Installing Debian Linux 2.0 For x86
Bruce Perens, Sven Rudolph, Igor Grobman, James Treacy,
Adam P. Harris
23 June, 1998
Installing Debian Linux 2.0 For x86
Bruce Perens, Sven Rudolph, Igor Grobman, James Treacy,
Adam P. Harris
23 June, 1998
1. About Copyrights and Software Licenses
I'm sure you've read the licenses that come with most com-
mercial 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 soft-
ware 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 oth-
er sorts of restrictions on how you copy the software, which
you can read about once you've installed the system. For ex-
ample, many of the programs in the system are licensed un-
der the GNU General Public License, or GPL. The GPL requires
that you make the source code of the programs available when-
ever you distribute a copy of the program. Thus, we've in-
cluded the source code for all of those programs in the Debian
system. There are several other forms of copyright and soft-
ware license used on the programs in Debian. You can find the
copyrights and licenses of every program by looking in the di-
rectory /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 De-
bian Social Contract.
The most important legal notice is that this software comes
with no warranties. People who write free software can't af-
ford to be sued.
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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 proces-
sors made by manufacturers such as Cyrix, AMD, TI, IBM, etc.
If your processor has letters like [quot ]sx[quot ], [quot
]sl[quot ], [quot ]slc[quot ], etc. after the number as in
[quot ]386sx[quot ], that's fine. The system will not run on
the 286 or lower processors.
While Debian 2.0 does support other processors and architec-
tures, this installation guide does not currently cover them.
Users on m68k architectures such as Atari are directed to url-
nam for more information. Additionally, Alpha, Sparc, and Pow-
erPC ports are available. See urlnam 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. Lin-
ux 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 urlnam 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 in-
stallation, you'll need around 600MB. To install everything
available in Debian, you'll probably need around 2GB. The disk
interfaces that emulate the [quot ]AT[quot ] hard disk in-
terface which are often called MFM, RLL, IDE, or ATA are sup-
ported. SCSI disk controllers from many different manufactur-
ers 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,
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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 compat-
ible 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 test-
ed 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 in-
stalling the system. Again, see the Linux Hardware Compatibil-
ity 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 connec-
tion), you should ask your network's system administrator for
this information:
o Your host name (you may be able to decide this on your
own).
o Your domain name.
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o Your computer's IP address.
o The netmask to use with your network.
o The IP address of your network.
o The broadcast address to use on your network.
o The IP address of the default gateway system you should
route to, if your network has a gateway.
o The system on your network that you should use as a DNS
(Domain Name Service) server.
o 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 refnam (7.21) 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 sev-
eral 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 en-
ables 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
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to boot from CD-ROM, and you won't need a floppy at all. Ex-
act details of how to do this vary depending on the BIOS ver-
sion; 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 instal-
lation process. See refnam (6.3) below for details.
Also, if you're going to be installing from a FAT (DOS) par-
tition, you won't need any floppies at all. See refnam (6.2.1)
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 [quot ]Video BIOS Shadow[quot ], [quot
]C800-CBFF Shadow[quot ], etc. Disable all shadow RAM. Shad-
ow RAM is used to accelerate access to the ROMs on your moth-
erboard and on some of the controller cards. Linux avoids us-
ing 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 sys-
- 6 -
tem 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 soft-
ware 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 tur-
bo 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 unex-
pected signal while it was compiling the operating system ker-
nel. 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 re-
peatedly. An error in these data structures will cause it to
execute an illegal instruction or access a non-existent ad-
dress. The symptom of this will be gcc dying from an unexpect-
ed signal.
The very best motherboards support parity RAM and will actual-
ly tell you if your system has a single-bit error in RAM. Un-
fortunately, 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.
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4.11. Fake or ([quot ]virtual[quot ]) Parity RAM
If you ask for Parity RAM in a computer store, you'll proba-
bly get virtual parity SIMMs instead of true parity ones. Vir-
tual 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 mem-
ory. 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 mother-
board 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 contin-
ue 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 Processors We 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 multiple
processors, you'll have to install the kernel-source
package and then re-compile the kernel with symmetric
multiprocessing support enabled. At this time (kernel
version 2.0.33) the way you enable that is to edit the
top-level Makefile for the kernel and un-comment the
line that says [quot ]SMP = 1[quot ]. If you compile
software on a multiprocessor system, look for the
[quot ]-j[quot ] flag in the documentation on [quot
]make[quot ].
- 8 -
4.14. BIOS Settings to Watch Out For
If your BIOS offers something like [quot ]15-16 MB Memory
Hole[quot ], please disable that. Linux expects to find memo-
ry there if you have that much RAM.
