8. Getting and Installing Debian GNU/Linux

8.1 Where/how can I get the Debian installation disks?

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:

The Boot Disk.

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.

The Root Disk.

Download the file called root.bin. It will fit on either a 1.44 MByte or a 1.2 MByte floppy disk.

The Base Disks.

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.

8.2 OK, I've got the disks; how do I install the system?

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.

8.3 How (and on what media) can I get the Debian packages?

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:

• a CD-ROM containing a Debian distribution.
• a remote NFS server.
• a partition of your hard disk.
• a collection of floppy disks.
• a remote system accessible by anonymous ftp.

In each case, you can use either

• dselect, Debian's user-interface program to its package system. (This will help you mount the device containing the Debian package files (if necessary), and then guide you through the selection of packages and their installation on your system.) Or,
• use dpkg directly to control the installation of individual packages. Debian gurus quizzically refer to this approach as installing packages "by hand".

8.4 How do I get and install the Debian distribution from CD-ROM?

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:

• I-Connect Co.: I-Connect provides the master FTP system used by Debian developers, and its network connection and system administration. They provide our 100 developers with free accounts on a system that is exclusively for our use, and they run our DNS domain. They also maintain several Debian packages. Use the following contact info to order their CD-ROM:
  • WWW: http://www.i-connect.net/i-connect/services/cdrom.html
  • Email (sales): sales@i-connect.net
  • Email (help): help@i-connect.net
  • Phone from inside the US: 1-503-677-2900
  • Phone from outside the US: +1-503-677-2900
  • Postal address:

           iConnect Corp.
           14355 SW Allen Blvd., Suite 140
           Beaverton, OR 97008
          
    

• Flexible Software: This company maintains 8 Debian packages, and puts a lot of manpower into supporting users on the debian-user mailing list and refining the system design with our developers. They have carefully documented the development of one of the two methods used to upgrade from Debian 0.93 to Debian 1.1.
  • Email (sales): dwarf@polaris.net
  • Postal address:

           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, or
• mount -t iso9660 /dev/scd0 /cdrom if the CD-ROM is a SCSI drive, or
• mount -t iso9660 /dev/xxxxx /cdrom where xxxxx refers to CD-ROm's which are sbpcd, cdu31a, or some other proprietary (non-IDE) drive.

8.5 How do I get and install the Debian distribution from an NFS-mounted 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

• mount -t nfs host@Fully-qualified.domain.name:/var/spool/debian \ -o ro,nosuid,soft /mnt

To ensure that the filesystem is always accessible, the appropriate string could be added to /etc/fstab:

• rulway.leidenuniv.nl:/var/spool/ftp.pub.linux.debian /mnt/debian nfs ro,nosuid,soft

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.

8.6 How can I get/install the Debian distribution from a set of floppy disks?

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:

• Short MS-DOS filenames: If you are trying to place Debian package files onto MS-DOS formatted disks, you will find that their names are generally too long, and do not conform to the MS-DOS 8.3 filename limitation. To overcome this, Debian developers make all of their packages available by 8.3 filenames in separate "msdos" subdirectories (Debian-1.1/msdos-i386, non-free/msdos-i386, and contrib/msdos). The files in these subdirectories are merely symbolic links to the Debian archive files; they only differ from the files in the binary-i386, etc. directories by having shorter file names.
• Large file sizes: Some packages are larger than 1.44 MBytes, and won't fit onto a single floppy disk. To solve this problem, use the dpkg-split tool, available in the 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.

8.7 How can I get/install the Debian distribution from my own hard disk?

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.

8.8 How can I get and install the Debian distribution directly from a remote ftp site?

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:

• the fully qualified domain name of the anonymous ftp site you plan to use. For example, you might use ftp.nluug.nl.gov if you live in or near the Netherlands.
• the directory which contains the files you want to install, or the subdirectories which contain files you want to install. This directory must contain a file called "Packages" (or its compressed equivalent, "Packages.gz"). For example, if you want to install files from the most uptodate revisions of the current Debian distribution, then (for ftp.nluug.nl) you would specify the directory pub/os/Linux/distr/Debian/Debian-1.1.1/.

8.9 How can I get and install the Debian distribution from a tape?

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.

8.10 What's the latest version of Debian?

Currently there are two versions of the Debian distribution:

• "1.1": this is stable software, and will not change.
• the "development" version . This is updated continuously. You can retrieve packages from the "development" archive on our FTP sites and use them to upgrade your system at any time.

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.