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OS InstallationI've used several different Linux distributions in the past (mainly Redhat and Slackware) but this time I decided to try out Debian for the first time. I've been meaning to try out Debian for quite a while and now seems like as good time as any.Debian has several different release types - stable, testing, unstable for example. I decided to go with the 3.0 r1 Woody stable release. This is the newest stable release although it has been out for a while now so some of the packages are not the latest and greatest, I know that I will probably have to upgrade some of the packages once the system is built. There are several different ways to install Debian, I decided to go with downloading CD images and using those (although note that this is not Debian's recommended method...). The Woody release contains 9 CD images but you don't need all of them. Debian package up the CDs so that the most important packages are on the first CD down to the least important packages being on the ninth CD. I decided to download just the first two CDs which should contain most of the packages that I need. The CD images that I downloaded were:
Once I'd downloaded the CD images I just burnt them to CD and booted from the first one (remembering to set the BIOS to boot from the CD first). When booting from the CD the first thing that appears is a 'boot:' prompt. I didn't need to add any special parameters so I just hit enter. OK, so now into the installation proper... The first few prompts are just to set your language and keyboard type so I just set those appropriately. The next thing to do is to partition the hard disk. The install puts you into a seperate program to do the partitioning. As this was a brand new disk I was prompted to confirm that I wanted to start with a zero table which I did. I then created the following partitions:
So now the partitions have been created, initialized and activated. The next screens deal with adding any extra device driver modules that you want to add. I looked through the list of drivers, but I didn't see anything of interest in there so I just continued without installing any of these optional drivers. I was prompted for a hostname and I called mine 'pundit'. Very original I thought :-) At this point the base system was installed and I confirmed the defaults to make the system bootable and to install LILO in the MBR. I completed this part of the install by rebooting the machine when prompted after declining to create a boot disk - there didn't seem like much point when there isn't a floppy drive in this machine :-) Rather than taking out the CD for the reboot (and then inserting it again later on) I modified the BIOS during the boot up to tell it to boot from the hard drive first. Once the machine reboots you are taken automatically into the next stage of the installation. The first couple of screens just set the clock settings and timezone. I set these appropriately and told it that my hardware clock is set to GMT. Next are some screens to configure passwords for the machine. I just accepted the defaults and gave the machine a root password when prompted. You are prompted if you want to create a user account at this point and I did this, creating an account called 'matt'. The next prompt was an interesting one. The installer prompted me to say that no PCMCIA hardware had been detected and therefore should it remove the PCMCIA packages. This is of course interesting as the Pundit does have a PCMCIA slot... I guess the installer just doesn't recognise it. It is important to select 'Yes' to remove the PCMCIA packages here. The first time I went through the install I said 'No' to leave all the PCMCIA packages on the machine; The installation continued fine, but when I rebooted after the installation had been completed there was a kernel panic during the boot up. Following that there was a prompt whether I have an ISP account and want to set up PPP. Well I do have an ISP account but I answered no here as the Pundit will just access the internet via the LAN not via PPP. When it prompted to scan other CDs I inserted the second CD and got it to scan that one. The next couple of prompts are regarding setting up apt sources (apt sources tell the Debian package system where to pick up new packages from). I told it that I didn't want to add any extra apt sources and then at the next prompt I said yes to using security updates. At this point it tried to connect to the internet to get security updates. This failed as the network doesn't work at this point with the network card in the Pundit (the network card is installed after the OS install is complete). I still think that it is a good idea to say yes to the security updates at this point though, as when it fails it adds a commented out line in the /etc/apt/sources.list file which can then be easily enabled once the network is working. You get prompted whether to run tasksel next and I said yes in order to select the packages that get installed. Once tasksel starts up here are the packages that I selected to install:
Once that was complete I chose not to run dselect and then just let it install the packages, switching over CDs as prompted. Following the installation of the packages you then get prompted with all sorts of configuration questions for the packages that have been installed which I'll now detail below. Note that you should be able to tell from the title bar of the dialog which package is being configured if you get confused. Firstly I was prompted for the Less application whether I wanted to configure a mime handler for "application/*". I accepted the 'No' default for this. Next you get prompted with a couple of locale configuration options, I just selected the defaults, not adding any extra locales or anything. Again with the prompts to configure SSH I just accepted all the default settings. When prompted for configuring Psfontmgr whether I have a Postscript printer I said yes and selected the appropriate paper size. I accepted the defaults for all the CVS configuration prompts. Next up was a prompt for configuring GDM which I just selected the default. Mozilla configuration came up next, again I accepted the defaults. There were a few different prompts that then came up for configuring Samba. I accepted the default options apart from setting the workgroup name that we use here in our house - 'LOCALWG' in our case. X configuration is up next. There are quite a few different prompts for this one. I accepted the defaults for the first few prompts until it got to the point where it asked which X server driver I wanted to use. For that I also selected the default driver 'vesa' and continued accepting the defaults until it prompted me for what keyboard layout I have. I put 'uk' for that and left the keyboard variant and keyboard options settings on the next couple of screens blank. I accepted the default settings for the mouse and then said 'No' when asked if my monitor is LCD. At this point you get asked to choose a method for specifying monitor settings. I selected 'Medium' from the list and then on the next screen I set my best video mode to something fairly conservative of 1024x768 @ 75Hz. On the next screen I was prompted to select which video modes I want to use with X and I added 1024x768 to the already selected 800x600 and 640x480. I set the color depth to 16 on the next screen. Follwing the X configuration there is just an information screen about ftpd security to continue past and then the installation of all the packages begins. You just need to change over CDs as prompted. During the install of the packages I was prompted for which ISpell dictionary to use by default. I selected British, although if you're in the US you'll probably want to select American :-) When all the packages had been installed there was a message that an error had occured whilst installing cxref. I wasn't really bothered about this as cxref shouldn't be critical for anything on this box so I just continued. The install continued further and then I got a dialog asking whether I wanted to retry due to the failure. I said 'No' and continued. Next I was presented with some options to configure the mail system. The first option was the type of mail system that the machine should be. I selected option '4' for 'Local Delivery Only'. Next I was prompted for what account mail to the administrator should be delivered to. I gave it the 'matt' account. Finally I confirmed the options. At this point the system install was now complete and I was presented with a console login prompt. I rebooted using CTRL+ALT+DEL so that the system booted to a graphical login prompt.
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