Debian GNU/Linux Installation Guide

Copyright © 2004 - 2023 the Debian Installer team

This manual is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU General Public License. Please refer to the license in
Appendix F, GNU General Public License.

Build version of this manual: 20230508+deb12u1.

Abstract

This document contains installation instructions for the Debian GNU/Linux 12
system (codename "bookworm"), for the 64-bit PowerPC (little-endian) ("ppc64el"
) architecture. It also contains pointers to more information and information
on how to make the most of your new Debian system.

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Table of Contents

Installing Debian GNU/Linux 12 for ppc64el
1. Welcome to Debian

    1.1. What is Debian?
    1.2. What is GNU/Linux?
    1.3. What is Debian GNU/Linux?
    1.4. What is the Debian Installer?
    1.5. Getting Debian
    1.6. Getting the Newest Version of This Document
    1.7. Organization of This Document
    1.8. About Copyrights and Software Licenses

2. System Requirements

    2.1. Supported Hardware

        2.1.1. Supported Architectures
        2.1.2. CPU, Main Boards, and Video Support
        2.1.3. Multiple Processors
        2.1.4. Graphics Hardware Support
        2.1.5. Network Connectivity Hardware
        2.1.6. Braille Displays
        2.1.7. Peripherals and Other Hardware

    2.2. Devices Requiring Firmware
    2.3. Purchasing Hardware Specifically for GNU/Linux

        2.3.1. Avoid Proprietary or Closed Hardware

    2.4. Installation Media

        2.4.1. CD-ROM/DVD-ROM/BD-ROM
        2.4.2. Network
        2.4.3. Hard Disk
        2.4.4. Un*x or GNU system
        2.4.5. Supported Storage Systems

    2.5. Memory and Disk Space Requirements

3. Before Installing Debian GNU/Linux

    3.1. Overview of the Installation Process
    3.2. Back Up Your Existing Data!
    3.3. Information You Will Need

        3.3.1. Documentation
        3.3.2. Finding Sources of Hardware Information
        3.3.3. Hardware Compatibility
        3.3.4. Network Settings

    3.4. Meeting Minimum Hardware Requirements
    3.5. Pre-Partitioning for Multi-Boot Systems
    3.6. Pre-Installation Hardware and Operating System Setup

        3.6.1. How to update bare metal ppc64el firmware
        3.6.2. Updating KVM guest firmware (SLOF)
        3.6.3. Updating PowerKVM hypervisor

4. Obtaining System Installation Media

    4.1. Official Debian GNU/Linux installation images
    4.2. Downloading Files from Debian Mirrors

        4.2.1. Where to Find Installation Files

    4.3. Preparing Files for Hard Disk Booting
    4.4. Preparing Files for TFTP Net Booting

        4.4.1. Setting up a DHCP server
        4.4.2. Setting up a BOOTP server
        4.4.3. Enabling the TFTP Server
        4.4.4. Move TFTP Images Into Place

    4.5. Automatic Installation

        4.5.1. Automatic Installation Using the Debian Installer

    4.6. Verifying the integrity of installation files

5. Booting the Installation System

    5.1. Booting the Installer on 64-bit PowerPC (little-endian)

        5.1.1. Booting a ppc64el machine

    5.2. Accessibility

        5.2.1. Installer front-end
        5.2.2. USB Braille Displays
        5.2.3. Serial Braille Displays
        5.2.4. Board Devices
        5.2.5. High-Contrast Theme
        5.2.6. Zoom
        5.2.7. Expert install, rescue mode, automated install
        5.2.8. Accessibility of the installed system

    5.3. Boot Parameters

        5.3.1. Boot console
        5.3.2. Debian Installer Parameters
        5.3.3. Using boot parameters to answer questions
        5.3.4. Passing parameters to kernel modules
        5.3.5. Blacklisting kernel modules

    5.4. Troubleshooting the Installation Process

        5.4.1. Reliability of optical media
        5.4.2. Boot Configuration
        5.4.3. Interpreting the Kernel Startup Messages
        5.4.4. Reporting Installation Problems
        5.4.5. Submitting Installation Reports

6. Using the Debian Installer

    6.1. How the Installer Works
    6.2. Components Introduction
    6.3. Using Individual Components

        6.3.1. Setting up Debian Installer and Hardware Configuration
        6.3.2. Setting Up Users And Passwords
        6.3.3. Configuring the Clock and Time Zone
        6.3.4. Partitioning and Mount Point Selection
        6.3.5. Installing the Base System
        6.3.6. Installing Additional Software
        6.3.7. Making Your System Bootable
        6.3.8. Finishing the Installation
        6.3.9. Troubleshooting
        6.3.10. Installation over network-console

    6.4. Loading Missing Firmware

        6.4.1. Preparing a medium
        6.4.2. Firmware and the Installed System
        6.4.3. Completing the Installed System

    6.5. Customization

        6.5.1. Installing an alternative init system

7. Booting Into Your New Debian System

    7.1. The Moment of Truth
    7.2. Mounting encrypted volumes

        7.2.1. Troubleshooting

    7.3. Log In

8. Next Steps and Where to Go From Here

    8.1. Shutting down the system
    8.2. Orienting Yourself to Debian

        8.2.1. Debian Packaging System
        8.2.2. Additional Software Available for Debian
        8.2.3. Application Version Management
        8.2.4. Cron Job Management

    8.3. Further Reading and Information
    8.4. Setting Up Your System To Use E-Mail

        8.4.1. Default E-Mail Configuration
        8.4.2. Sending E-Mails Outside The System
        8.4.3. Configuring the Exim4 Mail Transport Agent

    8.5. Compiling a New Kernel
    8.6. Recovering a Broken System

A. Installation Howto

    A.1. Preliminaries
    A.2. Booting the installer

        A.2.1. Optical disc
        A.2.2. Booting from network
        A.2.3. Booting from hard disk

    A.3. Installation
    A.4. Send us an installation report
    A.5. And finally...

B. Automating the installation using preseeding

    B.1. Introduction

        B.1.1. Preseeding methods
        B.1.2. Limitations

    B.2. Using preseeding

        B.2.1. Loading the preconfiguration file
        B.2.2. Using boot parameters to preseed questions
        B.2.3. Auto mode
        B.2.4. Aliases useful with preseeding
        B.2.5. Examples of boot prompt preseeding
        B.2.6. Using a DHCP server to specify preconfiguration files

    B.3. Creating a preconfiguration file
    B.4. Contents of the preconfiguration file (for bookworm)

        B.4.1. Localization
        B.4.2. Network configuration
        B.4.3. Network console
        B.4.4. Mirror settings
        B.4.5. Account setup
        B.4.6. Clock and time zone setup
        B.4.7. Partitioning
        B.4.8. Base system installation
        B.4.9. Apt setup
        B.4.10. Package selection
        B.4.11. Finishing up the installation
        B.4.12. Preseeding other packages

    B.5. Advanced options

        B.5.1. Running custom commands during the installation
        B.5.2. Using preseeding to change default values
        B.5.3. Chainloading preconfiguration files

C. Partitioning for Debian

    C.1. Deciding on Debian Partitions and Sizes
    C.2. The Directory Tree
    C.3. Recommended Partitioning Scheme
    C.4. Device Names in Linux
    C.5. Debian Partitioning Programs

D. Random Bits

    D.1. Linux Devices

        D.1.1. Setting Up Your Mouse

    D.2. Disk Space Needed for Tasks
    D.3. Installing Debian GNU/Linux from a Unix/Linux System

        D.3.1. Getting Started
        D.3.2. Install debootstrap
        D.3.3. Run debootstrap
        D.3.4. Configure The Base System
        D.3.5. Install a Kernel
        D.3.6. Set up the Boot Loader
        D.3.7. Remote access: Installing SSH and setting up access
        D.3.8. Finishing touches

    D.4. Installing Debian GNU/Linux using PPP over Ethernet (PPPoE)

E. Administrivia

    E.1. About This Document
    E.2. Contributing to This Document
    E.3. Major Contributions
    E.4. Trademark Acknowledgement

F. GNU General Public License

List of Tables

3.1. Hardware Information Helpful for an Install
3.2. Recommended Minimum System Requirements

Installing Debian GNU/Linux 12 for ppc64el

We are delighted that you have decided to try Debian, and are sure that you
will find that Debian's GNU/Linux distribution is unique. Debian GNU/Linux
brings together high-quality free software from around the world, integrating
it into a coherent whole. We believe that you will find that the result is
truly more than the sum of the parts.

