Debian

Taken From: Debian GNU/Linux

Installing Debian Linux 2.0 For x86

Bruce Perens, Sven Rudolph, Igor Grobman, James Treacy, Adam P. Harris

23 June, 1998

Installation instructions for the Debian GNU/Linux 2.0 system on the x86 architecture.

1. About Copyrights and Software Licenses

I'm sure you've read the licenses that come with most commercial software - they say you can only use one copy of the software on one computer. The Debian GNU/Linux System isn't like that. We encourage you to put a copy on every computer in your school or place of business. Lend it to your friends, and help them install it on their computers. You can even make thousands of copies and sell them - with a few restrictions. That's because Debian is based on free software.

Free software doesn't mean that it doesn't have a copyright, and it doesn't mean that the CD you buy containing this software is distributed at no charge, it simply means that the licenses of individual programs do not require you to pay for the privilege of copying the programs. There are other sorts of restrictions on how you copy the software, which you can read about once you've installed the system. For example, many of the programs in the system are licensed under the GNU General Public License, or GPL. The GPL requires that you make the source code of the programs available whenever you distribute a copy of the program. Thus, we've included the source code for all of those programs in the Debian system. There are several other forms of copyright and software license used on the programs in Debian. You can find the copyrights and licenses of every program by looking in the directory /usr/doc/program-name/copyright once you've installed your system.

For more information on licenses and how Debian decides what is free enough to be included in the distribution, see the Debian Social Contract.

The most important legal notice is that this software comes with no warranties. People who write free software can't afford to be sued.

2. System Requirements

2.1 CPU

Your computer must have a 386, 486, Pentium, Pentium Pro, or Pentium II processor, or one of the clones of those processors made by manufacturers such as Cyrix, AMD, TI, IBM, etc. If your processor has letters like "sx", "sl", "slc", etc. after the number as in "386sx", that's fine. The system will not run on the 286 or lower processors.

While Debian 2.0 does support other processors and architectures, this installation guide does not currently cover them. Users on m68k architectures such as Atari are directed to http://debian-m68k.nocrew.org/ for more information. Additionally, Alpha, Sparc, and PowerPC ports are available. See http://www.debian.org/ for more information.

2.2 I/O Bus

Your computer must use the ISA, EISA, PCI, or VL bus. The VL bus is also known as VESA Local Bus or VLB. Computers that have PCI or VLB generally have ISA or EISA slots as well. Linux offers some support for the Micro-Channel bus used in IBM PS/2 computers, but this is not included on the Debian rescue disk. The newer AGP video slots are actually a modification on the PCI specification, and most AGP video cards work under XFree86. See http://www.xfree86.org/ for more information and to see if your video card is supported under Linux.

2.3 RAM and Disk

You must have at least 4MB of RAM and 40MB of hard disk. If you want to install a reasonable amount of software, including X window system, and some development programs and libraries, you'll need at least 300MB. For a more or less complete installation, you'll need around 600MB. To install everything available in Debian, you'll probably need around 2GB. The disk interfaces that emulate the "AT" hard disk interface which are often called MFM, RLL, IDE, or ATA are supported. SCSI disk controllers from many different manufacturers are supported. See the Linux Hardware Compatibility HOWTO for more details.

2.4 Floppy Disk

Unless you will be installing from a CD or a DOS partition, you must have a 1.2MB or 1.44MB floppy disk drive as the a: drive in the system upon which you will install Linux. If you have both a 1.2MB and a 1.44MB drive, you could configure the hardware so that the 1.44MB drive is a:, if this is not too difficult.

2.5 Display

You should be using a VGA-compatible display interface for the console terminal. Nearly every modern display card is compatible with VGA. CGA, MDA, or HGA might work OK for text, but they won't work with the X Window System, and we haven't tested them. Use of a serial terminal for the console is not yet supported.

2.6 Other Hardware

Linux supports a large variety hardware devices such as mice, printers, scanners, modems, network cards, PCMCIA devices, etc. However, none of these devices are required while installing the system. Again, see the Linux Hardware Compatibility HOWTO for more details to see if your specific hardware is supported under Linux.

3. Before You Start

3.1 Backups

Before you start, make sure to back up every file that is now on your system. The installation procedure can wipe out all of the data on a hard disk!

3.2 Information You'll Need

Besides this document, you'll need the cfdisk manual page, the Dselect Tutorial, and the Linux Hardware Compatibility HOWTO.

If your computer is connected to a network 24 hours a day (i.e. an Ethernet or equivalent connection - not a PPP connection), you should ask your network's system administrator for this information:

Your host name (you may be able to decide this on your own).
Your domain name.
Your computer's IP address.
The netmask to use with your network.
The IP address of your network.
The broadcast address to use on your network.
The IP address of the default gateway system you should route to, if your network has a gateway.
The system on your network that you should use as a DNS (Domain Name Service) server.
Whether you connect to the network using Ethernet, and whether your Ethernet interface is a PCMCIA card.

If your computer is connected to the Internet via PPP or an equivalent dialup connection, please see PPP below for information on setting up PPP under Debian.

4. Configuring Your System

4.1 Disks

There are some hardware details you should look into. First, decide which disk you want to place the Linux system on. You've backed that up along with your other disks already, right?

4.2 The BIOS Set-Up Menu

Your motherboard probably provides a BIOS set-up menu. Some systems start this menu if you press DEL while the system is booting, some require a SETUP disk, and some have other means of invoking the BIOS set-up menu. If you can start this menu, use it to control the features discussed in the following several paragraphs.

4.3 Boot Device Selection

Many BIOS set-up menus allow you to select the devices that will be used to bootstrap the system. Set this to look for a bootable operating system on a:, (the first floppy disk), and then c: (the first hard disk). Since you'll boot Linux from a floppy while installing it, it is important that the BIOS enables booting from a floppy disk.

