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. Find a recent revision of this document in the debian-installer cvs repository, browsable via web: http://cvs.debian.org/debian-installer/doc/INSTALLATION-HOWTO?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup Last change to this document: 06.13.2003 1. Preliminaries Debian-installer images are currently only available for the i386, alpha and powerpc 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 its alpha 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 installer team provides different types of images for the debian-installer. None of these images are yet available on Debian mirrors, but there are a few semi-official places to get different kinds of images. The debian-cd team provides weekly builds of CD images for debian-installer here: http://gluck.debian.org/cdimage/testing/netinst/ If you feel more adventurous you are invited to test our daily builds, which can be found in the 'daily' subdirectories. In the past they often have been broken, but nevertheless these images need testing as well. Daily builds of all non-CDROM the debian-installer images, including floppy images and initrd's are here: http://people.debian.org/~sjogren/d-i/images/daily/ 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, burn it to a CD, and boot it. 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.ing, 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. Note that the rest of this document only covers installation from CD! 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 medium you can take with you anywhere. Your USB memory stick must have a DOS partition on it for this method to work. Most come with such a partition by default. To prepare your USB memory stick, download hd-media-initrd.gz and save it to a file named "initrd.gz" on the USB device. Make sure that the compressed image is not transparently decompressed by your browser. You must also include a Debian netinst CD image on your memory stick. See section 2.1 for details. Place the downloaded ISO on your memory stick; any filename is ok as long as it ends in ".iso". Some BIOSes can boot USB storage directly, and some cannot. 2.3.1 Booting directly from USB storage The author of this section has not yet succeeded in booting directly from USB storage, as all his hardware has too old a BIOS, but in theory you just need to put a kernel on the USB device, and set up a boot loader. The kernel can be gotten from the same place you'd get floppy images (see section 2.2), and is named vmlinuz. If you succeed, please post details to debian-boot@lists.debian.org so this section can be fixed. 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 mount the initrd.gz, which will in turn find the ISO. After that things will proceed the same as if you had booted from 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. The next thing you will be confronted with is a note, that debian-installer could not find a network interface. This is a known bug but 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. Select "Detect network hardware and load kernel drivers for it" and debian-installer will continue gracefully. If you have a pcmcia network card try using the menu entry "Start PC card services (PCMCIA)". The next questions will help you to configure your mirror. First select the protocol to access your mirror. If unsure use "http" as the help text suggests. If you know a mirror which will be fast for you, you can enter it by selecting the last entry "enter information manually" on the next screen. If not, just select the country where you are located. After selecting the mirror you will be asked for your proxy configuration. If unsure just hit ENTER. To complete your mirror setup you have to select the distribution you wish to install. You have to select "sarge" here, "woody" and "sid" won't work (if you want to install sid directly, you may want to try the businesscard image, where selecting "sid" actually works). 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 screens 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. The next thing you will see, is a little oddity which we will hopefully get rid of soon. Answer the question if you want to automatically partition your harddrives with "No", and you will see the main menu again. Select "Install the kernel" and answer the following question about how you want to generate you fstab with "debian-installer utility for creating fstab file". You will be prompted for the kernel to install which will leave you most probably with only one choice. Select it and wait until the kernel is installed on your harddisk. 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 bootrecord of the first harddrive which is generally a good choice. Hit ENTER and ignore the following warning that /proc/partitions does not exist. 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 in /cdrom". This step does not require user interaction, everything happens automatically. Now we are able to access additional modules. Select the corresponding entry "Load installer modules". 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. You are presented a long list with optional modules to install. We only want to install the standard modules, which are selected automatically, so just hit "Continue". Wait and watch until all modules have been installed. 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 and load kernel drivers for it (full version)". 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"). If you did not use autopartkit to partition your harddrive you will be asked how your fstab file should be created. Select "debian-installer utility for creating fstab file" to do that. Next 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 you 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/ An overview of the status of d-i related packages can be obtained here: http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=debian-boot@lists.debian.org