We understand that many of you want to install Debian without reading this
manual, and the Debian installer is designed to make this possible. If you
don't have time to read the whole Installation Guide right now, we recommend
that you read the Installation Howto, which will walk you through the basic
installation process, and links to the manual for more advanced topics or for
when things go wrong. The Installation Howto can be found in Appendix A, 
Installation Howto.

With that said, we hope that you have the time to read most of this manual, and
doing so will lead to a more informed and likely more successful installation
experience.

Chapter 1. Welcome to Debian

Table of Contents

1.1. What is Debian?
1.2. What is GNU/Linux?
1.3. What is Debian GNU/Linux?
1.4. What is the Debian Installer?
1.5. Getting Debian
1.6. Getting the Newest Version of This Document
1.7. Organization of This Document
1.8. About Copyrights and Software Licenses

This chapter provides an overview of the Debian Project and Debian GNU/Linux.
If you already know about the Debian Project's history and the Debian GNU/Linux
distribution, feel free to skip to the next chapter.

1.1. What is Debian?

Debian is an all-volunteer organization dedicated to developing free software
and promoting the ideals of the Free Software community. The Debian Project
began in 1993, when Ian Murdock issued an open invitation to software
developers to contribute to a complete and coherent software distribution based
on the relatively new Linux kernel. That relatively small band of dedicated
enthusiasts, originally funded by the Free Software Foundation and influenced
by the GNU philosophy, has grown over the years into an organization of around
1000 Debian Developers.

Debian Developers are involved in a variety of activities, including Web and
FTP site administration, graphic design, legal analysis of software licenses,
writing documentation, and, of course, maintaining software packages.

In the interest of communicating our philosophy and attracting developers who
believe in the principles that Debian stands for, the Debian Project has
published a number of documents that outline our values and serve as guides to
what it means to be a Debian Developer:

  • The Debian Social Contract is a statement of Debian's commitments to the
    Free Software Community. Anyone who agrees to abide to the Social Contract
    may become a maintainer. Any maintainer can introduce new software into
    Debian -- provided that the software meets our criteria for being free, and
    the package follows our quality standards.

  • The Debian Free Software Guidelines are a clear and concise statement of
    Debian's criteria for free software. The DFSG is a very influential
    document in the Free Software Movement, and was the foundation of the The
    Open Source Definition.

  • The Debian Policy Manual is an extensive specification of the Debian
    Project's standards of quality.

Debian developers are also involved in a number of other projects; some
specific to Debian, others involving some or all of the Linux community. Some
examples include:

  • The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS) is an effort to standardize the
    layout of the Linux file system. The FHS will allow software developers to
    concentrate their efforts on designing programs, without having to worry
    about how the package will be installed in different GNU/Linux
    distributions.

  • Debian Jr. is an internal project, aimed at making sure Debian has
    something to offer to our youngest users.

For more general information about Debian, see the Debian FAQ.

1.2. What is GNU/Linux?

GNU/Linux is an operating system: a series of programs that let you interact
with your computer and run other programs.

An operating system consists of various fundamental programs which are needed
by your computer so that it can communicate and receive instructions from
users; read and write data to hard disks, tapes, and printers; control the use
of memory; and run other software. The most important part of an operating
system is the kernel. In a GNU/Linux system, Linux is the kernel component. The
rest of the system consists of other programs, many of which were written by or
for the GNU Project. Because the Linux kernel alone does not form a working
operating system, we prefer to use the term "GNU/Linux" to refer to systems
that many people casually refer to as "Linux".

GNU/Linux is modelled on the Unix operating system. From the start, GNU/Linux
was designed to be a multi-tasking, multi-user system. These facts are enough
to make GNU/Linux different from other well-known operating systems. However,
GNU/Linux is even more different than you might imagine. In contrast to other
operating systems, nobody owns GNU/Linux. Much of its development is done by
unpaid volunteers.

Development of what later became GNU/Linux began in 1984, when the Free
Software Foundation began development of a free Unix-like operating system
called GNU.

The GNU Project has developed a comprehensive set of free software tools for
use with Unix (tm) and Unix-like operating systems such as GNU/Linux. These
tools enable users to perform tasks ranging from the mundane (such as copying
or removing files from the system) to the arcane (such as writing and compiling
programs or doing sophisticated editing in a variety of document formats).

While many groups and individuals have contributed to GNU/Linux, the largest
single contributor is still the Free Software Foundation, which created not
only most of the tools used in GNU/Linux, but also the philosophy and the
community that made GNU/Linux possible.

The Linux kernel first appeared in 1991, when a Finnish computing science
student named Linus Torvalds announced an early version of a replacement kernel
for Minix to the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.minix. See Linux International's
Linux History Page.

Linus Torvalds continues to coordinate the work of several hundred developers
with the help of a number of subsystem maintainers. There is an official
website for the Linux kernel. Information about the linux-kernel mailing list
can be found on the linux-kernel mailing list FAQ.

GNU/Linux users have immense freedom of choice in their software. For example,
they can choose from a dozen different command line shells and several
graphical desktops. This selection is often bewildering to users of other
operating systems, who are not used to thinking of the command line or desktop
as something that they can change.

GNU/Linux is also less likely to crash, better able to run more than one
program at the same time, and more secure than many operating systems. With
these advantages, Linux is the fastest growing operating system in the server
market. More recently, Linux has begun to be popular among home and business
users as well.

1.3. What is Debian GNU/Linux?

The combination of Debian's philosophy and methodology and the GNU tools, the
Linux kernel, and other important free software, form a unique software
distribution called Debian GNU/Linux. This distribution is made up of a large
number of software packages. Each package in the distribution contains
executables, scripts, documentation, and configuration information, and has a 
maintainer who is primarily responsible for keeping the package up-to-date,
tracking bug reports, and communicating with the upstream author(s) of the
packaged software. Our extremely large user base, combined with our bug
tracking system ensures that problems are found and fixed quickly.

Debian's attention to detail allows us to produce a high-quality, stable, and
scalable distribution. Installations can be easily configured to serve many
roles, from stripped-down firewalls to desktop scientific workstations to
high-end network servers.

Debian is especially popular among advanced users because of its technical
excellence and its deep commitment to the needs and expectations of the Linux
community. Debian also introduced many features to Linux that are now
commonplace.

For example, Debian was the first Linux distribution to include a package
management system for easy installation and removal of software. It was also
the first Linux distribution that could be upgraded without requiring
reinstallation.

Debian continues to be a leader in Linux development. Its development process
is an example of just how well the Open Source development model can work --
even for very complex tasks such as building and maintaining a complete
operating system.

The feature that most distinguishes Debian from other Linux distributions is
its package management system. These tools give the administrator of a Debian
system complete control over the packages installed on that system, including
the ability to install a single package or automatically update the entire
operating system. Individual packages can also be protected from being updated.
You can even tell the package management system about software you have
compiled yourself and what dependencies it fulfills.

