Installing Debian Linux 1.1 from Floppy DiskAbout Copyrights and Software LicensesI'm sure you've read the licenses that come with most commercialsoftware - they say you can only use one copy of the software on onecomputer. The Debian Linux System isn't like that.We encourage you to put a copy on every computer in your school or place ofbusiness. Lend it to your friends, and help them install it on theircomputers. You can even make thousands of copies and sell them - witha few restrictions. That's because Debian is based on free software.Free software doesn't mean that it doesn't have a copyright, it simply meansthat the copyrights and licenses of individual programs do not require youto pay for the privilege of copying the programs.There are other sorts of restrictions on how you copy the software,which you can read about once you've installed the system. For example,many of the programs in the system are licensed under the GNUGeneral Public License, or GPL. The GPL requires that youmake the source code of the programs available whenever youdistribute a copy of the program. Thus, we've included the source codefor all of those programs in the Debian system. There are several otherforms of copyright and software license used on the programs in Debian.You can find the copyrights and licenses of every program by looking inthe directory /usr/doc/copyright once you've installed your system. The most important legal notice is that this software comes withno warranties. People who write free software can't afford to be sued. System RequirementsCPUYour computer must have a 386, 486, Pentium, or Pentium Pro processor, orone of the clones of those processors made by manufacturers such as Cyrix,AMD, TI, IBM, etc. If your processor has letters like "sx", "sl", "slc", etc.after the number as in "386sx", that's fine.The system will not run on the 286 or lowerprocessors.I/O BusYour computer must use the ISA, EISA, PCI, or VL bus. The VL bus is alsoknown as VESA Local Bus or VLB. Computers that have PCI or VLB generallyhave ISA or EISA slots as well. The Micro-Channel bus used in IBM PS/2computers won't work.RAM and DiskYou must have at least 4MB of RAM and 40MB of hard disk. If you want toinstall everything from the chess game through the printed-circuitdesign software, you'll need 300MB or more.The disk interfaces that emulate the "AT" hard disk interfacewhich are often called MFM, RLL, IDE, or ATA are supported. SCSI diskcontrollers from many different manufacturers are supported. See theHardware Compatibility List for more details.Floppy DiskYou must have a 1.2MB or 1.44MB floppy disk drive as the "a:" drive inthe system upon which you will install Linux.DisplayYou should be using a VGA-compatible display interface for the consoleterminal. Nearly every modern display card is compatible with VGA.CGA, MDA, or HGA might work OK for text, but they won't work with the XWindow System, and we haven't tested them.Use of a serial terminal for the console is not yet supported.Other HardwareLinux supports a large variety hardware devices such as mice, printers,scanners, modems, network cards, etc. However, none of these devices arerequired while installing the system.Before You StartBackupsBefore you start, make sure to back up every file that is now on yoursystem. The installation procedure can wipe out all of the data on ahard disk!Information You'll NeedIf your computer is connected to a network, you should ask your network'ssystem administrator for this information:- Your host name (you may be able to decide this on your own).
- Your domain name.
- Your computer's IP address.
- The netmask to use with your network.
- The IP address of your network.
- The broadcast address to use on your network.
- The IP address of the default gateway system you should route to, ifyour network has a gateway.
- The system on your network that you should use as a DNS (Domain NameService) server.
- Whether you connect to the network using Ethernet.
