As you initially install Debian, there are several steps that you shall undergo, in order:
Booting the Debian installation system, step 1, is generally done with the Rescue Floppy or from the CD-ROM. The first boot is sometimes the hardest, depending on your hardware. Therefore, it is described in Booting the Installation System, chapter 6.
Once you've booted into Linux, the dbootstrap program
will launch and guide you through the second step, the initial system
configuration. This step is described in detail in Using dbootstrap for Initial System
Configuration, chapter 7.
The ``Debian base system'' is a core set of packages which are
required to run Debian in a minimal, stand-alone fashion. Once you
have configured and installed the base system, your machine can
``stand on its own''. The Debian base system can be installed from
the following media: floppies, hard disk, CD-ROM, or from an NFS
server. dbootstrap will perform this installation; it is
described in ``Install the Base System'', section 7.12.
The final step is the installation of the remainder of the Debian
system. This would include the applications and documents that you
actually use on your computer, such as the X Window System, editors,
shells, and development environments. The rest of the Debian system
can be installed from CD-ROM or any mirror of the Debian archive (on
or off the Internet, via HTTP, FTP, or NFS). At this point, you'll be
using the standard Debian package management tools, such as
dselect or apt-get. This step is described
in Installing the Rest of Your System, section 7.22.
Note that the media you use for one step and the media used for another step do not need to be the same. That is, you can boot from the Rescue Floppy, install the base system from NFS, and then install the remainder of the system from CD-ROM. If you're downloading the system from the archive, you'll generally boot and install the base system from floppies, installing the complete Debian system from the Internet.
The installation system, which is required for the first three installation steps, are divided into three parts: the ``Rescue Floppy'', the ``Drivers Floppy'', and the ``Base System''. Below you will find a description of the different installation methods, and a description of files which might be required for installation. Which files you use, and what steps you have to take to prepare your installation media, will vary with the method that you select to install Debian.
First, you should choose your media to use for booting the installation system. Next, choose the method you will use to install the base system.
To boot the installation system, you have the following choices: floppies, or using a loader running in another operating system.
Booting from floppies is supported for most platforms, excepting Amigas and Macs. It is described in Booting from Floppies, section 5.7. For most m68k architectures, booting from a local filesystem is the recommended method.
Booting from an existing operating system is often a convenient option; for some systems it is the only supported method of installation. This method is described in Installing from a Hard Disk, section 5.4.
The base system can be installed in the following ways: from floppies (Installing Base from Floppies, section 5.8), from a CD-ROM (Installing from a CD-ROM, section 5.5), from an NFS server (Installing from NFS, section 5.6), or from a local hard disk (Installing from a Hard Disk, section 5.4). You should choose whatever method matches the media you have, and whatever is the most convenient.
This section contains an annotated list of files you will find in the
disks-m68k directory. You may not need to
download these at all; it all depends on the booting and base
system installation media you have chosen.
Most files are floppy disk images; that is, a single file which can be written to a disk to create the necessary floppy disks. These images are, obviously, dependent on the size of the target floppy, such as 1.44MB, 1.2MB, or 720KB. Which sizes are available depends on your platform (i.e., 720KB drives are Atari-specific). The images for 1.44MB images have `14' embedded in their filenames, 1.2MB drives have `12' somewhere in their filename, 720KB drives have `72' in their filename.
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/dists/slink/main/disks-m68k/current/, or a similar directory in any of the Debian FTP mirror sites.
common/base2_1.tgz file is for installation
from non-floppy media, i.e., CD-ROM, harddisk, or NFS.
In some cases, you may wish to boot from an existing operating system. You can also boot into the installation system using other means, but install the base system from disk.
Use the following steps to install Debian from your pre-existing AmigaOS setup.
amigainstall.lha into a partition with at least
10MB free. We recommend you unpack it into the main directory.
debian directory.
Move common/base2_1.tgz into that same debian
directory. Do not rename any files in this directory.
debian directory is. See Device Names in Linux, section 4.2 for more
information on Linux partition naming.
Workbench, start the Linux installation process by
double-clicking on the ``StartInstall'' icon in the
debian directory.
You may have to press the Return key twice after the Amiga
installer program has output some debugging information into a window.
After this, the screen will go grey, there will be a few seconds'
delay Next, a black screen with white text should come up, displaying
all kinds of kernel debugging information. These messages may scroll
by too fast for you to read, but that's OK. After a couple of
seconds, the installation program should start automatically, so you
can continue down at Using dbootstrap for Initial System
Configuration, chapter 7.
If, on the other hand, you have problems booting, see Troubleshooting the Boot Process, section 6.4.
Use the following steps to install Debian from your pre-existing Atari TOS setup.
install.lzh into a partition with at least 10 MB
free. We recommend you unpack it into the ``main'' directory.
debian directory. Move
common/base2_1.tgz into that same debian
directory. Do not rename any files in this directory.
debian directory is. See Device Names in Linux, section 4.2 for more
information on Linux partition naming.
debian directory and clicking ``Ok'' at the program
options dialog box.
You may have to press the Return key after the Atari
bootstrap program has output some debugging information into a
window. After this, the screen will go grey, there will be a few
seconds' delay. Next, a black screen with white text should come up,
displaying all kinds of kernel debugging information. These messages
may scroll by too fast for you to read, but that's OK. After a couple
of seconds, the installation program should start automatically, so
you can continue below at Using dbootstrap for Initial System
Configuration, chapter 7.