To protect your system against "Trojan horses" and other malevolent software,
Debian's servers verify that uploaded packages come from their registered
Debian maintainers. Debian packagers also take great care to configure their
packages in a secure manner. When security problems in shipped packages do
appear, fixes are usually available very quickly. With Debian's simple update
options, security fixes can be downloaded and installed automatically across
the Internet.

The primary, and best, method of getting support for your Debian GNU/Linux
system and communicating with Debian Developers is through the many mailing
lists maintained by the Debian Project (there are more than 327 at this
writing). The easiest way to subscribe to one or more of these lists is visit
Debian's mailing list subscription page and fill out the form you'll find
there.

1.4. What is the Debian Installer?

Debian Installer, also known as "d-i", is the software system to install a
basic working Debian system. A wide range of hardware such as embedded devices,
laptops, desktops and server machines is supported and a large set of free
software for many purposes is offered.

The installation is conducted by answering a basic set of questions. Also
available are an expert mode that allows to control every aspect of the
installation and an advanced feature to perform automated installations. The
installed system can be used as is or further customized. The installation can
be performed from a multitude of sources: USB, CD/DVD/Blu-Ray or the network.
The installer supports localized installations in more than 80 languages.

The installer has its origin in the boot-floppies project, and it was first
mentioned by Joey Hess in 2000. Since then the installation system has been
continuously developed by volunteers improving and adding more features.

More information can be found on the Debian Installer page, on the Wiki and on
the debian-boot mailing list.

1.5. Getting Debian

For information on how to download Debian GNU/Linux from the Internet or from
whom official Debian installation media can be purchased, see the distribution
web page. The list of Debian mirrors contains a full set of official Debian
mirrors, so you can easily find the nearest one.

Debian can be upgraded after installation very easily. The installation
procedure will help set up the system so that you can make those upgrades once
installation is complete, if need be.

1.6. Getting the Newest Version of This Document

This document is constantly being revised. Be sure to check the Debian 12 pages
for any last-minute information about the 12 release of the Debian GNU/Linux
system. Updated versions of this installation manual are also available from
the official Install Manual pages.

1.7. Organization of This Document

This document is meant to serve as a manual for first-time Debian users. It
tries to make as few assumptions as possible about your level of expertise.
However, we do assume that you have a general understanding of how the hardware
in your computer works.

Expert users may also find interesting reference information in this document,
including minimum installation sizes, details about the hardware supported by
the Debian installation system, and so on. We encourage expert users to jump
around in the document.

In general, this manual is arranged in a linear fashion, walking you through
the installation process from start to finish. Here are the steps in installing
Debian GNU/Linux, and the sections of this document which correlate with each
step:

 1. Determine whether your hardware meets the requirements for using the
    installation system, in Chapter 2, System Requirements.

 2. Backup your system, perform any necessary planning and hardware
    configuration prior to installing Debian, in Chapter 3, Before Installing
    Debian GNU/Linux. If you are preparing a multi-boot system, you may need to
    create partitionable space on your hard disk for Debian to use.

 3. In Chapter 4, Obtaining System Installation Media, you will obtain the
    necessary installation files for your method of installation.

 4. The next Chapter 5, Booting the Installation System describes booting into
    the installation system. This chapter also discusses troubleshooting
    procedures in case you have problems with this step.

 5. Perform the actual installation according to Chapter 6, Using the Debian
    Installer. This involves choosing your language, configuring peripheral
    driver modules, configuring your network connection, so that remaining
    installation files can be obtained directly from a Debian server (if you
    are not installing from a set of CD/DVD installation images), partitioning
    your hard drives and installation of a base system, then selection and
    installation of tasks. (Some background about setting up the partitions for
    your Debian system is explained in Appendix C, Partitioning for Debian.)

 6. Boot into your newly installed base system, from Chapter 7, Booting Into
    Your New Debian System.

Once you've got your system installed, you can read Chapter 8, Next Steps and
Where to Go From Here. That chapter explains where to look to find more
information about Unix and Debian, and how to replace your kernel.

Finally, information about this document and how to contribute to it may be
found in Appendix E, Administrivia.

1.8. About Copyrights and Software Licenses

We're sure that you've read some of the licenses that come with most commercial
software -- they usually say that you can only use one copy of the software on
a single computer. This system's license isn't like that at all. We encourage
you to put a copy of Debian GNU/Linux on every computer in your school or place
of business. Lend your installation media to your friends and help them install
it on their computers! You can even make thousands of copies and sell them --
albeit with a few restrictions. Your freedom to install and use the system
comes directly from Debian being based on free software.

Calling software free doesn't mean that the software isn't copyrighted, and it
doesn't mean that installation media containing that software must be
distributed at no charge. Free software, in part, means that the licenses of
individual programs do not require you to pay for the privilege of distributing
or using those programs. Free software also means that not only may anyone
extend, adapt, and modify the software, but that they may distribute the
results of their work as well.

Note

The Debian project, as a pragmatic concession to its users, does make some
packages available that do not meet our criteria for being free. These packages
are not part of the official distribution, however, and are only available from
the contrib or non-free areas of Debian mirrors or on third-party CD/DVD-ROMs;
see the Debian FAQ, under "The Debian FTP archives", for more information about
the layout and contents of the archives.

Many of the programs in the system are licensed under the GNU General Public
License, often simply referred to as "the GPL". The GPL requires you to make
the source code of the programs available whenever you distribute a binary copy
of the program; that provision of the license ensures that any user will be
able to modify the software. Because of this provision, the source code^[1] for
all such programs is available in the Debian system.

There are several other forms of copyright statements and software licenses
used on the programs in Debian. You can find the copyrights and licenses for
every package installed on your system by looking in the file /usr/share/doc/
package-name/copyright once you've installed a package on your system.

For more information about licenses and how Debian determines whether software
is free enough to be included in the main distribution, see the Debian Free
Software Guidelines.

The most important legal notice is that this software comes with no warranties.
The programmers who have created this software have done so for the benefit of
the community. No guarantee is made as to the suitability of the software for
any given purpose. However, since the software is free, you are empowered to
modify that software to suit your needs -- and to enjoy the benefits of the
changes made by others who have extended the software in this way.


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

^[1] For information on how to locate, unpack, and build binaries from Debian
source packages, see the Debian FAQ, under "Basics of the Debian Package
Management System".

Chapter 2. System Requirements

Table of Contents

2.1. Supported Hardware

    2.1.1. Supported Architectures
    2.1.2. CPU, Main Boards, and Video Support
    2.1.3. Multiple Processors
    2.1.4. Graphics Hardware Support
    2.1.5. Network Connectivity Hardware
    2.1.6. Braille Displays
    2.1.7. Peripherals and Other Hardware

2.2. Devices Requiring Firmware
2.3. Purchasing Hardware Specifically for GNU/Linux

    2.3.1. Avoid Proprietary or Closed Hardware

2.4. Installation Media

    2.4.1. CD-ROM/DVD-ROM/BD-ROM
    2.4.2. Network
    2.4.3. Hard Disk
    2.4.4. Un*x or GNU system
    2.4.5. Supported Storage Systems

2.5. Memory and Disk Space Requirements

This section contains information about what hardware you need to get started
with Debian. You will also find links to further information about hardware
supported by GNU and Linux.

2.1. Supported Hardware

Debian does not impose hardware requirements beyond the requirements of the
Linux or kFreeBSD kernel and the GNU tool-sets. Therefore, any architecture or
platform to which the Linux or kFreeBSD kernel, libc, gcc, etc. have been
ported, and for which a Debian port exists, can run Debian. Please refer to the
Ports pages at https://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/ for more details on 64-bit
PowerPC (little-endian) architecture systems which have been tested with Debian
GNU/Linux.