Note that some systems can boot from CD-ROM nowadays; if yours can, and you're installing via the Official Debian GNU/Linux CD-ROM, you can simply tell your BIOS set-up menu to boot from CD-ROM, and you won't need a floppy at all. Exact details of how to do this vary depending on the BIOS version; consult your hardware manuals. If your system can't boot directly from CD-ROM, don't despair; you can simply run E:\boot\boot.bat under DOS (replace E: with whatever drive letter DOS assigns to your CD-ROM drive) to start the installation process. See CDROM below for details.

Also, if you're going to be installing from a FAT (DOS) partition, you won't need any floppies at all. See DOS below for more information on installing via this method.

4.4 Extended vs. Expanded Memory

If your system provides both extended and expanded memory, set it so that there is as much extended and as little expanded memory as possible. Linux requires extended memory and cannot use expanded memory.

4.5 Virus Protection

Disable any virus-warning features your BIOS may provide. If you have a virus-protection board or other special hardware, make sure it is disabled or physically removed while running Linux. These aren't compatible with Linux, and Linux has a better method of protecting you from viruses.

4.6 Shadow Ram

Your motherboard probably provides shadow RAM. You may see settings for "Video BIOS Shadow", "C800-CBFF Shadow", etc. Disable all shadow RAM. Shadow RAM is used to accelerate access to the ROMs on your motherboard and on some of the controller cards. Linux avoids using these ROMs once it has booted because it provides its own faster 32-bit software in place of the 16-bit programs in the ROMs. Disabling the shadow RAM may make some of it available for programs to use as normal memory. Leaving the shadow RAM enabled may interfere with Linux access to hardware devices.

4.7 Advanced Power Management

If your motherboard provides Advanced Power Management (APM), configure it so that power management is controlled by APM. Disable the doze, standby, suspend, nap, and sleep modes, and disable the hard-disk power-down timer. Linux can take over control of these modes, and can do a better job of power-management than the BIOS. The version of the operating system kernel on the installation floppies does not, however, use APM, because we've had reports of one laptop system crashing when the Linux APM driver is configured. Once you've installed Linux, you can install the kernel-source package and build a custom-configured version of the operating system kernel to enable APM and other features.

4.8 The Turbo Switch

Many systems have a turbo switch that controls the speed of the CPU. Select the high-speed setting. If your BIOS allows you to disable software control of the turbo switch (or software control of CPU speed), do so and lock the system in high-speed mode. We have one report that on a particular system, while Linux is auto-probing (looking for hardware devices) it can accidentally touch the software control for the turbo switch.

4.9 Over-Clocking your CPU

Many people have tried operating their 90 MHz CPU at 100 MHz, etc. It sometimes works, but is sensitive to temperature and other factors and can actually damage your system. The author of this document overclocked his own system for a year, and then the system started aborting the gcc program with an unexpected signal while it was compiling the operating system kernel. Turning the CPU speed back down to its rated value solved the problem.

4.10 Bad RAM

The gcc compiler is often the first thing to die from bad RAM (or other hardware problems that change data unpredictably) because it builds huge data structures that it traverses repeatedly. An error in these data structures will cause it to execute an illegal instruction or access a non-existent address. The symptom of this will be gcc dying from an unexpected signal.

The very best motherboards support parity RAM and will actually tell you if your system has a single-bit error in RAM. Unfortunately, they don't have a way to fix the error, thus they generally crash immediately after they tell you about the bad RAM. Still, it's better to be told you have bad memory than to have it silently insert errors in your data. Thus, the best systems have motherboards that support parity and true-parity SIMMs.

4.11 Fake or ("virtual") Parity RAM

If you ask for Parity RAM in a computer store, you'll probably get virtual parity SIMMs instead of true parity ones. Virtual parity SIMMs can often (but not always) be distinguished because they only have one more chip than an equivalent non-parity SIMM, and that one extra chip is smaller than all the others. Virtual-parity SIMMs work exactly like non-parity memory. They can't tell you when you have a single-bit RAM error the way true-parity SIMMs do in a motherboard that implements parity. Don't ever pay more for a virtual-parity SIMM than a non-parity one. Do expect to pay a little more for true-parity SIMMs, because you are actually buying one extra bit of memory for every 8 bits.

If you do have true-parity RAM and your motherboard can handle it, be sure to enable any BIOS settings that cause the motherboard to interrupt on memory parity errors.

4.12 Cyrix CPUs and Floppy Disk Errors

Many users of Cyrix CPUs have had to disable the cache in their systems during installation, because the floppy disk has errors if they do not. If you have to do this, be sure to re-enable your cache when you are finished with installation, as the system runs much slower with the cache disabled.

We don't think this is necessarily the fault of the Cyrix CPU. It may be something that Linux can work around. We'll continue to look into the problem. For the technically curious, we suspect a problem with the cache being invalid after a switch from 16-bit to 32-bit code.

4.13 Multiple ProcessorsWe have several reports that Debian runs well (and very fast)on systems with two (or more) Pentium, Pentium Pro, or Pentium II processors on the same motherboard. To take advantage of multipleprocessors, you'll have to install the kernel-source packageand then re-compile the kernel with symmetric multiprocessing supportenabled. At this time (kernel version 2.0.33) the way you enable thatis to edit the top-level Makefile for the kernel and un-comment the linethat says "SMP = 1". If you compile software on a multiprocessor system, look for the "-j" flag in the documentation on "make".

4.14 BIOS Settings to Watch Out For

If your BIOS offers something like "15-16 MB Memory Hole", please disable that. Linux expects to find memory there if you have that much RAM.

We have a report of an Intel Endeavor motherboard on which there is an option called "LFB" or "Linear Frame Buffer". This had two settings: "Disabled" and "1 Megabyte". Set it to "1 Megabyte". When disabled, the installation floppy was not read correctly, and the system eventually crashed. At this writing we don't understand what's going on with this particular device - it just worked with that setting and not without it.

4.15 Hardware Settings to Watch Out For

If any cards provide "mapped memory", the memory should be mapped somewhere between 0xA0000 and 0xFFFFF (from 640K to just below 1 megabyte) or at an address at least 1 megabyte greater than the total amount of RAM in your system.