Configuring Your SystemDisksThere are some hardware details you should look into.First, decide which disk you want to place the Linux system on. You'vebacked that up along with your other disks already, right?The BIOS Set-Up MenuYour motherboard probably provides a BIOS set-up menu. Some systemsstart this menu if you press DEL while the system is booting,some require a SETUP disk, and some have other means of invoking theBIOS set-up menu. If you can start this menu, use it to control thefeatures discussed in the following several paragraphs.Boot Device SelectionMany BIOS set-up menus allow you to select the devices that will be usedto bootstrap the system. Set this to look for a bootable operating systemon a:, (the first floppy disk), and then c: (the first harddisk). Since you'll boot Linux from a floppy while installing it, it'simportant that the BIOS enables booting from a floppy disk.Extended vs. Expanded MemoryIf your system provides both extended and expanded memory,set it so that there is as much extended and as little expanded memoryas possible. Linux requires extended memory and can not use expanded memory.Virus ProtectionDisable any virus-warning features your BIOS may provide.If you have a virus-protection board or other special hardware,make sure it is disabled or physically removed while running Linux.These aren't compatible with Linux, and Linux has a better method ofprotecting you from viruses.Shadow RamYour motherboard probably provides shadow RAM. You may see settingsfor "Video BIOS Shadow", "C800-CBFF Shadow", etc. Disable all shadowRAM. Shadow RAM is used to accellerate access to the ROMs on your motherboardand on some of the controller cards. Linux avoids using these ROMs once ithas booted because it provides its own faster 32-bit softwarein place of the 16-bit programs in the ROMs. Disabling the shadow RAM may makesome of it available for programs to use as normal memory. Leaving the shadowRAM enabled may interfere with Linux access to hardware devices.Advanced Power ManagementIf your motherboard provides Advanced Power Management (APM), configure itso that power management is controlled by APM. Disable the doze,standby, suspend, nap, and sleep modes, and disable the hard-diskpower-down timer. Linux can take over control of these modes, and can do abetter job of power-management than the BIOS. The version of the operatingsystem kernel on the installation floppies does not, however, use APM,because we've had reports of one laptop system crashing when the LinuxAPM driver is configured. Once you've installed Linux, you can install thesource package and build a custom-configured version of the operatingsystem kernel to enable APM and other features.Other BIOS Settings to Watch Out ForIf your BIOS offers something like "15-16 MB Memory Hole", please disablethat. Linux expects to find memory there if you have that much RAM.We have a report of an Intel Endeavor motherboard on which there is an optioncalled "LFB" or "Linear Frame Buffer". This had two settings: "Disable" and"1 Megabyte". Set it to "1 Megabyte". When disabled, the installation floppywas not read correctly, and the system eventually crashed.At this writing we don't understand what's going on with this particulardevice - it just worked with that setting and not without it. Hardware Settings to Watch Out ForIf any cards provide "mapped memory", the memory should be mapped somewherebetween 0xA0000 and 0xFFFFF (from 640K to just below 1 megabyte)or at an address at least 1 megabyte greater than the total amount of RAMin your system.Windows-specific HardwareA disturbing trend is the proliferation of Windows modems and printers.In some cases these are specially designed to be operated by the MicrosoftWindows operating system and bear the legend Made expecially forWindows-based computers. This is generally done by removing the embeddedprocessors of the hardware and shifting the work they do over to a Windowsdriver that is run by your computer's main CPU. This strategy makes the hardwareless expensive, but the savings are often not passed on to the user andthis hardware may even be more expensive than equivalent devices that retaintheir embedded intellegence.You should avoid windows-specific hardware for two reasons. The first isthat the manufacturers do not generally make the resources available towrite a Linux driver. Generally, the hardware and software interface tothe device is proprietary, and documentation is not available without anon-disclosure agreement, if it is available at all. This precludes itsbeing used for free software, since freesoftware writers disclose the source code of their programs.The second reason is that when devices like these havehad their embedded processors removed, the operating system mustperform the work of the embedded processors, often at real-timepriority, and thus the CPU is not available to run your programs whileit is driving these devices. Since the typical Windows user does notmulti-process as intensively as a Linux user, the manufacturers hope thatthe Windows user simply won't notice the burden this hardware places ontheir CPU. However, any multi-processing operating system, evenWindows 95 or NT, is degraded when peripheral manufacturersskimp on the embedded processing power of their hardware. You can help this situation by encouraging these manufacturers to