Rather than attempting to describe all the different hardware configurations
which are supported for 64-bit PowerPC (little-endian), this section contains
general information and pointers to where additional information can be found.

2.1.1. Supported Architectures

Debian GNU/Linux 12 supports 9 major architectures and several variations of
each architecture known as "flavors".

┌───────────────────────┬────────────────┬─────────────────────────┬──────────┐
│     Architecture      │     Debian     │     Subarchitecture     │  Flavor  │
│                       │  Designation   │                         │          │
├───────────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────────────┼──────────┤
│AMD64 & Intel 64       │amd64           │                         │          │
├───────────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────────────┼──────────┤
│                       │                │default x86 machines     │default   │
│Intel x86-based        │i386            ├─────────────────────────┼──────────┤
│                       │                │Xen PV domains only      │xen       │
├───────────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────────────┼──────────┤
│ARM                    │armel           │Marvell Kirkwood and     │marvell   │
│                       │                │Orion                    │          │
├───────────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────────────┼──────────┤
│ARM with hardware FPU  │armhf           │multiplatform            │armmp     │
├───────────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────────────┼──────────┤
│64bit ARM              │arm64           │                         │          │
├───────────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────────────┼──────────┤
│                       │                │MIPS Malta               │5kc-malta │
│64bit MIPS             │                ├─────────────────────────┼──────────┤
│(little-endian)        │mips64el        │Cavium Octeon            │octeon    │
│                       │                ├─────────────────────────┼──────────┤
│                       │                │Loongson 3               │loongson-3│
├───────────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────────────┼──────────┤
│                       │                │MIPS Malta               │4kc-malta │
│32bit MIPS             │                ├─────────────────────────┼──────────┤
│(little-endian)        │mipsel          │Cavium Octeon            │octeon    │
│                       │                ├─────────────────────────┼──────────┤
│                       │                │Loongson 3               │loongson-3│
├───────────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────────────┼──────────┤
│Power Systems          │ppc64el         │IBM POWER8 or newer      │          │
│                       │                │machines                 │          │
├───────────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────────────┼──────────┤
│64bit IBM S/390        │s390x           │IPL from VM-reader and   │generic   │
│                       │                │DASD                     │          │
└───────────────────────┴────────────────┴─────────────────────────┴──────────┘

This document covers installation for the 64-bit PowerPC (little-endian)
architecture using the Linux kernel. If you are looking for information on any
of the other Debian-supported architectures take a look at the Debian-Ports
pages.

This is the first official release of Debian GNU/Linux for the 64-bit PowerPC
(little-endian) architecture. We feel that it has proven itself sufficiently to
be released. However, because it has not had the exposure (and hence testing by
users) that some other architectures have had, you may encounter a few bugs.
Use our Bug Tracking System to report any problems; make sure to mention the
fact that the bug is on the 64-bit PowerPC (little-endian) platform using the 
Linux kernel. It can be necessary to use the debian-powerpc mailing list as
well.

2.1.2. CPU, Main Boards, and Video Support

2.1.2.1. Machines

  • S822L

  • S821L

  • S822

  • S821

  • TYAN GN70-BP010

2.1.3. Multiple Processors

Multiprocessor support -- also called "symmetric multiprocessing" or SMP -- is
available for this architecture. Having multiple processors in a computer was
originally only an issue for high-end server systems but has become common in
recent years nearly everywhere with the introduction of so called "multi-core"
processors. These contain two or more processor units, called "cores", in one
physical chip.

The standard Debian 12 kernel image has been compiled with SMP support. It is
also usable on non-SMP systems without problems.

2.1.4. Graphics Hardware Support

Debian's support for graphical interfaces is determined by the underlying
support found in X.Org's X11 system, and the kernel. Basic framebuffer graphics
is provided by the kernel, whilst desktop environments use X11. Whether
advanced graphics card features such as 3D-hardware acceleration or
hardware-accelerated video are available, depends on the actual graphics
hardware used in the system and in some cases on the installation of additional
"firmware" blobs (see Section 2.2, "Devices Requiring Firmware").

Details on supported graphics hardware and pointing devices can be found at
https://wiki.freedesktop.org/xorg/. Debian 12 ships with X.Org version 7.7.

2.1.5. Network Connectivity Hardware

Almost any network interface card (NIC) supported by the Linux kernel should
also be supported by the installation system; drivers should normally be loaded
automatically.

2.1.6. Braille Displays

Support for braille displays is determined by the underlying support found in
brltty. Most displays work under brltty, connected via either a serial port,
USB or bluetooth. Details on supported braille devices can be found on the
brltty website. Debian GNU/Linux 12 ships with brltty version 6.5.

2.1.7. Peripherals and Other Hardware

Linux supports a large variety of hardware devices such as mice, printers,
scanners, PCMCIA/CardBus/ExpressCard and USB devices. However, most of these
devices are not required while installing the system.

2.2. Devices Requiring Firmware

Besides the availability of a device driver, some hardware also requires
so-called firmware or microcode to be loaded into the device before it can
become operational. This is most common for network interface cards (especially
wireless NICs), but for example some USB devices and even some hard disk
controllers also require firmware.

With many graphics cards, basic functionality is available without additional
firmware, but the use of advanced features requires an appropriate firmware
file to be installed in the system.

On many older devices which require firmware to work, the firmware file was
permanently placed in an EEPROM/Flash chip on the device itself by the
manufacturer. Nowadays most new devices do not have the firmware embedded this
way anymore, so the firmware file must be uploaded into the device by the host
operating system every time the system boots.

In most cases firmware is non-free according to the criteria used by the Debian
GNU/Linux project and thus cannot be included in the main distribution. If the
device driver itself is included in the distribution and if Debian GNU/Linux
legally can distribute the firmware, it will often be available as a separate
package from the non-free-firmware section of the archive (prior to Debian GNU/
Linux 12.0: from the non-free section).

However, this does not mean that such hardware cannot be used during
installation. Starting with Debian GNU/Linux 12.0, following the 2022 General
Resolution about non-free firmware, official installation images can include
non-free firmware packages. By default, debian-installer will detect required
firmware (based on kernel logs and modalias information), and install the
relevant packages if they are found on an installation medium (e.g. on the
netinst). The package manager gets automatically configured with the matching
components so that those packages get security updates. This usually means that
the non-free-firmware component gets enabled, in addition to main.

Users who wish to disable firmware lookup entirely can do so by setting the
firmware=never boot parameter. It's an alias for the longer hw-detect/
firmware-lookup=never form.

Unless firmware lookup is disabled entirely, debian-installer still supports
loading firmware files or packages containing firmware from a removable medium,
such as a USB stick. See Section 6.4, "Loading Missing Firmware" for detailed
information on how to load firmware files or packages during the installation.
Note that debian-installer is less likely to prompt for firmware files now that
non-free firmware packages can be included on installation images.

If the debian-installer prompts for a firmware file and you do not have this
firmware file available or do not want to install a non-free firmware file on
your system, you can try to proceed without loading the firmware. There are
several cases where a driver prompts for additional firmware because it may be
needed under certain circumstances, but the device does work without it on most
systems (this e.g. happens with certain network cards using the tg3 driver).

2.3. Purchasing Hardware Specifically for GNU/Linux

There are several vendors, who ship systems with Debian or other distributions
of GNU/Linux pre-installed. You might pay more for the privilege, but it does
buy a level of peace of mind, since you can be sure that the hardware is
well-supported by GNU/Linux.

Whether or not you are purchasing a system with Linux bundled, or even a used
system, it is still important to check that your hardware is supported by the
Linux kernel. Check if your hardware is listed in the references found above.
Let your salesperson (if any) know that you're shopping for a Linux system.
Support Linux-friendly hardware vendors.