4.16 Windows-specific Hardware

A disturbing trend is the proliferation of Windows modems and printers. In some cases these are specially designed to be operated by the Microsoft Windows operating system and bear the legend WinModem or Made especially for Windows-based computers. This is generally done by removing the embedded processors of the hardware and shifting the work they do over to a Windows driver that is run by your computer's main CPU. This strategy makes the hardware less expensive, but the savings are often not passed on to the user and this hardware may even be more expensive than equivalent devices that retain their embedded intelligence.

You should avoid Windows-specific hardware for two reasons. The first is that the manufacturers do not generally make the resources available to write a Linux driver. Generally, the hardware and software interface to the device is proprietary, and documentation is not available without a non-disclosure agreement, if it is available at all. This precludes its being used for free software, since free software writers disclose the source code of their programs. The second reason is that when devices like these have had their embedded processors removed, the operating system must perform the work of the embedded processors, often at real-time priority, and thus the CPU is not available to run your programs while it is driving these devices. Since the typical Windows user does not multi-process as intensively as a Linux user, the manufacturers hope that the Windows user simply won't notice the burden this hardware places on their CPU. However, any multi-processing operating system, even Windows 95 or NT, is degraded when peripheral manufacturers skimp on the embedded processing power of their hardware.

You can help this situation by encouraging these manufacturers to release the documentation and other resources necessary for us to program their hardware, but the best strategy is simply to avoid this sort of hardware until it is listed as working in the Linux Hardware Compatibility HOWTO.

4.17 Other Closed Hardware

Some hardware manufacturers simply won't tell us how to write drivers for their hardware, or they won't allow us access to the documentation without a non-disclosure agreement that would prevent us from releasing the Linux source code. One example is the IBM laptop DSP sound system used in recent ThinkPad systems - some of these systems also couple the sound eystem to the modem. Since we haven't been granted access to the documentation on these devices, they simply won't work under Linux. You can help by asking the manufacturers of such hardware to release the documentation. If enough people ask, they will realize that Linux is an important market. The Linux Hardware Compatibility HOWTO provides information about what devices currently have Linux drivers.

5. Notes on Partitioning your Hard Drive

5.1 Background

Partitioning your disk simply refers to the act of breaking up your disk into sections. Each section is then independent of the others. It's roughly equivalent to putting up walls in a house; if you add furniture to one room it doesn't affect any other room.

If you already have an OS on your system (Windows95, WindowsNT, OS/2, DOS, FreeBSD) and want to stick Linux on the same disk, you will probably need to repartition the disk. In general, changing a partition with a filesystem already on it will destroy any information there. Thus you should always make backups before doing any repartitioning. Using the analogy of the house, you would probably want to move all the furniture out of the way before moving a wall or you risk destroying it. Luckily, there is an alternative for some users. See the section on Lossless .

At a bare minimum, Linux needs two partitions. In this scenario, one will contain the entire operating system, all the programs and your personal files. The other is called the swap partition. Swap is scratch space for an operating system. By putting it on its own partition Linux can make much more efficient use of it (it is possible to force Linux to use a regular file as swap, but it is not recommended).

There are two reasons you might want to break up the filesystem into a number of smaller partitions. The first is for safety. If something happens to corrupt the file system, generally only one partition is affected. Thus, you only have to replace (from the backups you've been carefully keeping) a portion of your system. At a bare minimum, you should consider creating what is commonly called a 'root partition'. This contains the most essential components of the system. If any other partitions get corrupted, you can still boot into Linux to fix the system. This can save you the trouble of having to reinstall the system from scratch.

The second reason is generally more important in a business setting, but it really depends on your use of the machine. Suppose something runs out of control and starts eating disk space. If the process causing the problem happens to have root privileges (the system keeps a percentage of the disk away from users), you could suddenly find yourself out of disk space. This is not good as the OS needs to use real files (besides swap space) for many things. It may not even be a problem of local origin. For example, getting spammed with e-mail can easily fill a partition. By using more partitions, you protect the system from many of these problems. Using mail as an example again, by putting /var/spool/mail on its own partition, the bulk of the system will work even if you get spammed.

Another reason applies to you only if you have a large IDE disk, and are not using neither LBA addressing, nor overlay drivers usually provided by hard disk manufacturer. In this case, you will have to put the root partition into the first 1024 cylinders of your hard drive (usually around 524 megabytes).

The only real drawback to using more partitions is that it is often difficult to know in advance what your needs will be. If you make a partition too small then you will either have to reinstall the system or you will be constantly moving things around to make room in the undersized partition. On the other hand, if you make the partition too big, you will be wasting space that could be used elsewhere. Disk space is cheap nowadays, but why throw your money away.

5.2 What do you recommend?

As described above, you should definitely have a separate smaller root partition, and a larger /usr partition, if you have the space. For examples, see below. For most users, the two partitions initially mentioned is sufficient. This is especially appropriate when you have a single small disk, since breaking out lots of partition can waste space.

In some cases, you might need a separate /usr/local partition if you plan to install many programs that are not part of the operating system. If your machine will be a mail server, you might need to make /var/spool/mail a separate partition. Often, putting /tmp on it's own partition, for instance 20 to 32MB, is a good idea. If you are setting up a server with lots of user accounts, it's generally good to have a separate, large, /home partition. In general, the partitioning situation varies from computer to computer depending on its uses.

That still leaves the question of swap space. There are as many views on how much swap you need as there are Unix administrators. One rule of thumb which works well is to use as much swap as you have RAM, although there probably isn't much point in going over 64MB of swap for most users. If you start using that much swap, you should get more RAM. Of course, there are exceptions. If you are trying to solve 10000 simultaneous equations on a machine with 256MB of RAM you may need a gigabyte (or more) of swap. If your swap requirements are this high, however, you should probably try to spread the swap across different disks.

