Appendix B. Random Bits
B.1. Installing Emdebian Grip from a Unix/Linux System
This section explains how to install Emdebian Grip from an existing Unix or Linux system, without using the menu-driven installer as explained in the rest of the manual. This "cross-install" HOWTO has been requested by users switching to Emdebian Grip from Red Hat, Mandrake, and SUSE. In this section some familiarity with entering *nix commands and navigating the file system is assumed. In this section, $ symbolizes a command to be entered in the user's current system, while # refers to a command entered in the Debian chroot.
Once you've got the new Debian system configured to your preference, you can migrate your existing user data (if any) to it, and keep on rolling. This is therefore a "zero downtime" Emdebian Grip install. It's also a clever way for dealing with hardware that otherwise doesn't play friendly with various boot or installation media.
 | As this is a mostly manual procedure, you should bear in mind that you will need to do a lot of basic configuration of the system yourself, which will also require more knowledge of Debian and of Linux in general than performing a regular installation. You cannot expect this procedure to result in a system that is identical to a system from a regular installation. You should also keep in mind that this procedure only gives the basic steps to set up a system. Additional installation and/or configuration steps may be needed. |
B.1.1. Getting Started
With your current *nix partitioning tools, repartition the hard drive as needed, creating at least one filesystem plus swap. You need around 350MB of space available for a console only install, or about 1GB if you plan to install X (more if you intend to install desktop environments like GNOME or KDE).
Next, create file systems on the partitions. For example, to create an ext3 file system on partition /dev/hda6 (that's our example root partition):
To create an ext2 file system instead, omit -j.Initialize and activate swap (substitute the partition number for your intended Debian swap partition):
Mount one partition as /mnt/debinst (the installation point, to be the root (/) filesystem on your new system). The mount point name is strictly arbitrary, it is referenced later below. | If you want to have parts of the filesystem (e.g. /usr) mounted on separate partitions, you will need to create and mount these directories manually before proceding with the next stage. |
B.1.2. Install debootstrap
The utility used by the Debian installer, and recognized as the
official way to install a Debian base system, is
debootstrap. It uses wget and
ar, but otherwise depends only on
/bin/sh and basic Unix/Linux tools[1]. Install wget and
ar if they aren't already on your current system,
then download and install debootstrap.
Or, you can use the following procedure to install it manually. Make a work folder for extracting the .deb into:
The debootstrap binary is located in the Debian archive (be sure to select the proper file for your architecture). Download the debootstrap .deb from the pool, copy the package to the work folder, and extract the files from it. You will need to have root privileges to install the files.B.1.3. Run debootstrap
debootstrap can download the needed files directly from the archive when you run it. You can substitute any Debian archive mirror for /debian in the command example below, preferably a mirror close to you network-wise. Mirrors are listed at http://www.debian.org/misc/README.mirrors.
If you have a lenny Emdebian Grip CD mounted at /cdrom, you could substitute a file URL instead of the http URL: file:/cdrom/debian/
Substitute one of the following for ARCH in the debootstrap command: alpha, amd64, arm, armel, hppa, i386, ia64, m68k, mips, mipsel, powerpc, s390, or sparc.
B.1.4. Configure The Base System
Now you've got a real Debian system, though rather lean, on disk. chroot into it:
After chrooting you may need to set the terminal definition to be compatible with the Debian base system, for example:B.1.4.1. Create device files
At this point /dev/ only contains very basic device
files. For the next steps of the installation additional device files may
be needed. There are different ways to go about this and which method you
should use depends on the host system you are using for the installation,
on whether you intend to use a modular kernel or not, and on whether you
intend to use dynamic (e.g. using udev) or static
device files for the new system.
A few of the available options are:
create a default set of static device files using
manually create only specific device files using MAKEDEV
bind mount /dev from your host system on top of /dev in the target system; note that the postinst scripts of some packages may try to create device files, so this option should only be used with care
B.1.4.2. Mount Partitions
You need to create /etc/fstab.
Here is a sample you can modify to suit:# /etc/fstab: static file system information. # # file system mount point type options dump pass /dev/XXX / ext3 defaults 0 1 /dev/XXX /boot ext3 ro,nosuid,nodev 0 2 /dev/XXX none swap sw 0 0 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 /dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto noauto,rw,sync,user,exec 0 0 /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom iso9660 noauto,ro,user,exec 0 0 /dev/XXX /tmp ext3 rw,nosuid,nodev 0 2 /dev/XXX /var ext3 rw,nosuid,nodev 0 2 /dev/XXX /usr ext3 rw,nodev 0 2 /dev/XXX /home ext3 rw,nosuid,nodev 0 2
The command ls /proc should now show a non-empty directory. Should this fail, you may be able to mount proc from outside the chroot:
B.1.4.3. Setting Timezone
An option in the file /etc/default/rcS determines whether the system will interpret the hardware clock as being set to UTC or local time. The following command allow you to set that and choose your timezone.