releasethe documentation and other resources necessary for us to program theirhardware, but the best strategy is simply to avoid this sort of hardware. Other Closed HardwareSome hardware manufacturers simply won't tell us how to write driversfor their hardware, or they won't allow us access to the documentationwithout a non-disclosure agreement that would prevent us from releasingthe Linux source code. One example is the IBM laptop DSP sound systemused in recent ThinkPad systems - some of these systems also couple thesound system to the modem. Since we haven't been granted access to thedocumentation on these devices, they simply won't work under Linux.You can help by asking the manufacturers of such hardware to releasethe documentation. If enough people ask, they will realize that Linuxis an important market.Writing the Floppy Disk Image Files to Floppy DiskYou will need the fileroot.bin . If your a: drive ofthe system upon which you will install Linux uses1.2MB floppy disks, you will also need the filesboot1200.bin,base12-1.bin,base12-2.bin,base12-3.bin,andbase12-4.bin.If the a: drive ofthe system upon which you will install Linux uses 1.44MB floppy disks,you'll need the filesboot1440.bin,base14-1.bin,base14-2.bin,andbase14-3.bin.All of these are floppy disk image files, which means that eachfile contains the complete contents of a floppy disk in raw form.A special program is used to write the image files to floppy disk inraw mode.Find 6 formatted floppy disks if you are using 1.4 megabyte floppies, or7 if you are using 1.2 megabyte floppies. Mark these as"Installation Boot", "Installation Root", "Custom Boot","Base 1", "Base 2", "Base 3", and if you are using 1.2 megabyte floppies:"Base 4". Here is the filename-to-disk-label correspondence: boot1440.bin or boot1200.bin: "Installation Boot"
root.bin: "Installation Root"
base14-1.bin or base12-1.bin: "Base 1"
and so on for "Base 2", "Base 3", and, if you are using 1.2 megabytefloppies: "Base 4". No file is written to the Custom Boot floppy, that will be written bythe Debian system while it is being installed. Writing from a DOS, Windows, or OS-2 SystemYou'll find therawrite2.exeprogram in the/debian/toolsdirectory.There's also a rawrite2.txt file containing instructions for rawrite2.exe .To write the floppy disk image files to the floppy disks, use the command rawrite2 file drive where file is one of the floppy disk image files, and driveis either a: or b:.Writing from a Linux or Unix SystemSome workstations attempt to automaticaly mount a floppy disk when youplace it in the drive. You might have to disable this feature before theworkstation will allow you to write a floppy in raw mode.Unfortunately, I don't know the command necessary to do this for yourparticular workstation. Ask your system administrator.To write the floppy disk image files to the floppy disks, use the command dd if=file of=/dev/fd0 bs=10k ; sync where file is one of the floppy disk image files. /dev/fd0is a commonly used name of the floppy-disk device, it may be differenton your workstation. The command may return to the prompt before Unixhas finished writing the floppy disk, so look for the disk-in-use lighton the floppy drive and be sure that the light is out and the disk hasstopped 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.Installing the SystemThe Installation Boot floppyPlace the Installation Boot floppy in the a: floppy drive, andreset the system by pressing reset, turning the system off and then on,or by pressing Control-Alt-Del on the keyboard. The floppy diskshould be accessed, and you should then see a screen that starts withWelcome to Debian Linux and ends with the boot: prompt.You can do two things at the boot: prompt. You can press the functionkeysF1 through F10 to view a few pages of helpful information, or you can bootthe system. If you haveany hardware devices that aren't made accessable from Linux correctly whenLinux boots, you may find a parameter to add to the boot command line inthe screens you see by pressing F3, F4, and F5.If you add any parameters to the boot command line, be sure to typethe word linux and a space before the first parameter. If yousimply press Enter, that's the same as typing linux without anyspecial parameters. If this is the first time you're booting the system, just press Enter andsee if it works correctly. It probably will. If not, you can reboot later andlook for any special parameters that inform the system about your hardware. Once you press Enter, you should see the message Loading..., and thenUncompressing Linux..., and then a page or so of cryptic informationabout the hardware in your system. There may be a few messages in the formcan't find something, or something not present, or eventhis driver release depends on something. Most of these messages areharmless. You see them because the installation boot disk is built torun on computers with many different peripheral devices. Obviously, noone computer will have every possible peripheral device, so the operatingsystem may emit a few complaints while it looks for peripherals you don'town. The last message on the screen should be VFS: Insert root floppy diskto be loaded into ramdisk and press Enter. Insert theInstallation Root Disk, and then press enter. The Installation Root DiskThe system shouldemit a message like RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0, orLoading 