5.3 Examples

As an example, the author's home machine has 32MB of RAM and a 1.7GB IDE drive on /dev/hda. There is a 500MB DOS partition on /dev/hda1 (should have made it 200MB as it never gets used). A 32MB swap partition is used on /dev/hda3 and the rest (about 1.2GB on /dev/hda2) is the Linux partition.

5.4 Lossless repartitioning when starting from DOS,Windows95 or OS/2

One of the most common installations is onto a system that already contains DOS (including Windows3.1), Windows95, or OS/2 and it is desired to put Debian onto the same disk without destroying the previous system. As explained in the Partitioning Background , decreasing the size of an existing partition will almost certainly damage the data on that partition unless certain precautions are taken. The method described here, while not guaranteed to protect your data, works extremely well in practice. As a precaution, you should make a backup.

Before going any further, you should have decided how you will be dividing up the disk. The method in this section will only split a partition into two pieces. One will contain the original OS and the other will be used for Debian. During the installation of Debian, you will be given the opportunity to finish dividing the Debian portion of the disk as you see fit.

The idea is to move all the data on the partition to the beginning, before changing the partition information, so that nothing will be lost. It is important that you do as little as possible between the data movement and repartitioning to minimize the chance of a file being written near the end of the partition as this will decrease the amount of space you can take from the partition.

The first thing needed is a copy of fips which is available in the tools/ directory on your nearest debian mirror. Unzip the archive and copy the files RESTORRB.EXE, FIPS.EXE and ERRORS.TXT to a bootable floppy. A bootable floppy can be created using the command sys a: under DOS. Fips comes with very good documentation which you may want to read. You will definitely need to read the documentation if you use one of the following:

Stacker/SuperStor/Doublespace etc.
OS/2
OnTrack Disk Manager or similar driver

Create the disk and read the documentation before you defragment the disk.

The next thing needed is to move all the data to the beginning of the partition. defrag, which comes standard with DOS 6.0 and later can easily do the job. See the fips documentation for a list of other software that may do the trick. Note that if you have Windows95, you must run defrag from there, since DOS doesn't understand FAT32).

After running the defragmentor (which can take a while on a large disk), reboot with the fips disk you created in the floppy drive. Simply type a:\fips and follow the directions.

6. Methods for Installing Debian

You can install Debian from the following media: floppies, hard disk, CD, or from an NFS server. You can also mix those four methods for different parts of installation, as discussed below.

The installation disks are divided into three parts: the rescue disk, the driver disk, and the base system. You will be prompted for each one of them separately. Therefore, you can place each one of them on a different medium if you wish. Below you will find a description of the most common methods of installing Debian. Keep in mind that if need be, you can always put every distinct part of bootdisks on a separate medium. Note that the base system is available in two forms: floppy disk images for direct writing to a floppy, and in a tar archive for other forms of installation.

Below is an annotated list of files you will find in disks-i386 directory. You do not need to download them all, but only those you will need for your particular form of installation. See below for detailed installation instructions. All disk images are available in a form suitable for using in a 1.44MB and older 1.2MB floppy drives separately. The images for 1.2MB drives have 12 somewhere in their filename, and 1.44MB images have 14 embedded in their filenames.

6.1 Downloading the files

resc1440.bin, resc1200.bin : the rescue disk image
resc1440tecra.bin : The rescue disk image for some laptops.
drv1440.bin, drv1200.bin: the driver disk image
base2_0.tgz, base14-1.bin...base14-5.bin base12-1.bin...base12-6.bin : the base system.
root.bin : an image of the temporary filesystem.
rawrite2.exe : utility to write an image to floppy.
loadlin.exe : Linux boot loader for DOS.
install.bat : DOS batch file for starting Debian installation from DOS.
linux : the kernel image
install.txt, install.html : this file
cfdisk.txt : instructions for using cfdisk, the partitioning software
basecont.txt : listing of contents of the base system.

6.2 Installing from Hard Disk

Installing from a DOS partition

Get the following files from your nearest Debian ftp mirror and put them into a directory on your DOS partition: resc1440.bin, drv1440.bin, base2_0.tgz, root.bin, linux, install.bat and loadlin.exe.
Execute install.bat from that directory in DOS.
skip down to Installation .

Installing from an ext2fs partition

Get the following files and place them in a directory on your ext2 partition: resc1440.bin, drv1440.bin, and base2_0.tgz.
Write the rescue disk image (resc1440.bin) to the floppy by using the following command:

 dd if=resc1440.bin of=/dev/fd0 bs=512 conv=sync ; sync

insert the floppy with the image into your floppy drive, and reboot the computer.
Skip down to Installation

6.3 Installing from a CD

You are very likely to be installing from an official Debian CD. Booting a Debian CD is as easy as putting the CD in the drive, and booting off the CD if your BIOS supports it. In the case that your computer does not support bootable CDs, you should boot into DOS, and execute boot.bat file which is located in the \boot directory on your CD. Then, skip down to Installation

6.4 Installing from NFS

Due to the nature of this method of installation, only the base system can be installed via NFS. You will need tno have the rescue disk and the driver disk available locally using one of the above methods. To install the base system via NFS, you'll have to go through the regular installation as explained in Installation . Do not forget to insert the module (driver) for your ethernet card, and the file system module for nfs. When the menu system asks you where the base system is located, you should choose NFS, and follow the instructions.

6.5 Installing Base from Floppies

NOTE: This is not a recommended way of installing Debian, because the floppies are generally the flakiest type of media. This is only recommended if you have no filesystems on any of the hard drives on your system.

Of course, when installing from scratch on a machine without a bootable CDROM, you'll need at least the Rescue disk and the Drivers Disk on floppies.

Writing Floppy Disk Image Files to Floppy Disk

You will need to write the following disk images to floppies:

Rescue Disk
Driver Disk
Base Disks

If you are using a web browser on a networked computer to read this document, you can probably retrieve the files by selecting their names in your web browser. Otherwise, you can retrieve them from ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/stable/disks-i386/current/, or a similar directory in any of the Debian FTP mirror sites. All of these are floppy disk image files, which means that each file contains the complete contents of a floppy disk in raw form. A special program is used to write the image files to floppy disk in raw mode.