2.3.1. Avoid Proprietary or Closed Hardware

Some hardware manufacturers simply won't tell us how to write drivers for their
hardware. Others won't allow us access to the documentation without a
non-disclosure agreement that would prevent us from releasing the driver's
source code, which is one of the central elements of free software. Since we
haven't been granted access to usable documentation on these devices, they
simply won't work under Linux.

In many cases there are standards (or at least some de-facto standards)
describing how an operating system and its device drivers communicate with a
certain class of devices. All devices which comply to such a (de-facto-)
standard can be used with a single generic device driver and no device-specific
drivers are required. With some kinds of hardware (e.g. USB "Human Interface
Devices", i.e. keyboards, mice, etc., and USB mass storage devices like USB
flash disks and memory card readers) this works very well and practically every
device sold in the market is standards-compliant.

In other fields, among them e.g. printers, this is unfortunately not the case.
While there are many printers which can be addressed via a small set of
(de-facto-)standard control languages and therefore can be made to work without
problems in any operating system, there are quite a few models which only
understand proprietary control commands for which no usable documentation is
available and therefore either cannot be used at all on free operating systems
or can only be used with a vendor-supplied closed-source driver.

Even if there is a vendor-provided closed-source driver for such hardware when
purchasing the device, the practical lifespan of the device is limited by
driver availability. Nowadays product cycles have become short and it is not
uncommon that a short time after a consumer device has ceased production, no
driver updates get made available any more by the manufacturer. If the old
closed-source driver does not work anymore after a system update, an otherwise
perfectly working device becomes unusable due to lacking driver support and
there is nothing that can be done in this case. You should therefore avoid
buying closed hardware in the first place, regardless of the operating system
you want to use it with.

You can help improve this situation by encouraging manufacturers of closed
hardware to release the documentation and other resources necessary for us to
provide free drivers for their hardware.

2.4. Installation Media

This section will help you determine which different media types you can use to
install Debian. There is a whole chapter devoted to media, Chapter 4, Obtaining
System Installation Media, which lists the advantages and disadvantages of each
media type. You may want to refer back to this page once you reach that
section.

2.4.1. CD-ROM/DVD-ROM/BD-ROM

Installation from optical disc is supported for most architectures.

2.4.2. Network

The network can be used during the installation to retrieve files needed for
the installation. Whether the network is used or not depends on the
installation method you choose and your answers to certain questions that will
be asked during the installation. The installation system supports most types
of network connections (including PPPoE, but not ISDN or PPP), via either HTTP
or FTP. After the installation is completed, you can also configure your system
to use ISDN and PPP.

You can also boot the installation system over the network without needing any
local media like CDs/DVDs or USB sticks. If you already have a
netboot-infrastructure available (i.e. you are already running DHCP and TFTP
services in your network), this allows an easy and fast deployment of a large
number of machines. Setting up the necessary infrastructure requires a certain
level of technical experience, so this is not recommended for novice users.

Diskless installation, using network booting from a local area network and
NFS-mounting of all local filesystems, is another option.

2.4.3. Hard Disk

Booting the installation system directly from a hard disk is another option for
many architectures. This will require some other operating system to load the
installer onto the hard disk. This method is only recommended for special cases
when no other installation method is available.

2.4.4. Un*x or GNU system

If you are running another Unix-like system, you could use it to install Debian
GNU/Linux without using the debian-installer described in the rest of this
manual. This kind of install may be useful for users with otherwise unsupported
hardware or on hosts which can't afford downtime. If you are interested in this
technique, skip to the Section D.3, "Installing Debian GNU/Linux from a Unix/
Linux System". This installation method is only recommended for advanced users
when no other installation method is available.

2.4.5. Supported Storage Systems

The Debian installer contains a kernel which is built to maximize the number of
systems it runs on.

IDE systems are also supported.

2.5. Memory and Disk Space Requirements

You must have at least 64MB of memory and 1160MB of hard disk space to perform
a normal installation. Note that these are fairly minimal numbers. For more
realistic figures, see Section 3.4, "Meeting Minimum Hardware Requirements".

The installer normally automatically enables memory-saving tricks to be able to
run on such low-memory system, but on architectures that are less tested it may
miss doing so. It can however be enabled manually by appending the lowmem=1 or
even lowmem=2 boot parameter (see also Section 6.3.1.1, "Check available memory
/ low memory mode" and Section 5.3.2, "Debian Installer Parameters").

Warning

On ppc64el the lowmem levels have not been tested, so automatic detection is
probably outdated and you thus probably need to pass the boot parameter if your
system has little memory.

Installation on systems with less memory or disk space available may be
possible but is only advised for experienced users.

Chapter 3. Before Installing Debian GNU/Linux

Table of Contents

3.1. Overview of the Installation Process
3.2. Back Up Your Existing Data!
3.3. Information You Will Need

    3.3.1. Documentation
    3.3.2. Finding Sources of Hardware Information
    3.3.3. Hardware Compatibility
    3.3.4. Network Settings

3.4. Meeting Minimum Hardware Requirements
3.5. Pre-Partitioning for Multi-Boot Systems
3.6. Pre-Installation Hardware and Operating System Setup

    3.6.1. How to update bare metal ppc64el firmware
    3.6.2. Updating KVM guest firmware (SLOF)
    3.6.3. Updating PowerKVM hypervisor

This chapter deals with the preparation for installing Debian before you even
boot the installer. This includes backing up your data, gathering information
about your hardware, and locating any necessary information.

3.1. Overview of the Installation Process

First, just a note about re-installations. With Debian, a circumstance that
will require a complete re-installation of your system is very rare; perhaps
mechanical failure of the hard disk would be the most common case.

Many common operating systems may require a complete installation to be
performed when critical failures take place or for upgrades to new OS versions.
Even if a completely new installation isn't required, often the programs you
use must be re-installed to operate properly in the new OS.

Under Debian GNU/Linux, it is much more likely that your OS can be repaired
rather than replaced if things go wrong. Upgrades never require a wholesale
installation; you can always upgrade in-place. And the programs are almost
always compatible with successive OS releases. If a new program version
requires newer supporting software, the Debian packaging system ensures that
all the necessary software is automatically identified and installed. The point
is, much effort has been put into avoiding the need for re-installation, so
think of it as your very last option. The installer is not designed to
re-install over an existing system.

Here's a road map for the steps you will take during the installation process.

 1. Back up any existing data or documents on the hard disk where you plan to
    install.

 2. Gather information about your computer and any needed documentation, before
    starting the installation.

 3. Create partitionable space for Debian on your hard disk.

 4. Locate and/or download the installer software and any specialized driver or
    firmware files your machine requires.

 5. Set up boot media such as CDs/DVDs/USB sticks or provide a network boot
    infrastructure from which the installer can be booted.

 6. Boot the installation system.

 7. Select the installation language.

 8. Activate the ethernet network connection, if available.

 9. Create and mount the partitions on which Debian will be installed.

10. Watch the automatic download/install/setup of the base system.

11. Select and install additional software.

12. Install a boot loader which can start up Debian GNU/Linux and/or your
    existing system.

13. Load the newly installed system for the first time.

If you have problems during the installation, it helps to know which packages
are involved in which steps. Introducing the leading software actors in this
installation drama:

The installer software, debian-installer, is the primary concern of this
manual. It detects hardware and loads appropriate drivers, uses dhcp-client to
set up the network connection, runs debootstrap to install the base system
packages, and runs tasksel to allow you to install certain additional software.
Many more actors play smaller parts in this process, but debian-installer has
completed its task when you load the new system for the first time.

To tune the system to your needs, tasksel allows you to choose to install
various predefined bundles of software like a Web server or a Desktop
environment.

