floppy-retriever can be used to load additional modules from a floppy, e.g. if you have exotic hardware. See section 2.1.1 if you have a SCSI CDROM. You are presented a long list with optional components to install. We only want to install the standard components, which are selected automatically, so just hit "Continue". Wait and watch until all components have been loaded. Main-menu appears again, but with the additional modules there are new entries. The next default step would be to configure a network. We are breaking out of the default route, because we do not need networking since the base debs are on the CD. Select "Detect hardware". This step again involves no user interaction. Now it is time to partition your disk. There are basically two ways to do that. The first one is to use cfdisk, which will be started upon selecting the menu entry "Partition a harddrive". Be sure to create at least two partitions, one for swap and one for the root filesystem. The other possibility is to use the autopartitioner. Select "Automatically partition harddrives" which tries to determine a sane partitioning. WARNING: Use this option ONLY if you have no or unimportant data on your harddrives. After finishing partitioning, select the entry "Configure and mount partitions". Since autopartkit creates filesystems and mounts them automatically you can skip this step if you used autopartkit to partition your harddrive. Configuring the partitions is pretty straightforward. You are presented with a list with all partitions, their sizes and a filesystem if one was detected on that partition. Selecting a partition lets you choose which filesystem to create on that partition. If you select a non-swap filesystem, you are also asked for a mount point. Configure the partitions to your need, and remember to specify a partition with mount point "/". When you've made your choices, select "Finish" and confirm that the filesystems should be created as requested. Now we are ready to install the base system. Select the corresponding entry ("Install the base system") and lean back. The packages are retrieved from the CD and installed in the /target area. Next step will be to install the kernel ("Install the kernel"). You will presented a list of all available kernel images on the CD. Select the most suitable for your system and wait until the installation has finished. Now we are almost done. Select "Install LILO on a hard disk" or "Install GRUB on a hard disk" to make your harddisk bootable. You will be asked where LILO/GRUB shall install the bootblock. A good idea is your first harddrive in your system which should be in fact the default selection. If that last step has completed successfully select "Finish the installation and reboot", eject your CD and wait until your computer restarts. Make sure it boots from harddisk, cross your fingers and wait until base-config is started. Stepping through base-config is not within the scope of this document as it is not part of debian-installer. 4. Installation Report If you successfully managed an installation with debian-installer, please take time to provide us with a report. There is a template named "install-report.template" in the /root directory of a freshly installed system. Please fill it out and file it as a bug against the package "installation-reports". See section 5 on how to file bugs. 5. Reporting bugs If you did not reach base-config or ran into other trouble, you probably found a bug in debian-installer. To improve the installer it is necessary that we know about them, so please take your time and report them. First, look here to see if your bug has already been reported: http://bugs.qa.debian.org/cgi-bin/debian-installer.cgi?full=yes The page is sorted by packages which represent the individual subsystems of debian-installer. File your bug against the respective subsystem or, if you do not know which it is, against the package "install". Look here for an explanation of how to file bugs: http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting 6. Get involved The Debian-Installer Team always welcomes people who would like to work on the installer. We have plenty of work to do: fixing bugs, improve usability, create new modules and of course extensive testing. If you are interested to help, check out this page: http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/