Find (up to) 10 formatted floppy disks. Mark them as "Rescue", "Device Drivers", "Custom Boot", "Base 1", "Base 2", etc.

No file is written to the Custom Boot floppy, that will be written by the Debian system while it is being installed.

Writing Disk Images From DOS, Windows, or OS/2

You'll find the rawrite2.exe program in the same directory as the floppy disk images. There's also a rawrite2.txt file containing instructions for rawrite2.exe .

To write the floppy disk image files to the floppy disks, use the command

rawrite2 -f file -d drive

where file is one of the floppy disk image files, and drive is either a: or b:.

Writing Disk Images From a Linux or Unix System

Some systems attempt to automatically mount a floppy disk when you place it in the drive. You might have to disable this feature before the workstation will allow you to write a floppy in raw mode. Unfortunately, I don't know the command necessary to do this for your particular workstation. Ask your system administrator.

To write the floppy disk image files to the floppy disks, use the command

dd if=file of=/dev/fd0 bs=512 conv=sync ; sync

where file is one of the floppy disk image files. /dev/fd0 is a commonly used name of the floppy-disk device, it may be different on your workstation. The command may return to the prompt before Unix has finished writing the floppy disk, so look for the disk-in-use light on the floppy drive and be sure that the light is out and the disk has stopped revolving before you remove it from the drive. On some systems, you'll have to run a command to eject the floppy from the drive.

Floppy-disk Reliability

The number one problem of people installing Debian for the first time seems to be floppy-disk reliability.

The Rescue Floppy is the one with the worst problems, because that floppy is read by BIOS before Linux boots. BIOS doesn't read as reliably as the Linux floppy disk driver, and may just stop without printing an error message if it reads incorrect data. There can also be failures in the drivers floppy and the base floppies, most of which indicate themselves with a flood of messages about disk I/O errors.

If you are having the installation stall at a particular floppy, the first thing you should do is re-download the floppy disk image and write it to a different floppy. Simply reformatting the old floppy is not sufficient, even if it appears that the floppy was reformatted and written with no errors. It is sometimes useful to try writing the floppy on a different system.

One user reports he had to write three boot floppies before one worked, and then everything was fine with the third floppy.

Other users have reported that simply rebooting a few times with the same floppy in the floppy drive can lead to a successful boot. This is all due to buggy BIOS floppy drivers.

6.6 Installation on Systems with Low Memory

If your system has less than 6MB of RAM, you will need to use a special low-memory disk image lowmem.bin. This image needs to be written to a floppy disk, and you should boot from that disk first. See low-mem below for more instructions.

7. Using the Installation System to Install and Configure Debian

7.1 The Rescue Floppy

Place the Rescue floppy in the a: floppy drive, and reset the system by pressing reset, turning the system off and then on, or by pressing Control-Alt-Del on the keyboard. The floppy disk should be accessed, and you should then see a screen that introduces the rescue floppy and ends with the boot: prompt. It's called the Rescue floppy because you can use it to boot your system and perform repairs if there is ever a problem that makes your hard disk unbootable. Thus, you should save this floppy after you've installed your system. Pressing F3 will give further information on this.

If you are using an alternative way to boot the system, follow the instructions, and wait for the boot: prompt to come up.

You can do two things at the boot: prompt. You can press the function keys F1 through F10 to view a few pages of helpful information, or you can boot the system. If you have less than 6MB RAM, you have to boot from the Low-Memory Boot Disk (see low-mem-disk below). If you boot from a 1.2MB floppy drive, you have to use a ramdisk boot method, and you will need the Root Disk.

If you have any hardware devices that aren't made accessible from Linux correctly when Linux boots, you may find a parameter to add to the boot command line in the screens you see by pressing F4 and F5. If you add any parameters to the boot command line, be sure to type the boot method (the default is linux) and a space before the first parameter. If you simply press Enter, that's the same as typing linux without any special parameters.

If this is the first time you're booting the system, just press Enter and see if it works correctly. It probably will. If not, you can reboot later and look for any special parameters that inform the system about your hardware. Some floppies, in particular about accessing floppies, in which case you might boot with the comment linux floppy=thinkpad.

Once you press Enter, you should see the message Loading..., and then Uncompressing Linux..., and then a page or so of cryptic information about the hardware in your system. There may be many messages in the form can't find something, or something not present, can't inttialize something, or even this driver release depends on something. Most of these messages are harmless. You see them because the installation boot disk is built to run on computers with many different peripheral devices. Obviously, no one computer will have every possible peripheral device, so the operating system may emit a few complaints while it looks for peripherals you don't own. You may also see the system pause for a while. This happens when it is waiting for a device to respond, and that device is not present on your system. If you find the time it takes to boot the system unacceptably long, later you can create a custom kernel once you've installed your system without all of the drivers for non-existent devices.

If you choose a non-default boot method, e.g. ramdisk or floppy, you will be prompted to insert the Root floppy. Insert the Root Floppy into the first disk drive and press Enter. (If you choose floppy1 insert the Root Floppy into the second disk drive.)

7.2 Low-Memory Systems

If you system has less than 6MB RAM, a paragraph about low memory and a text menu with four choices can be displayed. This means that the system detected that you don't have enough memory for a normal installation, hence must follow a special low-memory installation procedure. Go through the menu selections in order:

Use fdisk to create a Linux Swap partition (type 82). The swap partition is needed to provide virtual memory during the installation process, since that process will use more memory than you have in your system. Select the size for the amount of virtual memory you intend to use once your system is installed. 16 megabytes is probably the lowest amount that's practical, use 32 megabytes if you can spare the space, and 64 if your disk is large enough that you won't miss that much.

In addition create a MINIX partition (type 81). This will hold the root filesystem in the early installation process. Its size should be at least 2 megabytes. This partition can be deleted when the installation is finished.