1440 blocks into ram disk.... You'll see a few more messagesand then your a dialog box should appear on your screen.If you see a messagelike end_request: I/O error, dev 02:00, sector 0 followed by anotherinsert root floppy prompt, you've pressed Enter before you insertedthe disk. Do not proceed, reset the system and start again. If you proceedafter that message, the system will not use a RAM disk and the installationwill not run correctly. The Color-or-Monochrome Dialog BoxIf your monitor displays black-and-white, press Enter to continue with theinstallation.Otherwise, use the arrow key to move the cursor to the Colormenu item and then press Enter. The display should change from black-and-whiteto color. Then press Enter again to continue with the installation.The Main MenuYou may see a dialog box that says The installation program is determiningthe current state of your system. On some systems, this will go by tooquickly to read. You'll see this dialog box between steps in the main menu.The installation program will check the state of the system in between eachstep. This checking allows you to re-start the installation without losingthe work you have already done if you happen to halt your system in themiddle of the installation process.The ShellIf you are an experienced Unix or Linux user, press LeftAlt-F2 to getto the second virtual console. That's the Alt key on the left-handside of the space bar, and the F2 function key, at the same time.This is a separate window runninga Bourne shell clone called ash. At this point you are booted fromthe floppy disk, and there is a limited set of Unix utilities available foryour use. You can see what programs are available with the commandls /bin /sbin /usr/bin /usr/sbin. Use the menus to perform any task thatthey are able to do - the shell and commands are only there in case somethinggoes wrong. In particular, you should always use the menus, not the shell,to activate your swap partition, because the menu software can't detectthat you've done this from the shell.Press LeftAlt-F1 to get back to menus.Last ChanceDid we tell you to back up your disks? Here's your first chance to wipeout all of the data on your disks, and your last chance to save your oldsystem. If you haven't backed up all of your disks, remove the floppy fromthe drive, reset the system, and run backups.Partition Your Hard DisksIf you have not already partitioned your disks for Linux native and Linuxswap filesystems, the menu item Next will bePartition a Hard Disk. If you have already created at least oneLinux Native and one Linux Swap disk partition, the Next menuselection will be Initialize and Activate the Swap Disk Partition.Whatever the Next menu selection is, you can use the down-arrow key toselect Partition a Hard Disk.The Partition a Hard Disk menu item presents you with a list of diskdrives you can partition, and runs the cfdisk program, which allows youto create and edit disk partitions. Thecfdiskmanual page is includedwith this document, and you should read it now. You must create one"Linux" (type 83) disk partition, and one "Linux Swap" (type 82) partition. Your swap partition will be used to provide virtual memory for the systemand should be between 16 and 128 megabytes in size, depending on how muchdisk space you have and how many large programs you want to run. Linuxwill not use more than 128 megabytes of swap, so there's no reason to makeyour swap partition larger than that.a swap partition is strongly recommended, but you can do without one ifyou insist, and if your system has more than 16 megabytes of RAM.If you wish to do this, please select the Do Without a Swap Partitionitem from the menu. The "Linux"disk partition will hold all of your files, and you may make it anysize between 40 megabytes and the maximum size of your disk minus thesize of the swap partition. If you are already familiar with Unix orLinux, you may want to make additional partitions - for example, youcan make partitions that will hold the /var, and /usr,filesystems. Initialize and Activate the Swap Disk PartitionThis will be the Next menu item once you have created one disk partition.You have the choice of initializing and activating a new swap partition,activating a previously-initialized one, and doing without a swap partition.It's always permissible to re-initialize a swap partition, so selectInitialize and Activate the Swap Disk Partition unless you are sureyou know what you are doing. This menu choice will give you the optionto scan the entire partition for un-readable disk blocks caused by defectson the surface of the hard disk platters. This is usefulif you have MFM, RLL, or older SCSI disks, and never hurts. Properly-workingIDE disks don't need this choice, as they have their own internal mechanismfor mapping out bad disk blocks.The swap partition provides virtual memory to supplement the RAMmemory that you've installed in your system.It's even used for virtual memory while the system is being installed.That's why we initialize it first. Initialize a Linux Disk PartitionAt this point, the Next menu item should be Initialize a Linux DiskPartition. If it isn't, it's because you haven't completed the diskpartitioning process, or you haven't made one of the menu choices dealingwith your swap partition.You can initialize a Linux Disk partition,or alternatedly you can mount a previously-initialized one. These floppieswill not upgrade an old system without removing the files - Debian providesa different procedure than using the boot floppies for upgrading existingDebian systems. Thus, if you are using old disk partitions that are notempty, you should initialize them (which erases all files) here. You mustinitialize any partitions that you created in the disk partitioning step.About the only reason to mount a partition without initializing it at thispoint would be to mount a partition upon which you have already performed somepart of the installation process using this same set of installation floppies. Select the Next menu item to initialize and mount the /disk partition.The firstpartition that you mount or initialize will be the one mounted as /(pronounced root).You will be offered the choice to scanthe disk partition for bad blocks, as you were when you initialized theswap partition. It never hurts to scan for bad blocks, but it couldtake 10 minutes or more to do so if you have a large disk. Once you've mounted the / partition, the Next menu item will beInstall the Base System unless you've already performed some of theinstallation steps. You can use the arrow keys to select themenu items to initialize and/or mount disk partitions if you have anymore partitions to set up.If you have created separate partitions for /var,/usr, or other filesystems, you should initialize and/or mount themnow. Install the Base SystemThis should be the Next menu step after you've mounted your /disk,unless you've already performed some of the installation steps on /.Select the Install the Base System menu item. There will be a pausewhile the system looks for a "local copy" of the base system. This searchis for CD-ROM installations and will not succeed, and you'll be offereda menu of drives to use to read the base floppies. Select the appropriatedrive. Feed in the Base 1,2, and 3 (and 4 if you are using 1.2MB floppies) as requested by theprogram. If one of the base floppies is unreadable, you'll have tocreate a replacement floppy and feed all 3 (or 4) floppies into the systemagain. Once the floppies have all been read, the system will installthe files it's read from them. This could take 10 minutes or more on slowsystems, less on faster ones.Install the Operating System KernelAt this point, the Next menu item should be Install the OperatingSystem Kernel. Select it, and you will be prompted to select a floppydrive and insert the Installation Boot floppy. This will copy thekernel on to the hard disk. In a later step this kernel will be used tocreate a custom boot floppy for your system, and to make the hard diskbootable without a floppy.Once the kernel has been copied over to your hard disk, you will be askedto install a master boot record. If you aren't using a boot manager (andthis is probably the case if you don't know what a boot manager is), answeryes to this question. The next question will be whether you want toboot Linux automaticaly from the hard disk when you turn on your system.This sets Linux to be the bootable partition - the one that will beloaded from the hard disk. If you answer no tothis question, you can set the bootable partition later using the DOSfdisk program, or with the Linux fdisk or activateprograms. If you are installing Linux on a drive other than the first hard disk inyour system, be sure to make a boot floppy. The boot ROM of most systemsis only capable of directly booting from the first hard drive, not thesecond one. You can, however, work around this problem once you'veinstalled your system. To do so, read the instructions in the directory/usr/doc/lilo. Configure the Base SystemAt this point you've read in all of the files that make up a minimalDebian system, but you must perform some configuration before the systemwill run. Select the Configure the Base System menu item.You'll first be asked about the keyboard you are using. You can selectthe United States keyboard, or the keyboards used in other locales.Next, you'll be asked to select your time zone. Look for your time zoneor region of the world in the menu, and type it at the prompt. This maylead to another menu, in which you can select your actual time zone. Next, you'll be asked if your system clock is to be set to GMT or localtime. Select GMT if you will only be running Linux and Unix on your system,and select local time if you will be running another operating systemsuch as DOS or Windows. Unix and Linux keep GMT time on the systemclock and use software to convert it to the local time zone. This allowsthem to keep track of daylight savings time and leap years, and evenallows users who are logged in from other time zones to individuallyset the time zone used on their terminal. If you run the system clockon GMT and your locality uses daylight savings time, you'll findthat the system adjusts for daylight savings time properly on the daysthat it starts and ends. Configure the NetworkYou'll have to configure the network even if you don't have a network,but you'll only have to answer the first two questions - what is thename of your computer?, and is your system connected to a network?.If you are connected to a network, here come some questions that youmay not be able to figure out on your own - check with your systemadministrator if you don't know: - Your host name.