If, on the other hand, you have problems booting, see Troubleshooting the Boot Process, section 6.4.
Use the following steps to install Debian from your pre-existing MacOS setup.
Install.sit.hqx into a partition with at least 10 MB
free. We recommend you unpack it into the top-level directory of a
volume with sufficient space.
debian directory. Move
common/base2_1.tgz into that same debian
directory. Do not rename any files in this directory.
debian directory is. See Device Names in Linux, section 4.2 Linux'
for more information on Linux partition naming.
debian directory. The Linux booter will start up. Go to
the ``Settings'' item in the ``File'' menu and select the kernel and
ramdisk images in the debian directory by clicking on the
corresponding buttons in the upper right corner, and navigating the
file select dialogs to locate the files. Close the ``Settings''
dialog, save the settings and start the bootstrap using the ``Boot
Now'' item in the ``File'' menu.
Penguin booter will output some debugging information
into a window. After this, the screen will go grey, there will be a
few seconds' delay. Next, a black screen with white text should come
up, displaying all kinds of kernel debugging information. These
messages may scroll by too fast for you to read, but that's OK. After
a couple of seconds, the installation program should start
automatically, so you can continue below at Using dbootstrap for Initial System
Configuration, chapter 7.
If, on the other hand, you have problems booting, see Troubleshooting the Boot Process, section 6.4.
You can install Debian as well from an ext2fs partition or a Minix partition. This would be appropriate if you were completely removing your current Linux system with Debian, for instance.
Note that the partition you are installing from should not be
the same as the partitions you are installing Debian to
(i.e., /, /usr, /lib, and all that).
To install from an already existing Linux disk, follow these instructions.
Get the following files and place them in a directory on your Linux partition. Use the largest possible files for your architecture:
However you decide to boot, you can install the base Debian system from the CD-ROM. Simply boot using one of the other installation techniques; when it is time to install the base system, and when you install the complete system, just point your installation system at the CD-ROM drive as described in ``Install the Base System'', section 7.12.
Due to the nature of this method of installation, only the base system
can be installed via NFS. You will need to 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 Using dbootstrap for Initial System
Configuration, chapter 7. Do not
forget to insert the module (driver) for your ethernet card, and the
file system module for NFS.
When dbootstrap asks you where the base system is located
(``Install the Base System'', section 7.12), you should choose NFS, and follow the
instructions.
Booting from floppies is a simple process. Simply download the Rescue Floppy image and the Drivers Floppy image. Copy these to floppies as described in Creating Floppies from Disk Images, section 5.9. You can also modify the Rescue Floppy; see Replacing the Kernel, section 9.3. Booting from the Rescue Floppy is supported only for Atari, Macintosh and VME (with a SCSI floppy drive on VME) at this time.
NOTE: This is not a recommended way of installing Debian, because the floppies are generally the least reliable type of media. This is only recommended if you have no extra, pre-existing filesystems on any of the hard drives on your system. Installing the Base System from floppies is not supported on Amiga and Macintosh systems.
Complete these steps:
Obtain these disk images (these files are described in greater detail in Description of Installation System Files, section 5.3):
Disk images are files containing the complete contents of a floppy
disk in raw form. Disk images, such as
resc1440.bin, cannot simply be copied to floppy drives.
A special program is used to write the image files to floppy disk in
raw mode. This is required because these images are raw
representations of the disk; it is required to do a sector
copy of the data from the file onto the floppy.
There are different techniques for creating floppies from disk images, which depend on your platform. This section describes how to create floppies from disk images for different platforms.
No matter which method you use to create your floppies, you should remember to flip the tab on the floppies once you have written them, to ensure they are not damaged unintentionally.
To write the floppy disk image files to the floppy disks, you will probably need root access to the system. Place a good, blank floppy in the floppy drive. Next, use the command
dd if=file of=/dev/fd0 bs=512 conv=sync ; syncwhere 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 (on Solaris, it is
/dev/fd/0). 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 (on Solaris, use eject, see the manual page).
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, how to accomplish this will vary based on your
operating system. On Solaris, make sure vold isn't running.
On other systems, ask your system administrator.
You'll find the rawwrite.ttp program in the same directory as the floppy disk images. Start the program by double clicking on the program icon, and type in the name of the floppy image file you want written to the floppy at the TOS program command line dialog box.
Using DiskCopy (version 4.2 or later), you can create
a MacOS floppy from the ``Debian-m68k-2.1-Mac.img'' file in the
same directory as the Macintosh installer files. Start DiskCopy and
select the ``Make a Floppy'' option in the ``Utilities'' menu.
Select the disk image file in the file select dialog.
There is no MacOS application to write the Rescue and Drivers floppy images to floppy disks (and there would be no point in doing this as you can't use these floppies to boot the installation system or install kernel and modules from on Macintosh).
If you have access to a PC running one of these systems (I know you'd never admit that, but these exist) you can use it to write the floppy images.
You'll find the rawrite2.exe program in the i386
section of a Debian archive, in the same directory as the floppy
disk images. There's also a rawrite2.txt file
containing instructions for using rawrite2.
The biggest problem for people installing Debian for the first time seems to be floppy-disk reliability.
The Rescue Floppy is the floppy with the worst problems, because it is read by the hardware directly, before Linux boots. Often, the hardware 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 may not be 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 the images to floppy three times 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 hardware or firmware floppy drivers.