Activate the swap partition.
Copy the root filesystem to disk. You will need a DOS-formatted floppy disk with the root.bin file in it (for example, the rescue floppy disk).
Exit. The normal installation system will be started.

7.3 The Color-or-Monochrome Dialog Box

Once the system has finished booting, you should see the color or monochrome choice dialog box. If your monitor displays black-and-white, press Enter to continue with the installation. Otherwise, use the arrow key to move the cursor to the Color menu item and then press Enter. The display should change from black-and-white to color. Then move the cursor to the Next item and press Enter again to continue with the installation.

7.4 The Main Menu

You may see a dialog box that says The installation program is determining the current state of your system. On some systems, this will go by too quickly to read. You'll see this dialog box between steps in the main menu. The installation program will check the state of the system in between each step. This checking allows you to re-start the installation without losing the work you have already done if you happen to halt your system in the middle of the installation process. If you have to restart an installation, you will have to configure color-or-monochrome, configure your keyboard, re-activate your swap partition, and re-mount any disks that have been initialized. Anything else that you have done with the installation system will be saved.

During the entire installation process, you will be presented with the main menu. The choices at the top of the menu will change to indicate your progress in installing the system. Phil Hughes wrote in Linux Journal that you could teach a chicken to install Debian! He meant that the installation process was mostly just pecking at the return key. The first choice on the installation menu is the next action that you should perform according to what the system detects you have already done. It should say Next, and at this point the next step in installing the system will be taken.

7.5 Configuring the Keyboard

Make sure the highlight is on the Next item, and press Enter to go to the keyboard configuration menu. Select a keyboard that conforms to the layout used for your national language, or select something close if the keyboard layout you want isn't represented. Once the system is installed, you'll be able to select a keyboard layout from a wider range of choices. Move the highlight to the keyboard selection you desire and press Enter. Use the arrow keys to move the highlight - they are in the same place in all national language keyboard layouts, so they are independent of the keyboard configuration.

7.6 The Shell

If you are an experienced Unix or Linux user, press LeftAlt-F2 to get to the second virtual console. That's the Alt key on the left-hand side of the space bar, and the F2 function key, at the same time. This is a separate window running a Bourne shell clone called ash. At this point you are booted from the RAM disk, and there is a limited set of Unix utilities available for your use. You can see what programs are available with the command ls /bin /sbin /usr/bin /usr/sbin. Use the menus to perform any task that they are able to do - the shell and commands are only there in case something goes wrong. In particular, you should always use the menus, not the shell, to activate your swap partition, because the menu software can't detect that you've done this from the shell. Press LeftAlt-F1 to get back to menus. Linux provides up to 64 virtual consoles, although the Rescue floppy only uses a few of them.

7.7 Last Chance!

Did we tell you to back up your disks? Here's your first chance to wipe out all of the data on your disks, and your last chance to save your old system. If you haven't backed up all of your disks, remove the floppy from the drive, reset the system, and run backups.

7.8 Partition Your Hard Disks

If you have not already partitioned your disks for Linux native and Linux swap filesystems, the menu item Next will be Partition a Hard Disk. If you have already created at least one Linux Native and one Linux Swap disk partition, the Next menu selection will be Initialize and Activate the Swap Disk Partition, or you may even skip that step if your system had low memory and you were asked to activate the swap partition as soon as the system started. Whatever the Next menu selection is, you can use the down-arrow key to select Partition a Hard Disk.

The Partition a Hard Disk menu item presents you with a list of disk drives you can partition, and runs the cfdisk program, which allows you to create and edit disk partitions. The cfdisk manual page is included with this document, and you should read it now. You should also read Partitioning above. You must create at least one "Linux" (type 83) disk partition, and one "Linux Swap" (type 82) partition.

Your swap partition will be used to provide virtual memory for the system and should be between 16 and 128 megabytes in size, depending on how much disk space you have and how many large programs you want to run. The old rule of thumb is that swap should be twice as big as the amount of physical memory you have available. Once you get past the 32MB of RAM mark, you shouldn't make your swap partition more than 1.5 bigger than the amount of RAM. Linux will not use more than 128 megabytes of swap on a single swap partition, so there's no reason to make your swap partition larger than that. However, you can make multiple swap partitions by hand and edit /etc/fstab after you've installed to get more than 128 megabytes of swap. A swap partition is strongly recommended, but you can do without one if you insist, and if your system has more than 16 megabytes of RAM. If you wish to do this, please select the Do Without a Swap Partition item from the menu.

The "Linux" disk partition will hold all of your files, and you may make it any size between 40 megabytes and the maximum size of your disk minus the size of the swap partition. If you are already familiar with Unix or Linux, you may want to make additional partitions - for example, you can make partitions that will hold the /var, and /usr, filesystems.

7.9 Initialize and Activate the Swap Disk Partition

This will be the Next menu item once you have created one disk partition. You have the choice of initializing and activating a new swap partition, activating a previously-initialized one, and doing without a swap partition. It's always permissible to re-initialize a swap partition, so select Initialize and Activate the Swap Disk Partition unless you are sure you know what you are doing. This menu choice will give you the option to scan the entire partition for un-readable disk blocks caused by defects on the surface of the hard disk platters. This is useful if you have MFM, RLL, or older SCSI disks, and never hurts. Properly-working IDE disks don't need this choice, as they have their own internal mechanism for mapping out bad disk blocks.

The swap partition provides virtual memory to supplement the RAM that you've installed in your system. It's even used for virtual memory while the system is being installed. That's why we initialize it first.

7.10 Initialize a Linux Disk Partition

At this point, the Next menu item should be Initialize a Linux Disk Partition. If it isn't, it's because you haven't completed the disk partitioning process, or you haven't made one of the menu choices dealing with your swap partition.

You can initialize a Linux Disk partition, or alternately you can mount a previously-initialized one.

These floppies will not upgrade an old system without removing the files - Debian provides a different procedure than using the boot floppies for upgrading existing Debian systems. Thus, if you are using old disk partitions that are not empty, you should initialize them (which erases all files) here. You must initialize any partitions that you created in the disk partitioning step. About the only reason to mount a partition without initializing it at this point would be to mount a partition upon which you have already performed some part of the installation process using this same set of installation floppies.

