Quick Start

If the target machine can boot a CD then you will be able to begin the installation by putting the CD in the drive and re-booting the machine. If you don't have that luxury, boot the machine in DOS, either from a ``DOS rescue'' floppy or from the hard disk. As a last resort you may need to build a boot disk and a drivers disk on another DOS machine to get the installation started. These methods are covered in detail in the docs/install.en.txt file previously described. What follows next is a simplified, step by step, procedure that will result in the installation of a Standard Debian GNU/Linux system.

• If the machine will not boot the CD, use one of the alternative methods provided to boot the rescue disk.

• Set color or monochrome at the opening screen, read the intro, and proceed to the Main Menu, then choose Next to configure your keyboard.

• Partition and/or install a swap partition and, at minimum, a root partition. These will be created and mounted at your direction by the installation software when the file system is created. Repeated execution of this step will create whatever other partitions are necessary for the installation.

• Install the Operating System Kernel and Modules from the CD, the hard disk, or floppies, depending on which procedure is being followed.

• After the Modules have been copied into the target partition they can be installed for use during the remainder of the installation.

• Configuring the Network is provided next, so that the base system can be obtained from a remote site if the machine has an Ethernet card installed. This can be a many step configuration process, or, for CD installs to a stand alone machine, simply a matter of choosing the machine's name.

• Installing the Base System can now be done from a variety of sources. The installation software will offer to search the media you have chosen, declaring the correct path to the base2_2.tgz file.

• Configuring the Base System is simply a matter of choosing the appropriate time zone information. The rest of the information necessary for proper Base System configuration has already been collected.

• Now the system is made bootable. Even if some other boot method is to be used in the final system, follow that step with ``Make Boot Floppy''. Make a boot floppy so you can be certain of booting your new system.

• Reboot the system.

• Give root a password; decide whether to add a new user account to the system; several other questions, including whether you wish simple or advanced installation: and the rest of the installation begins when the install script runs either apt-get or dselect depending upon the choice made.

• It is easy to get a standard system using dselect. More complex package management is possible with dselect, but usually not by the novice adventurer. This piece of software should be your first serious candidate for study once the system installation is complete. Choosing simple presents a list of package groups called tasks which you can select for installation using apt-get. Skip the next dselect items if you use the simple installation method.

• From the dselect main menu, choose the Access option. Here you can choose from the CD-ROM, the Hard Disk, an FTP site, an NFS mount, or, heaven forbid, floppies. Tell dselect where to find the Packages files and it's back to the main menu.

• First time in, either for a new install or for an upgrade from a new archives, always choose Update from the menu next. This will update the available file from the Packages files in the archives.

• Enter Select: the standard set of packages have already been pre-selected for you, unless you chose a profile. Now go straight to Install. This process is fairly long and will ask some questions near t he end of the installation period. When this completes with no errors it is time to quit dselect and start using your new system.

• At this point a Standard installation has been achieved. However, you may find packages that are not installed but are desirable and available in this release. To install them, restart dselect (as root) and go back to the Select screens. Now begin to learn about the heart of dselect. Pay close attention to the help screens and don't follow your instincts.

• Now the real fun begins!