By far the easiest way to install Debian GNU/Linux is from an Official Debian
CD-ROM Set (see the CD
vendors page
). You may also download the CD-ROM images from the
Debian server and make your own set, if you have a fast network connnection and
a CD burner. If you have a Debian CD set and CDs are bootable on your machine,
you can skip right to Booting
from a CD-ROM, Section 5.2; much effort has been expended to ensure the
files most people need are there on the CD.
If your machine doesn't support CD booting, but you do have a CD set, you can use an alternative strategy (floppy disk, hard disk, or net boot) to initially boot the system installer. Once the installer is booted, it will be able to obtain all the other files it needs from the CD. You will also find all the files you need for booting by another means on the CD.
If you don't have a CD set, then you will need to download the operating system
installation files and place them either on your hard disk, floppy disks, or a
connected computer so they can be used to a) boot the installer, and b) allow
the installer to retrieve additional files as needed.
When downloading files from a Debian mirror, be sure to download the files in
binary mode, not text or automatic mode. It's important to replicate
the directory structure you find on the mirror to create a local `sub-mirror'.
It isn't really necessary to do this if you place all the installation files on
floppies; but it still makes it easier to find the files when you need them.
You should start your local directory structure at the level under
disks-i386
, for example:
current/sub-architecture/images-1.44/flavor/rescue.bin
You don't need to download every file under that level, just those that apply to you (you'll find out which ones apply as you read on). Just name the directories the same as the mirror's, and keep the files in their proper directories.
If your machine is set up to automatically decompress/decode files you
download, you must turn that feature off when downloading the installation
system files. They will be decompressed just-in-time by the installer.
Decompressing in your current system will waste space and time, and if the
original compressed archives are deleted by the decompression program, they
won't be there later when the installer needs them.
Kernel images are available in various ``flavors'', each of which supports a different set of hardware. The flavors available for Intel x86 are:
kernel-patch-ethernet-drivers
package). It also loads a driver
for the USB keyboard if you boot this flavor from a CD.
Although we have described above how many 1.44MB diskettes the different sets occupy, you may still choose different methods of installation.
The kernel config files for these flavors can be found in their respective
directories in a file named "kernel-config".
The files needed for a Debian installation fall into two categories: 1) those files you will need in order to boot into the installation system, and 2) those files the installation system will need access to after it has been booted in order to install the operating system kernel and peripheral drivers. You will need to obtain both types of files before starting the installation.
The network locations of installation files for each i386 flavor are listed in the Appendix. These include:
.../current/images-1.20/rescue.bin
.../current/images-1.20/safe/rescue.bin
.../current/images-1.44/rescue.bin
.../current/images-1.44/compact/rescue.bin
.../current/images-1.44/idepci/rescue.bin
.../current/images-1.44/safe/rescue.bin
.../current/images-1.44/ide/rescue.bin
.../current/images-2.88/rescue.bin
.../current/images-2.88/compact/rescue.bin
.../current/images-2.88/idepci/rescue.bin
.../current/images-2.88/ide/rescue.bin
.../current/images-1.20/root.bin
.../current/images-1.44/root.bin
.../current/images-1.44/compact/root.bin
.../current/images-1.44/idepci/root.bin
.../current/images-1.44/ide/root.bin
The rescue image contains a compressed Linux boot kernel. It is used for both floppy disk booting (when transferred to a floppy) and as the source for the Linux kernel when the kernel is being installed on your machine. Refer to Creating Floppies from Disk Images, Section 4.3 for important information on properly creating floppy disks from floppy images.
The root floppy image contains a compressed ramdisk filesystem which gets loaded into memory after you boot the installer.
The kernel binary linux
is an uncompressed binary kernel. It is
used when booting the installer from the hard disk or CD-ROM, and is not needed
for floppy installer booting.
The peripheral drivers may be downloaded as a series of floppy images or as a
tarball (drivers.tgz
). The installer system will need access to
the drivers file during installation. If you have a hard drive partition or
connected computer which will be accessible to the installer (see below), the
tarball will be more convenient to handle. The floppy image files are needed
only if you must install the drivers from floppies.
When downloading files, you should also pay attention to the type of filesystem you are downloading them to, unless you will use floppies for the kernel and drivers. The installer can load files from many kinds of filesystems, including FAT, HFS, ext2fs, and Minix.
It cannot access files on an NTFS filesystem — you must load the appropriate driver).
Note that the partition you are installing from should not be the same as the partitions you are installing Debian to.
In addition to the files above, you will need .../current/dosutils/loadlin.exe
(see
Files for the Initial System
Boot, Section 11.2.3.1).
Bootable floppy disks are commonly used to boot the installer system for machines with a floppy drive. Floppies can also be used for installation of the kernel and modules on most systems.
Disk images are files containing the complete contents of a floppy disk in
raw form. Disk images, such as rescue.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 on 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=1024 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 (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, you can
work around volume management to get raw access to the floppy. First, make
sure that the floppy is automounted (using volcheck
or the
equivalent command in the file manager). Then use a dd
command of
the form given above, just replace /dev/fd0
with
/vol/rdsk/floppy_name
, where floppy_name is
the name the floppy disk was given when it was formatted (unnamed floppies
default to the name unnamed_floppy
). On other systems, ask your
system administrator.
If you have access to an i386 machine, you can use one of the following programs to copy images to floppies.
The FDVOL, WrtDsk or RaWrite3 programs can be used under MS-DOS.
http://www.minix-vmd.org/pub/Minix-vmd/dosutil/
To use these programs, first make sure that you are booted into DOS. Trying to use these programs from within a DOS box in Windows, or double-clicking on these programs from the Windows Explorer is not expected to work. If you don't know how to boot into DOS, just hit F8 while booting.
NTRawrite is an attempt to create a contemporary version of Rawrite/Rawrite3 that is consistently compatible with WinNT, Win2K and Win95/98.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ntrawrite/
where file is one of the floppy disk image files, and
drive is either `a:' or `b:', depending on which floppy drive you
are writing to.
The messages shown by the Rescue Floppy (before loading the Linux kernel) can
be shown in your mother tongue. To achieve this if you are not an English
speaker, after writing the image file, you must copy the provided message files
and a font to the floppy. For MS-DOS and Windows users there is a batch file
setlang.bat
in the dosutils
directory, which copies
the correct files. Simply enter this directory (e.g. cd
c:\debian\dosutils) within a command prompt window, and run
setlang lang, where lang is a two-letter
code of your language in lower case, for example setlang pl to set
the language to Polish. Currently these language codes are available:
ca cs da de eo es fi fr gl hr hu it ko ja pl pt ru sk sv tr zh_CN
The installer may be booted using boot files placed on an existing hard drive partition, either launched from another operating system or by invoking a boot loader directly from the BIOS. If you intend to boot the installer from a hard disk partition, you will need to place the files in specific locations according to the instructions here.
The installer cannot boot from files on an NTFS filesystem.
For installing on multiple computers it's possible to use the fully automatic
installation called FAI. The Debian package fai has to be installed on a
computer called the install server. Then all install clients boot from their
network card or floppy disk and automatically install Debian on their local
disks.