B.1.4.4. Configure Networking
To configure networking, edit /etc/network/interfaces, /etc/resolv.conf, /etc/hostname and /etc/hosts.
Here are some simple examples from /usr/share/doc/ifupdown/examples:###################################################################### # /etc/network/interfaces -- configuration file for ifup(8), ifdown(8) # See the interfaces(5) manpage for information on what options are # available. ###################################################################### # We always want the loopback interface. # auto lo iface lo inet loopback # To use dhcp: # # auto eth0 # iface eth0 inet dhcp # An example static IP setup: (broadcast and gateway are optional) # # auto eth0 # iface eth0 inet static # address 192.168.0.42 # network 192.168.0.0 # netmask 255.255.255.0 # broadcast 192.168.0.255 # gateway 192.168.0.1
B.1.4.5. Configure Apt
Debootstrap will have created a very basic /etc/apt/sources.list that will allow installing additional packages. However, you may want to add some additional sources, for example for source packages and security updates:
Make sure to run aptitude update after you have made changes to the sources list.B.1.4.6. Configure Locales and Keyboard
To configure your locale settings to use a language other than
English, install the locales support package
and configure it. Currently the use of UTF-8 locales is recommended.
Note that the keyboard cannot be set while in the chroot, but will be configured for the next reboot.
B.1.5. Install a Kernel
If you intend to boot this system, you probably want a Linux kernel and a boot loader. Identify available pre-packaged kernels with:
If you intend to use a pre-packaged kernel, you may want to create the configuration file /etc/kernel-img.conf before you do so. Here's an example file:
# Kernel image management overrides # See kernel-img.conf(5) for details do_symlinks = yes relative_links = yes do_bootloader = yes do_bootfloppy = no do_initrd = yes link_in_boot = no
For detailed information about this file and the various options, consult
its man page which will be available after installing the
kernel-package package. We recommend that you check
that the values are appropriate for your system.
Then install the kernel package of your choice using its package name.
If you did not create a /etc/kernel-img.conf before installing a pre-packaged kernel, you may be asked some questions during its installation that refer to it.B.1.6. Set up the Boot Loader
To make your Emdebian Grip system bootable, set up your boot loader to load the installed kernel with your new root partition. Note that debootstrap does not install a boot loader, though you can use aptitude inside your Debian chroot to do so.
Check info grub or man lilo.conf for instructions on setting up the bootloader. If you are keeping the system you used to install Debian, just add an entry for the Debian install to your existing grub menu.lst or lilo.conf. For lilo.conf, you could also copy it to the new system and edit it there. After you are done editing, call lilo (remember it will use lilo.conf relative to the system you call it from).
Installing and setting up grub is as easy as:
Note that this assumes that a /dev/hda device file has been created. There are alternative methods to install grub, but those are outside the scope of this appendix.
Here is a basic /etc/lilo.conf as an example:
boot=/dev/hda6 root=/dev/hda6 install=menu delay=20 lba32 image=/vmlinuz initrd=/initrd.img label=Debian
Depending on which bootloader you selected, you can now make some additional changes in /etc/kernel-img.conf.
For the grub bootloader, you should
set the do_bootloader option to "no".
And to automatically update your /boot/grub/menu.lst
on installation or removal of Debian kernels, add the following lines:
lilo bootloader, the value of
do_bootloader needs to remain "yes".
Check man yaboot.conf for instructions on setting up the bootloader. If you are keeping the system you used to install Debian, just add an entry for the Debian install to your existing yaboot.conf. You could also copy it to the new system and edit it there. After you are done editing, call ybin (remember it will use yaboot.conf relative to the system you call it from).
Here is a basic /etc/yaboot.conf as an example:
On some machines, you may need to use ide0: instead of hd:.B.1.7. Finishing touches
As mentioned earlier, the installed system will be very basic. If you would like to make the system a bit more mature, there is an easy method to install all packages with "standard" priority:
Of course, you can also just use aptitude to install packages individually.After the installation there will be a lot of downloaded packages in /var/cache/apt/archives/. You can free up some diskspace by running: