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Installing Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 For Intel x86
Chapter 4 Obtaining System Installation Media


4.1 Official Debian GNU/Linux CD-ROM Sets

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.


4.2 Downloading Files from Debian Mirrors

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.


4.2.1 Choosing the Right Installation Set

Kernel images are available in various ``flavors'', each of which supports a different set of hardware. The flavors available for Intel x86 are:

`vanilla'
The standard kernel package available in Debian. This includes almost all drivers supported by Linux built as modules, which includes drivers for network devices, SCSI devices, sound cards, Video4Linux devices, etc. The `vanilla' flavor includes one Rescue Floppy, one root and three Driver Floppies.
`udma100-ext3'
Very similar to `vanilla', except it includes support for the Promise and Highpoint EIDE chipsets used e.g. on modern boards with VIA chipsets and some new ethernet cards not supported by default in kernel 2.2.20 (taken from the kernel-patch-ethernet-drivers package). It also loads a driver for the USB keyboard if you boot this flavor from a CD.
`compact'
Like `vanilla', but with many of the less-frequently-use drivers removed (sound, v4l, etc). In addition, it has built in support for several popular PCI Ethernet devices — NE2000, 3com 3c905, Tulip, Via-Rhine and Intel EtherExpress Pro100. These built in drivers allow you to take full advantage of the Debian installer's net install feature to install the Driver Floppies over the network so that only the root and Rescue Floppy disks need to be made. Finally, `compact' also supports several common RAID controllers: DAC960, and Compaq's SMART2 RAID controllers. The `compact' flavor includes one Rescue Floppy, one root and one driver disk.
`idepci'
Kernel that supports only IDE and PCI devices (and a very small number of ISA devices). This kernel should be used if the SCSI drivers in the other flavors cause your system to hang on startup (probably because of resource conflicts, or a misbehaving driver/card in your system.) The `idepci' flavor also has a built-in ide-floppy driver so that you can install from LS120 or ZIP devices.
`reiserfs'
Allows installation to ReiserFS partitions, including the root partition. Compared to `vanilla', support for math emulation, sound, joysticks, video4linux, the microchannel bus, APM, ARCnet and others have been removed. Support for PCI SCSI and IDE controllers as well as some network controllers have been included. After installation you may want to build your own custom kernel in order to support these devices.

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".


4.2.2 Where to Find Installation Files

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
rescue image
.../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
root image(s) or tarball
Linux Kernel Files, Section 11.2.3.2
kernel binary
Driver Files, Section 11.2.3.3
driver images or tarball

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).


4.3 Creating Floppies from Disk Images

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.


4.3.1 Writing Disk Images From a Linux or Unix System

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.


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

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.


4.3.3 Modifying the Rescue Floppy to Support National Language

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


4.4 Preparing Files for Hard Disk Booting

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.


4.5 Automatic Installation

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.


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Installing Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 For Intel x86
version 3.0.18, 18 December, 2001
Bruce Perens
Sven Rudolph
Igor Grobman
James Treacy
Adam Di Carlo