You can get the installation disks by downloading the appropriate files
from any Debian FTP site:
ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/
and its
mirrors.
From the directory Debian-1.1/disks-i386/current
, you'll need:
If your system can boot from a 1.44 MByte floppy disk drive, download the
file called boot1440.bin
. On the other hand, if your system
can boot only from a 1.22 MByte floppy disk drive, download the
file called boot1220.bin
.
Download the file called root.bin
. It will fit on either a
1.44 MByte or a 1.2 MByte floppy disk.
These disks contain the software that's necessary to have a bare-bones system. Depending on your configuration, you may need 1, 3, or 4 of these disks. (See notes below.)
You may of course get these disks from a friend. You can make as many copies as you want. Debian is freely redistributable, provided you follow a few simple rules. For more information, see The GNU General Public License.
If you cannot get copies of the installation disks from one of the Debian FTP sites or from a friend, then make a request to one of the Debian mailins lists. See the debian-user mailing list. The likelihood is very high that someone will be willing to help.
Complete, detailed instructions are given in the same FTP sites as the installation disks. Fetch the plain ASCII file, the Postscript file, or view them directly on the WWW.
Once the base system has been installed, you can complete the installation of your Debian GNU/Linux system by accessing packages on any (or several) of these media:
In each case, you can use either
Linux supports the ISO 9660 (CD-ROM) file system with Rock Ridge extensions (formerly known as "High Sierra"). Several vendors provide the Debian distribution in this format; these vendors have directly supported the Debian project:
iConnect Corp.
14355 SW Allen Blvd., Suite 140
Beaverton, OR 97008
Flexible Software
1000 McCrackin Road
Tallahassee, FL 32308
To install packages provided on a CD-ROM, you must have CD-ROM support
built into the kernel you have. This may require a special kernel
(see the kernels in the directory Debian-1.1/disks-i386/special/),
a custom modification of the file /etc/conf.modules
, or
(least likely nowadays) a special argument on the boot command line.
To mount a CD-ROM under the mount point /cdrom
(a directory which
should have been created during installation), use these commands:
mount -t iso9660 /dev/hdd /cdrom
if the CD-ROM is an IDE drive on the secondary IDE controller, ormount -t iso9660 /dev/scd0 /cdrom
if the CD-ROM is a SCSI drive, ormount -t iso9660 /dev/xxxxx /cdrom
where xxxxx refers to CD-ROm's which are sbpcd, cdu31a, or some
other proprietary (non-IDE) drive.Debian packages on remote hosts can be installed via the Network File System using a SLIP, PPP, PLIP or Ethernet connection. SLIP and PPP require that the the netbase and netstd packages be installed first. These packages are not part of the Debian base system, and must be obtained by one of the other methods described in this section.
No special kernel configuration (other than the network drivers for SLIP,
PPP, PLIP, or one of the Ethernet cards) is necessary to access a remote
filesystem using NFS. As with all network communication, the appropriate
ifconfig
and route
commands will have to be issued before
accessing a remote disk using NFS.
To mount a network-accessible file system using NFS (say, /var/spool/debian) under the local directory /mnt, issue the command
To ensure that the filesystem is always accessible, the appropriate string
could be added to /etc/fstab
:
The preceding example shows the appropriate entry for the NFS site at Leiden University, the Netherlands, which is the only FTP site known to export Debian via NFS officially at this time.
Copy the Debian packages onto formatted floppy disks. Either a DOS, the native Linux "ext2", or the "minix" format will do; one just has to use a mount command appropriate to the floppy that's being used.
Using floppy disks has these complications:
tools
directory at
ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/
and its
mirrors.You must have support in the kernel for floppy disks in order to read and write to floppy disk; most kernels come with floppy drive support included in them.
To mount a floppy disk under the mount point /floppy (a directory which should have been created during installation), use:
mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /floppy
if the floppy disk is in drive A: and has an MS-DOS filesystem, mount -t msdos /dev/fd1 /floppy
if the floppy disk is in drive B: and has an MS-DOS filesystem, mount -t ext2 /dev/fd0 /floppy
if the floppy disk is in drive A: and has an ext2 (i.e., a normal Linux)
filesystem.The Debian packages can be installed from a hard disk on your system,
either IDE, EIDE, SCSI (including Jaz
drives), or a drive
connected through a parallel port.
Kernel support must of course be available for the type of drive you have. The appropriate drivers are:
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDE
for IDE or EIDE drives; most kernels
include this driver.CONFIG_SCSI
for SCSI drives (including Jaz
drives),
along with one of the (many) drivers for your particular SCSI interface.CONFIG_SCSI_PPA
for the parallel port version of
ZIP
drives.To mount partition X (X =1,2,3, or 4) for a given drive under the directory
/mnt
(which should have been created during installation), use:
mount -t msdos /dev/hdaX /mnt
if the disk is drive C: and has an MS-DOS filesystem,mount -t ext2 /dev/sdaX /mnt
if the disk is a SCSI drive and has the lowest SCSI ID of any SCSI device
on your system, and has an ext2 filesystem,mount -t ext2 /dev/sdbX /mnt
if the disk is a SCSI drive and has the second lowest SCSI ID of any SCSI
device on your system, and has an ext2 filesystem,mount -t ext2 /dev/fd0 /floppy
if the floppy disk is in drive A: and has an ext2 (i.e., a normal Linux)
filesystem.mount -t msdos /dev/ppa0 /mnt
if the disk is a Zip drive
with an MS-DOS filesystem.mount -t ext2 /dev/ppa0 /mnt
if the disk has an ext2 filesystem.Note that files on a disk partition having an MS-DOS filesystem must conform
to the DOS filename limitation of 8 characters plus a 3 character extension.
Files in the Debian-1.1/msdos-i386
, non-free/msdos-i386
,
and contrib/msdos
directories conform to this limitation.
Install the Debian tool
dpkg-ftp. This package
is currently installed in the directory project/experimental
at
ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/ and its
mirrors.
To do install a package, see notes on
dpkg.
Then invoke the program dselect
, which will call dpkg-ftp
for you, guide you through the selection of packages, then install the packages,
without every downloading the packages themselves to your machine.
This method is designed to save the user both disk space and time.
Note that no special kernel configuration is needed to access and
install Debian packages by this method.
To use this service of dselect
, you will need to know:
ftp.nluug.nl.gov
if
you live in or near the Netherlands.ftp.nluug.nl
) you would specify
the directory pub/os/Linux/distr/Debian/Debian-1.1.1/
.At present, installing packages directly from tape is not supported.
One can however, use tar
, cpio
, or afio
to
copy Debian archive files onto a tape, then copy them onto your local
disk for installation. In the same vein, floppy disks
containing "tar" files would have to be copied onto a
local disk before they could be managed with the Debian package tools.
Currently there are two versions of the Debian distribution:
Approximately three months from today, the "development" software will have been stabilized and made into Debian 1.2. Further releases will follow at three-month intervals.