- Your domain name.
- Your computer's IP address.
- The netmask to use with your network.
- The IP address of your network.
- The broadcast address to use on your network.
- The IP address of the default gateway system you should route to, ifyour network has a gateway.
- The system on your network that you should use as a DNS (Domain NameService) server.
- Whether you connect to the network using Ethernet.
Some technical details you might, or might not, find handy:the program will guess that thenetwork IP address is the bitwise-ANDof your system's IP address and your netmask. It will guess the broadcastaddress is the bitwise OR of your system's IP address with the bitwisenegation of the netmask. It will guess that your gateway system is alsoyour DNS server. If you can't find any of these answers, use the system'sguesses - you can change them once the system has been installed,if necessary, by editing /etc/init.d/network .Make a Boot FloppyYou should make a boot floppy even if you intend to boot the systemfrom the hard disk. The reason for this is that it's possible for thehard disk bootstrap to be mis-installed, but a boot floppy will almostalways work. Select Make a Boot Floppy from the menu and feed thesystem a blank floppy as directed. Make sure the floppy isn'twrite-protected, as the software will format and write it. Mark thisthe "Custom Boot" floppy and write-protect it once it has been written.The Moment of TruthThis is what electrical engineers call the smoke test - what happenswhen you turn on a new system for the first time. Remove the floppy diskfrom the floppy drive, and select the Reboot the System menu item.If the Linux system doesn't start up, insertthe Custom Boot floppy you created and reset your system. Linux should boot.You should see the same messages as when you first booted the installationboot floppy, followed by some new messages, and then a screen that promptsfor your system's root password.Set the Root PasswordThis is the password for the super-user, a login that bypassesall security protection on your system. It should only be used toperform system administration, and only for as short a time as possible.Do not use root as your personal login. You will be prompted to createa personal login as well, and that's the one you should use to sendand receive e-mail and perform most of your work - not root. The reasonto avoid using root's privileges is that you might be tricked into runninga trojan-horse program - that is a program that takesadvantage of your super-user power to compromise the security of yoursystem behind your back. Any good book on Unix system administration willcover this topic in more detail - consider reading one if it's new to you.The good news is that Linux is probably more secure than other operatingsystems you might run on your PC. DOS and Windows, for example, giveall programs super-user privilege. That's one reason that they havebeen so plagued by viruses.If asked to enter the "old password" for root, just press return.All of the passwords you create should contain from 6 to 8 characters,and should contain both upper and lower-case characters, as well aspunctuation characters. Once you've added both logins, you'll be dropped into the dselectprogram. This program allows you to select packages to be installedon your system. If you have a CD-ROM or hard disk containing the additionalDebian packages that you want to install on your system, this will be usefulto you. Otherwise, you may want to quit dselect and start it later, onceyou have transported the Debian package files to your system. You must bethe super-user (root) when you run dselect. Log InAfter you've quit dselect, you'll be presented with the login prompt.Log in using the personal login and password you selected. Your system isnow ready to use.Last UpdateThe last update of this document was made onWed May 29 14:39:41 PDT 1996Copyright of This DocumentCopyright 1996 Bruce Perens. This document may be distributed under theterms of the GNU General Public License.Trademark AcknowledgementTrademarks that are not explicitly acknowledged here are the property oftheir respective holders. 386, 386sx, 486, Pentium, and Pentium Pro are theproperty of Intel. Windows is a trademark of Microsoft. ThinkPad and PS/2 arethe property of IBM.
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