One important option during the installation is whether or not to install a
graphical desktop environment, consisting of the X Window System and one of the
available graphical desktop environments. If you choose not to select the "
Desktop environment" task, you will only have a relatively basic, command line
driven system. Installing the Desktop environment task is optional because in
relation to a text-mode-only system it requires a comparatively large amount of
disk space and because many Debian GNU/Linux systems are servers which don't
really have any need for a graphical user interface to do their job.

Just be aware that the X Window System is completely separate from
debian-installer, and in fact is much more complicated. Troubleshooting of the
X Window System is not within the scope of this manual.

3.2. Back Up Your Existing Data!

Before you start, make sure to back up every file that is now on your system.
If this is the first time a non-native operating system is going to be
installed on your computer, it is quite likely you will need to re-partition
your disk to make room for Debian GNU/Linux. Anytime you partition your disk,
you run a risk of losing everything on the disk, no matter what program you use
to do it. The programs used in the installation of Debian GNU/Linux are quite
reliable and most have seen years of use; but they are also quite powerful and
a false move can cost you. Even after backing up, be careful and think about
your answers and actions. Two minutes of thinking can save hours of unnecessary
work.

If you are creating a multi-boot system, make sure that you have the
distribution media of any other present operating systems on hand. Even though
this is normally not necessary, there might be situations in which you could be
required to reinstall your operating system's boot loader to make the system
boot or in a worst case even have to reinstall the complete operating system
and restore your previously made backup.

3.3. Information You Will Need

3.3.1. Documentation

3.3.1.1. Installation Manual

The document you are now reading, which is the official version of the
Installation Guide for the bookworm release of Debian; available in various
formats and translations.

3.3.1.2. Hardware documentation

Often contains useful information on configuring or using your hardware.

3.3.2. Finding Sources of Hardware Information

In many cases, the installer will be able to automatically detect your
hardware. But to be prepared, we do recommend familiarizing yourself with your
hardware before the install.

Hardware information can be gathered from:

  • The manuals that come with each piece of hardware.

  • The BIOS/UEFI setup screens of your computer. You can view these screens
    when you start your computer by pressing a combination of keys. Check your
    manual for the combination. Often, it is the Delete or the F2 key, but some
    manufacturers use other keys or key combinations. Usually upon starting the
    computer there will be a message stating which key to press to enter the
    setup screen.

  • The cases and boxes for each piece of hardware.

  • System commands or tools in another operating system, including file
    manager displays. This source is especially useful for information about
    RAM and hard drive memory.

  • Your system administrator or Internet Service Provider. These sources can
    tell you the settings you need to set up your networking and e-mail.

Table 3.1. Hardware Information Helpful for an Install

┌──────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│     Hardware     │              Information You Might Need               │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                  │How many you have.                                     │
│                  ├───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                  │Their order on the system.                             │
│                  ├───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                  │Whether IDE (also known as PATA), SATA or SCSI.        │
│Hard Drives       ├───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                  │Available free space.                                  │
│                  ├───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                  │Partitions.                                            │
│                  ├───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                  │Partitions where other operating systems are installed.│
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│Network interfaces│Type/model of available network interfaces.            │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│Printer           │Model and manufacturer.                                │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│Video Card        │Type/model and manufacturer.                           │
└──────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘


3.3.3. Hardware Compatibility

Many products work without trouble on Linux. Moreover, hardware support in
Linux is improving daily. However, Linux still does not run as many different
types of hardware as some operating systems.

Drivers in Linux in most cases are not written for a certain "product" or "
brand" from a specific manufacturer, but for a certain hardware/chipset. Many
seemingly different products/brands are based on the same hardware design; it
is not uncommon that chip manufacturers provide so-called "reference designs"
for products based on their chips which are then used by several different
device manufacturers and sold under lots of different product or brand names.

This has advantages and disadvantages. An advantage is that a driver for one
chipset works with lots of different products from different manufacturers, as
long as their product is based on the same chipset. The disadvantage is that it
is not always easy to see which actual chipset is used in a certain product/
brand. Unfortunately sometimes device manufacturers change the hardware base of
their product without changing the product name or at least the product version
number, so that when having two items of the same brand/product name bought at
different times, they can sometimes be based on two different chipsets and
therefore use two different drivers or there might be no driver at all for one
of them.

For USB and PCI/PCI-Express/ExpressCard devices, a good way to find out on
which chipset they are based is to look at their device IDs. All USB/PCI/
PCI-Express/ExpressCard devices have so called "vendor" and "product" IDs, and
the combination of these two is usually the same for any product based on the
same chipset.

On Linux systems, these IDs can be read with the lsusb command for USB devices
and with the lspci -nn command for PCI/PCI-Express/ExpressCard devices. The
vendor and product IDs are usually given in the form of two hexadecimal
numbers, separated by a colon, such as "1d6b:0001".

An example for the output of lsusb: "Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux
Foundation 2.0 root hub", whereby 1d6b is the vendor ID and 0002 is the product
ID.

An example for the output of lspci -nn for an Ethernet card: "03:00.0 Ethernet
controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express
Gigabit Ethernet controller [10ec:8168] (rev 06)". The IDs are given inside the
rightmost square brackets, i.e. here 10ec is the vendor- and 8168 is the
product ID.

As another example, a graphics card could give the following output: "04:00.0
VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RV710
[Radeon HD 4350] [1002:954f]".

On Windows systems, the IDs for a device can be found in the Windows device
manager on the tab "details", where the vendor ID is prefixed with VEN_ and the
product ID is prefixed with DEV_. On Windows 7 systems, you have to select the
property "Hardware IDs" in the device manager's details tab to actually see the
IDs, as they are not displayed by default.

Searching on the internet with the vendor/product ID, "Linux" and "driver" as
the search terms often results in information regarding the driver support
status for a certain chipset. If a search for the vendor/product ID does not
yield usable results, a search for the chip code names, which are also often
provided by lsusb and lspci ("RTL8111"/"RTL8168B" in the network card example
and "RV710" in the graphics card example), can help.

3.3.3.1. Testing hardware compatibility with a Live-System

Debian GNU/Linux is also available as a so-called "live system" for certain
architectures. A live system is a preconfigured ready-to-use system in a
compressed format that can be booted and used from a read-only medium like a CD
or DVD. Using it by default does not create any permanent changes on your
computer. You can change user settings and install additional programs from
within the live system, but all this only happens in the computer's RAM, i.e.
if you turn off the computer and boot the live system again, everything is
reset to its defaults. If you want to see whether your hardware is supported by
Debian GNU/Linux, the easiest way is to run a Debian live system on it and try
it out.

There are a few limitations in using a live system. The first is that as all
changes you do within the live system must be held in your computer's RAM, this
only works on systems with enough RAM to do that, so installing additional
large software packages may fail due to memory constraints. Another limitation
with regards to hardware compatibility testing is that the official Debian GNU/
Linux live system contains only free components, i.e. there are no non-free
firmware files included in it. Such non-free packages can of course be
installed manually within the system, but there is no automatic detection of
required firmware files like in the debian-installer, so installation of
non-free components must be done manually if needed.

Information about the available variants of the Debian live images can be found
at the Debian Live Images website.

3.3.4. Network Settings

If your computer is connected to a fixed network (i.e. an Ethernet or
equivalent connection -- not a dialup/PPP connection) which is administered by
somebody else, you should ask your network's system 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 the default gateway system you should route to, if your
    network has a gateway.

  • The system on your network that you should use as a DNS (Domain Name
    Service) server.

If the network you are connected to uses DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration
Protocol) for configuring network settings, you don't need this information
because the DHCP server will provide it directly to your computer during the
installation process.