We have a report of an Intel Endeavor motherboard on which
there is an option called [quot ]LFB[quot ] or [quot ]Lin-
ear Frame Buffer[quot ]. This had two settings: [quot ]Dis-
abled[quot ] and [quot ]1 Megabyte[quot ]. Set it to [quot
]1 Megabyte[quot ]. When disabled, the installation flop-
py 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 [quot ]mapped memory[quot ], 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 op-
erated by the Microsoft Windows operating system and bear the
legend WinModem or Made especially for Windows-based comput-
ers. This is generally done by removing the embedded proces-
sors 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 re-
moved, the operating system must perform the work of the em-
bedded processors, often at real-time priority, and thus the
CPU is not available to run your programs while it is driving
- 9 -
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 pe-
ripheral 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 ac-
cess 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 un-
der 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, Windows-
NT, OS/2, DOS, FreeBSD) and want to stick Linux on the same
disk, you will probably need to repartition the disk. In gen-
eral, 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 anal-
- 10 -
ogy of the house, you would probably want to move all the fur-
niture out of the way before moving a wall or you risk de-
stroying it. Luckily, there is an alternative for some users.
See the section on refnam (5.4).
At a bare minimum, Linux needs two partitions. In this sce-
nario, 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 effi-
cient use of it (it is possible to force Linux to use a regu-
lar file as swap, but it is not recommended).
There are two reasons you might want to break up the filesys-
tem into a number of smaller partitions. The first is for
safety. If something happens to corrupt the file system, gen-
erally 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 con-
tains the most essential components of the system. If any oth-
er partitions get corrupted, you can still boot into Linux to
fix the system. This can save you the trouble of having to re-
install the system from scratch.
The second reason is generally more important in a busi-
ness setting, but it really depends on your use of the ma-
chine. Suppose something runs out of control and starts eat-
ing 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 over-
lay 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
- 11 -
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 nowa-
days, 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 es-
pecially 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. Of-
ten, 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 situa-
tion 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 ad-
ministrators. 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 simul-
taneous 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
- 12 -
already contains DOS (including Windows3.1), Windows95, or
OS/2 and it is desired to put Debian onto the same disk with-
out destroying the previous system. As explained in the ref-
nam (5.1), decreasing the size of an existing partition will
almost certainly damage the data on that partition unless cer-
tain 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 orig-
inal OS and the other will be used for Debian. During the in-
stallation 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 be-
ginning, 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 min-
imize 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 ER-
RORS.TXT to a bootable floppy. A bootable floppy can be cre-
ated using the command sys a: under DOS. Fips comes with very
good documentation which you may want to read. You will def-
initely need to read the documentation if you use one of the
following:
o Stacker/SuperStor/Doublespace etc.
o OS/2
o OnTrack Disk Manager or similar driver
Create the disk and read the documentation before you defrag-
ment 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.
- 13 -
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 res-
cue 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. Be-
low you will find a description of the most common methods of
installing Debian. Keep in mind that if need be, you can al-
ways put every distinct part of bootdisks on a separate medi-
um. Note that the base system is available in two forms: flop-
py 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
If you are using a web browser on a networked computer to read
this document, you can probably retrieve the files by select-
ing their names in your web browser. Otherwise, you can re-
trieve them from urlnam, or a similar directory in any of the
Debian FTP mirror sites.
resc1440.bin, resc1200.bin : the rescue disk image This is
the rescue disk image. It is used for initial setup, and
also in emergencies when your system doesn't boot for some
reason in the future. Therefore it is recommended you write
the disk image to the floppy even if you are not using
floppies for installation.
resc1440tecra.bin : The rescue disk image for some laptops.
This is the rescue disk image for computers that can't han-
dle the kernel compression format called bzImage. This
problem is usually exhibited by certain models laptops (no-
tably, Toshiba tecras), but has also been reported on oth-
er kinds of computers. If your computer reboots or freezes
while kernel is booting, it is worth a try to use this disk
image.
- 14 -
drv1440.bin, drv1200.bin: the driver disk image This disk
image contains the kernel modules, or drivers, for all
kinds of hardware that are not necessary for initial boot-
ing. You will be prompted to choose the drivers you need
during the installation process.
base2_0.tgz, base14-1.bin...base14-5.bin
base12-1.bin...base12-6.bin : the base system. These
files contain the base system which will be installed on
your Linux partition during the installation process. This
is the bare minimum necessary for you to be able to install
the rest of the packages. The base2[lowbar]0.tgz file is
for installation from non-floppy media.
root.bin : an image of the temporary filesystem. This file
contains an image of temporary filesystem that gets loaded
into memory when you boot. This is used for installations
from hard disk and from CD-ROM.
rawrite2.exe : utility to write an image to floppy. This
is a DOS utility to write a floppy disk image to a floppy.
