As you initially install Debian, there are several steps that you shall undergo, in order:
Booting the Debian installation system, the first step, 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 7.14.
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 7.26.
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, choose the media to use to boot 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, bootable CD-ROM, or a non-Linux boot loader.
Booting from floppies is supported for most platforms, excepting Amigas and Macs. It is described in Booting from Floppies, section 5.6.
CD-ROM booting is one of the easiest ways to install. If you're unlucky and the kernel on the CD-ROM doesn't work for you, you'll have to fall back to another technique. Installing from CD-ROM is described in Installing from a CD-ROM, section 5.4.
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 5.3.
The base system can be installed in the following ways: from floppies (Installing Base from Floppies, section 5.7), from a CD-ROM (Installing from a CD-ROM, section 5.4), from an NFS server (Installing from NFS, section 5.5), or from a local hard disk (Installing from a Hard Disk, section 5.3). 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-i386 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 drives have `14' embedded in their filenames, 1.2MB images 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. Depending on your browser you may need to take special action to download directly to a file, in raw binary mode. For example, in Netscape you need to hold the shift key when clicking on the URL to retrieve the file. Files can be downloaded from the URLs in this document, or you can retrieve them from ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/slink/main/disks-i386/current/, or the corresponding directory on any of the Debian mirror sites.
If you have a 5.25 inch floppy drive, use the image with `1200' in the name; otherwise, use the image with `1440' in the name. The `tecra' images are an alternate kernel for people who have problems with the standard disks.
If you used a special Rescue Floppy image, you need to use the corresponding Drivers Floppy image.
base2_1.tgz file is for installation
from non-floppy media, i.e., CD-ROM, harddisk, or NFS.
md5sum program, you can ensure that your files are not
corrupt by running md5sum -v -c md5sum.txt.
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.
It is possible to install Debian from an already installed DOS partition on the same machine. You have two alternatives: either try the floppy-less installation, or boot from the Rescue Floppy but install base from the local disk.
To try floppyless booting, follow these directions:
install.bat from that directory in DOS.
If you want to boot from floppies, but install base from a DOS partition, then simply download and create the Rescue Floppy and Drivers Floppy as described in Creating Floppies from Disk Images, section 5.9. Download base2_1.tgz and place that file somewhere on a DOS partition.
You can install Debian from an ext2fs partition or from a Minix partition. This installation technique may be appropriate if you are 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 partition, follow these instructions.
If you have a CD which is bootable, and if you architecture and system supports booting from a CD-ROM, you don't need any floppies. Configure your hardware as indicated in Boot Device Selection, subsection 3.4.2. Then put the CD-ROM into the drive, and reboot. If you have a system which requires ``tecra'' boot images, place the second CD-ROM rather than the first one into the drive, and reboot. Now you can skip down to Booting the Installation System, chapter 6.
If your hardware does not support bootable CD-ROMs, you should boot
into DOS, and execute the boot.bat file which is located
in the \boot directory on your CD. Then, skip down to
Using dbootstrap for Initial System
Configuration, chapter 7.
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 7.14.
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 7.14), 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. If you need to, you can also modify the Rescue Floppy; see Replacing the Rescue Floppy Kernel, section 9.3.
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.
Complete these steps:
If your system has less than 5MB of memory, 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 Booting Low-Memory Systems, section 6.3 below for more instructions.
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 ; 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, make sure vold isn't running.
On other systems, ask your system administrator.
You'll find the rawrite2.exe program in the same
directory as the floppy disk images. There's also a rawrite2.txt file containing instructions for using
rawrite2.
To write the floppy disk image files to the floppy disks, first make
sure that you are booted into DOS. Many problems have been reported
when trying to use rawrite2 from within a DOS box from
within Windows. Double-clicking on rawrite2 from within
the Windows Explorer is also reported to not work. If you don't know
how to boot into DOS, just hit F8 while booting.
Once you've booted into plain DOS, 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:', depending on which floppy drive you are writing too.
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.