If you have internet access via DSL or cable modem (i.e. over a cable tv
network) and have a router (often provided preconfigured by your phone or catv
provider) which handles your network connectivity, DHCP is usually available by
default.

If you use a WLAN/WiFi network, you should find out:

  • The ESSID ("network name") of your wireless network.

  • The WEP or WPA/WPA2 security key to access the network (if applicable).

3.4. Meeting Minimum Hardware Requirements

Once you have gathered information about your computer's hardware, check that
your hardware will let you do the type of installation that you want to do.

Depending on your needs, you might manage with less than some of the
recommended hardware listed in the table below. However, most users risk being
frustrated if they ignore these suggestions.

Table 3.2. Recommended Minimum System Requirements

┌────────────┬─────────────┬─────────────────┬────────────┐
│Install Type│RAM (minimum)│RAM (recommended)│ Hard Drive │
├────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────┤
│No desktop  │256 megabytes│512 megabytes    │4 gigabytes │
├────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────┤
│With Desktop│1 gigabytes  │2 gigabytes      │10 gigabytes│
└────────────┴─────────────┴─────────────────┴────────────┘


The minimum values assumes that swap will be enabled and a non-liveCD image is
used. The "No desktop" value assumes that the non-graphical (text-based)
installer is used.

The actual minimum memory requirements are a lot less than the numbers listed
in this table. With swap enabled, it is possible to install Debian with as
little as 32MB. The same goes for the disk space requirements, especially if
you pick and choose which applications to install; see Section D.2, "Disk Space
Needed for Tasks" for additional information on disk space requirements.

It is possible to run a graphical desktop environment on older or low-end
systems, but in that case it is recommended to install a window manager that is
less resource-hungry than those of the GNOME or KDE Plasma desktop
environments; alternatives include xfce4, icewm and wmaker, but there are
others to choose from.

It is practically impossible to give general memory or disk space requirements
for server installations as those very much depend on what the server is to be
used for.

Remember that these sizes don't include all the other materials which are
usually to be found, such as user files, mail, and data. It is always best to
be generous when considering the space for your own files and data.

Disk space required for the smooth operation of the Debian GNU/Linux system
itself is taken into account in these recommended system requirements. Notably,
the /var partition contains a lot of state information specific to Debian in
addition to its regular contents, like logfiles. The dpkg files (with
information on all installed packages) can easily consume 40MB. Also, apt puts
downloaded packages here before they are installed. You should usually allocate
at least 200MB for /var, and a lot more if you install a graphical desktop
environment.

3.5. Pre-Partitioning for Multi-Boot Systems

Partitioning your disk simply refers to the act of breaking up your disk into
sections. Each section is then independent of the others. It's roughly
equivalent to putting up walls inside a house; if you add furniture to one room
it doesn't affect any other room.

If you already have an operating system on your system which uses the whole
disk and you want to stick Debian on the same disk, you will need to
repartition it. Debian requires its own hard disk partitions. It cannot be
installed on Windows or Mac OS X partitions. It may be able to share some
partitions with other Unix systems, but that's not covered here. At the very
least you will need a dedicated partition for the Debian root filesystem.

You can find information about your current partition setup by using a
partitioning tool for your current operating system. Partitioning tools always
provide a way to show existing partitions without making changes.

In general, changing a partition with a file system already on it will destroy
any information there. Thus you should always make backups before doing any
repartitioning. Using the analogy of the house, you would probably want to move
all the furniture out of the way before moving a wall or you risk destroying
it.

Several modern operating systems offer the ability to move and resize certain
existing partitions without destroying their contents. This allows making space
for additional partitions without losing existing data. Even though this works
quite well in most cases, making changes to the partitioning of a disk is an
inherently dangerous action and should only be done after having made a full
backup of all data.

3.6. Pre-Installation Hardware and Operating System Setup

This section will walk you through pre-installation hardware setup, if any,
that you will need to do prior to installing Debian. Generally, this involves
checking and possibly changing BIOS/UEFI/system firmware settings for your
system. The "BIOS/UEFI" or "system firmware" is the core software used by the
hardware; it is most critically invoked during the bootstrap process (after
power-up).

3.6.1. How to update bare metal ppc64el firmware

This is an excerpt from IBM PowerKVM on IBM POWER8.

Open Power Abstraction Layer (OPAL) is the system firmware in the stack of
POWER processor-based server.

There may be instances when the user might have to upgrade the Power Systems
firmware to a more recent level to acquire new features or additional support
for devices.

Make sure that the following requirements are met:

  • an OS to be running on the system;

  • the .img file of the OPAL level that the user needs to update to;

  • the machine isn't under HMC control.

Power Systems has two sides of flash to boot firmware from, namely permanent
and temporary. This provides a way to test firmware updates on the temporary
side of the flash before committing the tested changes to the permanent side,
thereby committing the new updates.

Perform the following steps for the update:

 1. Save the level of the existing firmware before really updating. In ASM, in
    the system menu, click Service Aids -> Service Processor Command Line, and
    run the following command:

         cupdcmd -f

 2. Download the .img file of the level of firmware to be updated to a location
    in the host filesystem. Refer to IBM Fix Central for downloading the image
    file.

    Verify the image downloaded by running the following command and save the
    output.

        $update_flash -v -f <file_name.img>

 3. Update the firmware by running the following command.

        $update_flash -f <file_name.img>

    Note

      □ The command reboots the system and therefore, sessions if any, would be
        lost.

      □ Do not reboot or switch off the system until it is back.

 4. Verify the updated firmware level of the temporary side of the flash as in
    step 1.

 5. In case the update has to be reverted, the user can do so by running this
    command:

        $update_flash -r

    Rejection would reject only the temporary side of the flash. Therefore, the
    new level should be committed to the permanent side only after thorough
    testing of the new firmware.

    The new updated level can be committed to the permanent side of the flash
    by running the following command.

        $update_flash -c

3.6.2. Updating KVM guest firmware (SLOF)

Slimline Open Firmware (SLOF) is an implementation of the IEEE 1275 standard.
It can be used as partition firmware for pSeries machines running on QEMU or
KVM.

The package qemu-slof is, in fact, a dependency of package qemu-system-ppc
(which also provides the virtual package qemu-system-ppc64), and can be
installed or updated via apt tool on Debian-based distros. Like so:

# apt install qemu-slof

SLOF can also be installed into rpm-based distribution systems, given the
proper repository or rpm package. Additionally, the upstream source code is
available at http://github.com/leilihh/SLOF.

Thus, one can use a different SLOF file rather than the default, when running 
qemu-system, by adding the command line argument -bios <slof_file> when
starting qemu.

3.6.3. Updating PowerKVM hypervisor

3.6.3.1. Instructions for Netboot installation

You will need a DHCP/TFTP (BOOTP) server, as well as a web server. After
downloading ibm-powerkvm-*-ppc64-service-*.iso, mount loop it and unpack it
into some directory within your HTTP server www root structure (say wwwroot):

# cd <directory-where-the-iso-is>
# mkdir ./iso
# sudo mount -o loop ibm-powerkvm-*-ppc64-service-*.iso ./iso
# cp -a ./iso/* <path-to-wwwroot>

Create the petitboot.conf file in a directory under your tftproot, say /
tftproot/powerkvm, with the following contents:

label PowerKVM Automated Install
kernel http://YOUR-SERVER-IP/SOME-PATH-TO-wwwroot/ppc/ppc64/vmlinuz
initrd http://YOUR-SERVER-IP/SOME-PATH-TO-wwwroot/ppc/ppc64/initrd.img
append root=live:http://YOUR-SERVER-IP/SOME-PATH-TO-wwwroot/LiveOS/squashfs.img repo=http://YOUR-SERVER-IP/SOME-PATH-TO-wwwroot/packages rd.dm=0 rd.md=0 console=hvc0 console=tty0

Editing your dhcpd.conf, set this directive at the beginning:

option conf-file code 209 = text;

Add the system directive:

host <your-system> {
    hardware ethernet <system macaddr>
    fixed-address <system ip>;
    option host-name "<system hostname>";
    option conf-file "<powerkvm/petitboot.conf>";
 }

Reboot the dhcp server.