Select the Next menu item to initialize and mount the / disk partition. The first partition that you mount or initialize will be the one mounted as / (pronounced root). You will be offered the choice to scan the disk partition for bad blocks, as you were when you initialized the swap partition. It never hurts to scan for bad blocks, but it could take 10 minutes or more to do so if you have a large disk.

Once you've mounted the / partition, the Next menu item will be Install the Operating System Kernel and the Device Drivers unless you've already performed some of the installation steps. You can use the arrow keys to select the menu items to initialize and/or mount disk partitions if you have any more partitions to set up. If you have created separate partitions for /var, /usr, or other filesystems, you should initialize and/or mount them now.

7.11 Install the Operating System Kernel and the Device Drivers

This should be the Next menu step after you've mounted your / disk, unless you've already performed some of the installation steps on /. Select it, and you will be offered a menu of drives to use to read the kernel. Choose the appropriate place to install the kernel and modules.

7.12 Configure the Device Drivers

Select the Configure Device Drivers menu item and look for devices that are on your system. Configure those device drivers, and they will be loaded whenever your system boots. If you want to install the base system via NFS you must load and configure the driver module for your network card, and the NFS module itself, available under filesystems.

Configure PCMCIA Support

There is an alternate step, before the Configure Device Drivers menu selection, called Configure PCMCIA Support. This menu is used to enable PCMCIA support.

If you do have PCMCIA, but are not installing your Debian system using it (i.e., installatio with a PCMCIA ethernet card), then you need not configure PCMCIA at this point. You can easily configure and enable PCMCIA at a later point, after installation is complete. However, if you are installing by way of a PCMCIA network device, this alternate must be selected, and PCMCIA support must be configured prior to configuring the network.

If you need to install PCMCIA, select the alternate, below Configure Device Drivers. You will be asked which PCMCIA controller your system contains. In most cases, this will be i82365. In some cases, it will be tcic; your laptop's vendor-supplied specifications should provide the information if in doubt. The following options, all following the pattern *_OPTS_MSG, can generally be left blank. Again, certain hardware has special needs; the Linux PCMCIA HOWTO contains plenty of information in case the default doesn't work.

In some unusual cases, such as using network devices on certain IBM Thinkpad models, you will also need to read and edit /etc/pcmcia/config.opts. You can open your second virtual terminal (LeftAlt-F2) and edit the file there, and then reconfigure your PCMCIA, or manually forcing a reload of the modules using insmod and rmmod.

Once PCMCIA is properly configured and installed, you should jump back up and configure your device drivers as described in the previous section.

7.13 Configure the Network

You'll have to configure the network even if you don't have a network, but you'll only have to answer the first two questions - what is the name of your computer?, and is your system connected to a network?.

If you are connected to a network, here come some questions that you may not be able to figure out on your own - check with your network administrator if you don't know:

NOTE: if your primary connection to the network will be PPP, you should choose NOT to configure the network.

Your host name.
Your domain name.
Your computer's IP address.
The netmask to use with your network.
The broadcast address to use on your network.
The IP address of the default gateway system you should route to, if your network has a gateway.
The system on your network that you should use as a DNS (Domain Name Service) server.
The type of your network (Ethernet, Token Ring).

Some technical details you might, or might not, find handy: the program assumes the network IP address is the bitwise-AND of your system's IP address and your netmask. It will guess the broadcast address is the bitwise OR of your system's IP address with the bitwise negation of the netmask. It will guess that your gateway system is also your DNS server. If you can't find any of these answers, use the system's guesses - you can change them once the system has been installed, if necessary, by editing /etc/init.d/network. (On a Debian system, daemons are started by scripts in /etc/init.d/.)

7.14 Install the Base System

Select the Install the Base System menu item. You'll be offered a menu of drives to use to read the base floppies. Select the appropriate drive. If you choose to install from floppy disk feed in the Base 1, 2, 3, ... as requested by the program. If one of the base floppies is unreadable, you'll have to create a replacement floppy and feed all floppies into the system again. Once the floppies have all been read, the system will install the files it had read from the floppies. This could take 10 minutes or more on slow systems, less on faster ones.

7.15 Configure the Base System

At this point you've read in all of the files that make up a minimal Debian system, but you must perform some configuration before the system will run. Select the Configure the Base System menu item.

You'll be asked to select your time zone. Look for your time zone or region of the world in the menu, and type it at the prompt. This may lead to another menu, in which you can select your actual time zone.

Next, you'll be asked if your system clock is to be set to GMT or local time. Select GMT if you will only be running Linux and Unix on your system, and select local time if you will be running another operating system such as DOS or Windows. Unix and Linux keep GMT time on the system clock and use software to convert it to the local time zone. This allows them to keep track of daylight savings time and leap years, and even allows users who are logged in from other time zones to individually set the time zone used on their terminal. If you run the system clock on GMT and your locality uses daylight savings time, you'll find that the system adjusts for daylight savings time properly on the days that it starts and ends.

7.16 Make the Hard Disk Bootable

If you select to make the hard disk boot directly to Linux, you will be asked to install a master boot record. If you aren't using a boot manager (and this is probably the case if you don't know what a boot manager is), answer yes to this question. The next question will be whether you want to boot Linux automatically from the hard disk when you turn on your system. This sets Linux to be the bootable partition - the one that will be loaded from the hard disk. If you answer no to this question, you can set the bootable partition later using the DOS fdisk program, or with the Linux fdisk or activate programs.

If you are installing Linux on a drive other than the first hard disk in your system, be sure to make a boot floppy. The boot ROM of most systems is only capable of directly booting from the first hard drive, not the second one. You can, however, work around this problem once you've installed your system. To do so, read the instructions in the directory /usr/doc/lilo.