You should not copy images to the floppy, but instead use
this utility to rawrite them.
loadlin.exe : Linux boot loader for DOS. You will need this
boot loader if you are installing from a DOS partition or
from a CD.
install.bat : DOS batch file for starting Debian installation
from DOS. This batch file is used in installations from
hard disk or CD.
linux : the kernel image This is the Linux kernel image to
be used for hard disk and CD installations.
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
6.2.1 Installing from a DOS partition
1 Get the following files from your nearest Debian ftp mir-
ror and put them into a directory on your DOS partition:
resc1440.bin, drv1440.bin, base2[lowbar]0.tgz, root.bin,
linux, install.bat and loadlin.exe.
- 15 -
2 Execute install.bat from that directory in DOS.
3 skip down to refnam (7).
6.2.2 Installing from an ext2fs partition
1 Get the following files and place them in a directo-
ry on your ext2 partition: resc1440.bin, drv1440.bin, and
base2[lowbar]0.tgz.
2 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
3 insert the floppy with the image into your floppy drive,
and reboot the computer.
4 Skip down to refnam (7)
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 lo-
cated in the \boot directory on your CD. Then, skip down to
refnam (7)
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 us-
ing one of the above methods. To install the base system via
NFS, you'll have to go through the regular installation as
explained in refnam (7). Do not forget to insert the mod-
ule (driver) for your ethernet card, and the file system mod-
ule for nfs. When the menu system asks you where the base
system is located, you should choose NFS, and follow the in-
structions.
6.5. Installing Base from Floppies
NOTE: This is not a recommended way of installing Debian, be-
cause 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.
- 16 -
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.
6.5.1 Writing Floppy Disk Image Files to Floppy Disk
You will need to write the following disk images to floppies:
Rescue Disk If your a: drive of the system upon which you
will install Linux uses 1.44MB floppy disks, you will need
the file resc1440.bin; if it uses 1.2MB floppy disks, you
will need the file resc1200.bin,
Driver Disk If your a: drive of the system upon which you
will install Linux uses 1.44MB floppy disks, you will need
the file drv1440.bin; if it uses 1.2MB floppy disks, you
will need the file drv1200.bin,
Base Disks These disks will be generated from the follow-
ing files (1.44MB version) base14-1.bin, base14-2.bin,
base14-3.bin, base14-4.bin and base14-5.bin.
And these are the 1.2MB versions: base12-1.bin,
base12-2.bin, base12-3.bin, base12-4.bin, base12-5.bin and
base12-6.bin.
If you are using a web browser on a networked com-
puter to read this document, you can probably re-
trieve 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 [quot
]Rescue[quot ], [quot ]Device Drivers[quot ], [quot ]Cus-
tom Boot[quot ], [quot ]Base 1[quot ], [quot ]Base 2[quot
], etc.
No file is written to the Custom Boot floppy, that will be
written by the Debian system while it is being installed.
6.5.2 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 con-
taining instructions for rawrite2.exe .
- 17 -
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:.
6.5.3 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 fea-
ture 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 dif-
ferent 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 be-
fore you remove it from the drive. On some systems, you'll
have to run a command to eject the floppy from the drive.
6.5.4 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 flop-
py, the first thing you should do is re-download the floppy
disk image and write it to a different floppy. Simply refor-
matting 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.
- 18 -
One user reports he had to write three boot floppies before
one worked, and then everything was fine with the third flop-
py.
Other users have reported that simply rebooting a few times
with the same floppy in the floppy drive can lead to a suc-
cessful 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 refnam (7.2) 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
refnam (6.6) 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 accessi-
ble from Linux correctly when Linux boots, you may find a pa-
rameter 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
- 19 -
linux) and a space before the first parameter. If you simply
press Enter, that's the same as typing linux without any spe-
cial 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 param-
eters that inform the system about your hardware. Some flop-
pies, 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 mes-
sages are harmless. You see them because the installation boot
disk is built to run on computers with many different periph-
eral devices. Obviously, no one computer will have every pos-
sible 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 cus-
tom 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 flop-
py, 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 selec-
tions in order:
o 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
- 20 -
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.
o Activate the swap partition.
o Copy the root filesystem to disk. You will need a DOS-
formatted floppy disk with the root.bin file in it (for ex-
ample, the rescue floppy disk).
o 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 col-
or or monochrome choice dialog box. If your monitor dis-
plays black-and-white, press Enter to continue with the in-
stallation. 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 in-
stallation.
