How to install sarge with the new debian-installer
--------------------------------------------------
This document 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 update: $Date: 2004-07-28 21:40:07 +0000 (Wed, 28 Jul 2004) $
1. Preliminaries
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,
type "expert" at the boot prompt. If you do so, refer to section
3.1. for installing rather than section 3.
This HOWTO is mainly targeted at users of the i386 architecture, although
the instructions are similar for all architectures. For more detailed
information, see the Debian Sarge Installation Manual:
http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/
2. Getting images
The debian-cd team provides builds of CD images for debian-installer here:
http://cdimage.debian.org/pub/cdimage-testing/daily/
The other kinds of images, including floppy images are in the Debian
archive, in the main/installer-<arch> 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 a complete list with links, see
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ports-status
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 and a relatively uncommon SCSI controller, then
you may also need one driver floppy to let the installer see your CD drive.
However, this is only the case with CD images that use syslinux as their
bootloader, rather than the normal ones, which use isolinux.
See section 2.2 for information about floppys, and download the cd-drivers
floppy image and write it to disk. You will be given an opportunity to load
drivers from the floppy if 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 floppy/boot.img, the floppy/root.img and possibly
one of the driver disks.
- floppy/net-drivers.img
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.
- floppy/cd-drivers.img
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 boot.img on it. This floppy, when
booted, will prompt you to insert a second floppy -- use the one with
root.img 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 that you
can take with you anywhere.
The easiest way to prepare your USB memory stick is to download
hd-media/boot.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 floppy/boot.img on a floppy (see section 2.2).
Now boot from the floppy. 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.
The files in netboot/ can be used to netboot debian-installer.
On i386, the easiest thing to set up is probably PXE netbooting. Untar the
file netboot/pxeboot.tar.gz into /var/lib/tftpboot or wherever is
appropriate for your tftp server. Set up your DHCP server to pass filename
"/pxelinux.0" to clients, and it with luck everything will just work. For
more details, see this web page:
http://wiki.debian.net/index.cgi?DebianInstallerNetbootPXE
2.5 Booting from hard disk
It's possible to boot the installer using no removable media, but just an
existing hard disk, which can have a different OS on it. These instructions
are for i386 systems, such as those running windows. Download
hd-media/initrd.gz, hd-media/vmlinuz, and a Debian CD image to the top-level
directory of the hard disk. Make sure that the CD image has a filename
ending in ".iso". Now it's just a matter of booting linux with the initrd.
If you have grub installed, boot grub, and do the following:
grub>kernel (hd0,0)/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram ramdisk_size=10000 devfs=mount,dall
grub>initrd (hd0,0)/initrd.gz
grub>boot
Note that the ramdisk_size parameter may need to be increased, depending on
the image you are booting.
After the installer boots, it should find the ISO you placed on the hard
disk, and continue with the install. You will not be able to reformat the
partition the installer was booted from if you use this technique.
2.6 Booting from CDROM
The most common choice, is booting directly from a CD drive.
For i386 systems, you should set this up in your BIOS directly
in the boot sequence.
For powerpc systems, you must press the "c" key while booting. The "c"
key, which represents "cdrom", will tell your machine to use that medium
as the boot method.
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. (If you want a
2.6 kernel, type "linux26" instead.)
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 country and 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 disks".
Now it is time to partition your disks. First you will be given the
opportunity to automatically partition either an entire drive, or free
space on a drive. If you do not want to autopartition, choose manual from
the menu.
On the next screen you will see your partition table, how the partitions
will be formatted, and where they will be mounted. Select a partition to
modify or delete it. If you did automatic partitioning, you should just be
able to choose "Finished partitioning" from the menu to use what it set up.
Remember to assign at least one partition for swap space and to mount a
partition on "/".
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. If the installer detects
other operating systems on your computer, it will add them to the boot menu
and let you know. By default GRUB will be installed to the boot
record of the first harddrive, which is generally a good choice. You'll be
given the opportiunity to override that choice and install it elsewhere.
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. Expert mode 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. Type "expert" and hit ENTER to
boot. If you want to install with the 2.6 linux kernel, type "expert26"
instead. 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 "Choose country". Select that entry and observe that the installer
tries to set a reasonable default based upon your language selection.
Select your country and continue.
The next step is "Detect a keyboard and select layout". Again the installer
will attempt to pick a reasonable default. Select your preferred keymap and
continue.
The next step is "Detect CDROM devices and mount the CD". As part of this
step, the installer will probe the system for hardware, and load kernel
modules for detect hardware. You will be given a chance to veto the loading
of kernel modules (in case they cause problems), and to specify parameters
to pass to the kernel when the modules are loaded. After the hardware is
detected, the CD should be found automatically in most cases.
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 will repeat the hardware detection process,
but now the installer has more kernel modules available to it.
Now it is time to partition your disk, so choose "Partition disks" from the
menu. You will be presented with a display showing the partitions on your
system. Select partitons from the list to modify or delete them. If you
have free space it will also show up under a drive, and you can select it
to create new partitions. When modifying a partition you will have the
opportunity to choose the file system to use, and where to mount it. The
partitioning menu also has a choice at the bottom that can be used to
automatically partition a drive or existing free space on a drive, if you'd
rather go that route. Be sure to create at least two partitions, one for
swap and one for the root filesystem.
After finishing partitioning, select "Finished partitioning" from the menu,
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. During this step, you will be
presented with 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 GRUB on a hard disk" or
"Install LILO on a hard disk" to make your harddisk bootable. You will
be asked where GRUB/LILO shall install the bootblock. A good idea is
the first hard drive 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/