7.17 Make a Boot Floppy

You should make a boot floppy even if you intend to boot the system from the hard disk. The reason for this is that it's possible for the hard disk bootstrap to be mis-installed, but a boot floppy will almost always work. Select Make a Boot Floppy from the menu and feed the system a blank floppy as directed. Make sure the floppy isn't write-protected, as the software will format and write it. Mark this the "Custom Boot" floppy and write-protect it once it has been written.

7.18 The Moment of Truth

This is what electrical engineers call the smoke test - what happens when you turn on a new system for the first time. Remove the floppy disk from the floppy drive, and select the Reboot the System menu item. If the Linux system doesn't start up, insert the Custom Boot floppy you created and reset your system. Linux should boot. You should see the same messages as when you first booted the installation boot floppy, followed by some new messages.

7.19 Set the Root Password

This is the password for the super-user, a login that bypasses all security protection on your system. It should only be used to perform system administration, and only for as short a time as possible. Do not use root as your personal login. You will be prompted to create a personal login as well, and that's the one you should use to send and receive e-mail and perform most of your work - not root. The reason to avoid using root's privileges is that you might be tricked into running a Trojan-horse program - that is a program that takes advantage of your super-user power to compromise the security of your system behind your back. Any good book on Unix system administration will cover this topic in more detail - consider reading one if it's new to you. The good news is that Linux is probably more secure than other operating systems you might run on your PC. DOS and Windows, for example, give all programs super-user privileges. That's one reason that they have been so plagued by viruses.

All of the passwords you create should contain from 6 to 8 characters, and should contain both upper and lower-case characters, as well as punctuation characters.

Once you've added both logins, you'll be dropped into the dselect program. The Dselect Tutorial is required reading before you run dselect. Dselect allows you to select packages to be installed on your system. If you have a CD-ROM or hard disk containing the additional Debian packages that you want to install on your system, or you are connected to the Internet, this will be useful to you right away. Otherwise, you may want to quit dselect and start it later, once you have transported the Debian package files to your system. You must be the super-user (root) when you run dselect.

7.20 Log In

After you've quit dselect, you'll be presented with the login prompt. Log in using the personal login and password you selected. Your system is now ready to use.

7.21 Setting up PPP

NOTE: In case you are installing from CD-ROM and/or are connected directly to the network, you can safely skip this section.

The base system includes a full PPP package. This package allows you to connect to your ISP using PPP. Below are some basic instructions for setting up your ppp connection. The boot disks contain a program called pppconfig which will help you set up PPP. However, if it does not work for you, see below for detailed instructions.

In order to setup PPP, you'll need to know the basics of file viewing and editing in Linux. To view files, you should use more, and zmore for compressed files with a .gz extension. For example, to view README.debian.gz, type zmore README.debian.gz. Less is a superior paging program, but it does not come with the base system. You should install the less package as soon as you can. The only editor that comes with the base system is ae, which also poses as vi. It is very simple to use, but does not have a lot of features. You will be able to choose from a great number of editors once you get into dselect.

Edit /etc/ppp/peers/provider and replace '/dev/modem' with '/dev/ttyS#' where # stands for the number of your COM port. Please remember that in Linux, the count starts from 0, so COM1 is /dev/ttyS0 under Linux. The next step is to edit /etc/chatscripts/provider and insert your provider's phone number, your username and password. Please do not delete the '\q' that precedes the password. It hides the password from appearing in your log files.

Many providers use PAP or CHAP for login sequence instead of textmode authentication. Others use both. If your provider requires PAP or CHAP, you'll need to follow a different procedure. Comment out everything below the dialing string (the one that starts with ATDT) in /etc/chatscripts/provider, modify /etc/ppp/peers/provider as described above, and add "user username" (no quotes) where username stands for your username for the provider you are trying to connect to. Next, edit /etc/pap-secrets or /etc/chap-secrets and enter your password there.

You will also need to edit /etc/resolv.conf and add your provider's name server (DNS) IP addresses. The lines in /etc/resolv.conf are in the following format:

 nameserver xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

where x's stand for numbers in your IP address.

Unless your provider has a login sequence different than the majority of ISPs you are done! Start the PPP connection by typing pon, and monitor the process using plog command. To disconnect, use poff.

8. Technical Information on the Boot Floppies

8.1 Source Code

The "boot-floppies" package contains all of the source code for the installation floppies.

8.2 The Rescue Floppy

The Rescue Floppy has an MS-DOS filesystem, and you should be able to access it from a DOS or Windows system or anything else that can mount DOS disks. The Linux kernel is in the file "linux". The file root.bin is a gzip-compressed disk image of a 1.44 MB Minix filesystem, and will be loaded into the RAM disk and used as the root filesystem.

8.3 Replacing the Kernel

If you find it necessary to replace the kernel on the Rescue Floppy, you must configure your new kernel with these features linked in, not in loadable modules:

Initial RAM disk.
MSDOS, Minix, and EXT2 filesystems.
ELF executables.

Copy your new kernel to the file "linux" on the Rescue Floppy, and then run the shell script "rdev.sh" that you'll find on the floppy.

8.4 The Base Floppies

The base floppies contain a 512-byte header followed by a portion of a gzip-compressed tar archive. If you strip off the headers and then concatenate the contents of the base floppies, the result should be the compressed tar archive. The archive contains the base system that will be installed on your hard disk. Once this archive is installed, you must go through the Configure the Base System menu item in the installation system and other menu items to configure the network and install the operating system kernel and modules before the system will be usable.

9. Copyright of This Document

Copyright 1996 Bruce Perens; 1996, 1997 Sven
Rudolph, 1998 Igor Grobman <[email protected], James Treacy [email protected] and
Adam P. Harris <[email protected]>.

This document may be distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

10. Trademark Acknowledgement

Trademarks that are not explicitly acknowledged here are the property of their respective holders. 386, 386sx, 486, Pentium, Pentium Pro and Pentium II are the property of Intel. Windows, Window95, WindowsNT, and WinModem are a trademark of Microsoft. ThinkPad and OS/2 are the property of IBM.