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 los-
ing 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 present-
ed with the main menu. The choices at the top of the menu
will change to indicate your progress in installing the sys-
tem. 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
- 21 -
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 En-
ter to go to the keyboard configuration menu. Select a key-
board that conforms to the layout used for your national lan-
guage, 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 de-
sire and press Enter. Use the arrow keys to move the highlight
- they are in the same place in all national language key-
board layouts, so they are independent of the keyboard config-
uration.
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 avail-
able 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 con-
soles, 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 na-
tive and Linux swap filesystems, the menu item Next will be
- 22 -
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 selec-
tion 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 pro-
gram, 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 refnam (5) above.
You must create at least one [quot ]Linux[quot ] (type 83)
disk partition, and one [quot ]Linux Swap[quot ] (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 af-
ter you've installed to get more than 128 megabytes of swap.
A swap partition is strongly recommended, but you can do with-
out 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 [quot ]Linux[quot ] 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 par-
tition. 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, filesys-
tems.
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 Acti-
- 23 -
vate 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 nev-
er 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 complet-
ed 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 remov-
ing the files - Debian provides a different procedure than us-
ing the boot floppies for upgrading existing Debian systems.
Thus, if you are using old disk partitions that are not emp-
ty, 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 par-
tition 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
- 24 -
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 instal-
lation 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 de-
vices 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 con-
figure the driver module for your network card, and the NFS
module itself, available under filesystems.
7.12.1 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 sys-
tem 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 in-
stallation 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 con-
troller 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
*[lowbar]OPTS[lowbar]MSG, can generally be left blank. Again,
certain hardware has special needs; the Linux PCMCIA HOW-
TO contains plenty of information in case the default doesn't
work.
In some unusual cases, such as using network devices on cer-
tain IBM Thinkpad models, you will also need to read and edit
- 25 -
/etc/pcmcia/config.opts. You can open your second virtual
terminal (LeftAlt-F2) and edit the file there, and then recon-
figure your PCMCIA, or manually forcing a reload of the mod-
ules 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 ques-
tions - 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.
o Your host name.
o Your domain name.
o Your computer's IP address.
o The netmask to use with your network.
o The broadcast address to use on your network.
o The IP address of the default gateway system you should
route to, if your network has a gateway.
o The system on your network that you should use as a DNS
(Domain Name Service) server.
o 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 sys-
tem, 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 of-
fered a menu of drives to use to read the base floppies. Se-
- 26 -
lect 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 Sys-
tem 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 sys-
tem 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 Lin-
ux, 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 us-
ing the DOS fdisk program, or with the Linux fdisk or activate
programs.
If you are installing Linux on a drive other than the first
- 27 -
hard disk in your system, be sure to make a boot floppy. The
boot ROM of most systems is only capable of directly boot-
ing 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 di-
rected. Make sure the floppy isn't write-protected, as the
software will format and write it. Mark this the [quot ]Cus-
tom Boot[quot ] 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. Re-
move the floppy disk from the floppy drive, and select the Re-
boot 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 be-
hind 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
- 28 -
by viruses.
All of the passwords you create should contain from 6 to 8
characters, and should contain both upper and lower-case char-
acters, as well as punctuation characters.
Once you've added both logins, you'll be dropped into the ds-
elect program. The Dselect Tutorial is required reading be-
fore 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 in-
stall 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 transport-
ed 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 se-
lected. Your system is now ready to use.
7.21. Setting up PPP
NOTE: In case you are installing from CD-ROM and/or are con-
nected directly to the network, you can safely skip this sec-
tion.
The base system includes a full PPP package. This package al-
lows you to connect to your ISP using PPP. Below are some ba-
sic 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 exten-
sion. 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[num ]' where [num ] stands for the number of
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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 pro-
cedure. Comment out everything below the dialing string (the
one that starts with ATDT) in /etc/chatscripts/provider, mod-
ify /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 pass-
word 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 [quot ]boot-floppies[quot ] 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
[quot ]linux[quot ]. 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.
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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:
o Initial RAM disk.
o MSDOS, Minix, and EXT2 filesystems.
o ELF executables.
Copy your new kernel to the file [quot ]linux[quot ]
on the Rescue Floppy, and then run the shell script [quot
]rdev.sh[quot ] that you'll find on the floppy.
8.4. The Base Floppies
The base floppies contain a 512-byte header followed by a por-
tion of a gzip-compressed tar archive. If you strip off the
headers and then concatenate the contents of the base flop-
pies, 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 instal-
lation 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 <igor@debian.org, James Treacy
treacy@easynet.on.ca and
Adam P. Harris <aph@onshore.com>.
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, Pen-
tium, 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.