Boot your PowerLinux machine.

There should be the following option at petitboot (select it):

"Power KVM Automated Install"

The installer menu should appear automatically.

3.6.3.2. Instructions for DVD

Boot the ISO ibm-powerkvm-*-ppc64-service-*.iso (either burn a DVD or make it
virtual if using QEMU) and simply wait for the boot.

There should be the following option at petitboot (select it):

"POWERKVM_LIVECD"

The installer menu should appear automatically.

Chapter 4. Obtaining System Installation Media

Table of Contents

4.1. Official Debian GNU/Linux installation images
4.2. Downloading Files from Debian Mirrors

    4.2.1. Where to Find Installation Files

4.3. Preparing Files for Hard Disk Booting
4.4. Preparing Files for TFTP Net Booting

    4.4.1. Setting up a DHCP server
    4.4.2. Setting up a BOOTP server
    4.4.3. Enabling the TFTP Server
    4.4.4. Move TFTP Images Into Place

4.5. Automatic Installation

    4.5.1. Automatic Installation Using the Debian Installer

4.6. Verifying the integrity of installation files

4.1. Official Debian GNU/Linux installation images

By far the easiest way to install Debian GNU/Linux is from a set of official
Debian installation images. You can buy a set of CDs/DVDs from a vendor (see
the CD vendors page). You may also download the installation images from a
Debian mirror and make your own set, if you have a fast network connection and
a CD/DVD burner (see the Debian CD/DVD page and Debian CD FAQ for detailed
instructions). If you have such optical installation media, and they are
bootable on your machine, you can skip right to Chapter 5, Booting the
Installation System. Much effort has been expended to ensure the most-used
files are on the first CD and DVD image, so that a basic desktop installation
can be done with only the first DVD or - to a limited extent - even with only
the first CD image.

As CDs have a rather limited capacity by today's standards, not all graphical
desktop environments are installable with only the first CD; for some desktop
environments a CD installation requires either network connectivity during the
installation to download the remaining files or additional CDs.

Also, keep in mind: if the installation media you are using don't contain some
packages you need, you can always install those packages afterwards from your
running new Debian system (after the installation has finished). If you need to
know on which installation image to find a specific package, visit https://
cdimage-search.debian.org/.

If your machine doesn't support booting from optical media, but you do have a
set of CD/DVD, you can use an alternative strategy such as hard disk, net boot,
or manually loading the kernel from the disc to initially boot the system
installer. The files you need for booting by another means are also on the
disc; the Debian network archive and folder organization on the disc are
identical. So when archive file paths are given below for particular files you
need for booting, look for those files in the same directories and
subdirectories on your installation media.

Once the installer is booted, it will be able to obtain all the other files it
needs from the disc.

If you don't have an installation media set, then you will need to download the
installer system files and place them on the hard disk or a connected computer
so they can be used to boot the installer.

4.2. Downloading Files from Debian Mirrors

To find the nearest (and thus probably the fastest) mirror, see the list of
Debian mirrors.

4.2.1. Where to Find Installation Files

Various installation files can be found on each Debian mirror in the directory
debian/dists/bookworm/main/installer-ppc64el/current/images/ -- the MANIFEST
lists each image and its purpose.

4.3. Preparing Files for Hard Disk Booting

The installer may be booted using boot files placed on an existing hard drive
partition, either launched from another operating system or by invoking a boot
loader directly from the BIOS. On modern UEFI systems, the kernel may be booted
directly from the UEFI partition without the need of a boot loader.

A full, "pure network" installation can be achieved using this technique. This
avoids all hassles of removable media, like finding and burning CD/DVD images.

4.4. Preparing Files for TFTP Net Booting

If your machine is connected to a local area network, you may be able to boot
it over the network from another machine, using TFTP. If you intend to boot the
installation system from another machine, the boot files will need to be placed
in specific locations on that machine, and the machine configured to support
booting of your specific machine.

You need to set up a TFTP server, and for many machines a DHCP server, or BOOTP
server.

BOOTP is an IP protocol that informs a computer of its IP address and where on
the network to obtain a boot image. The DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration
Protocol) is a more flexible, backwards-compatible extension of BOOTP. Some
systems can only be configured via DHCP.

The Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) is used to serve the boot image to
the client. Theoretically, any server, on any platform, which implements these
protocols, may be used. In the examples in this section, we shall provide
commands for SunOS 4.x, SunOS 5.x (a.k.a. Solaris), and GNU/Linux.

4.4.1. Setting up a DHCP server

One free software DHCP server is ISC dhcpd. For Debian GNU/Linux, the
isc-dhcp-server package is recommended. Here is a sample configuration file for
it (see /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf):

option domain-name "example.com";
option domain-name-servers ns1.example.com;
option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
default-lease-time 600;
max-lease-time 7200;
server-name "servername";

subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
  range 192.168.1.200 192.168.1.253;
  option routers 192.168.1.1;
}

host clientname {
  filename "/tftpboot.img";
  server-name "servername";
  next-server servername;
  hardware ethernet 01:23:45:67:89:AB;
  fixed-address 192.168.1.90;
}

In this example, there is one server servername which performs all of the work
of DHCP server, TFTP server, and network gateway. You will almost certainly
need to change the domain-name options, as well as the server name and client
hardware address. The filename option should be the name of the file which will
be retrieved via TFTP.

After you have edited the dhcpd configuration file, restart it with /etc/init.d
/isc-dhcp-server restart.

4.4.2. Setting up a BOOTP server

There are two BOOTP servers available for GNU/Linux. The first is CMU bootpd.
The other is actually a DHCP server: ISC dhcpd. In Debian GNU/Linux these are
contained in the bootp and isc-dhcp-server packages respectively.

To use CMU bootpd, you must first uncomment (or add) the relevant line in /etc/
inetd.conf. On Debian GNU/Linux, you can run update-inetd --enable bootps, then
/etc/init.d/inetd reload to do so. Just in case your BOOTP server does not run
Debian, the line in question should look like:

bootps  dgram  udp  wait  root  /usr/sbin/bootpd  bootpd -i -t 120

Now, you must create an /etc/bootptab file. This has the same sort of familiar
and cryptic format as the good old BSD printcap, termcap, and disktab files.
See the bootptab manual page for more information. For CMU bootpd, you will
need to know the hardware (MAC) address of the client. Here is an example /etc/
bootptab:

client:\
  hd=/tftpboot:\
  bf=tftpboot.img:\
  ip=192.168.1.90:\
  sm=255.255.255.0:\
  sa=192.168.1.1:\
  ha=0123456789AB:

You will need to change at least the "ha" option, which specifies the hardware
address of the client. The "bf" option specifies the file a client should
retrieve via TFTP; see Section 4.4.4, "Move TFTP Images Into Place" for more
details.

By contrast, setting up BOOTP with ISC dhcpd is really easy, because it treats
BOOTP clients as a moderately special case of DHCP clients. Some architectures
require a complex configuration for booting clients via BOOTP. If yours is one
of those, read the section Section 4.4.1, "Setting up a DHCP server". Otherwise
you will probably be able to get away with simply adding the allow bootp
directive to the configuration block for the subnet containing the client in /
etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf, and restart dhcpd with /etc/init.d/isc-dhcp-server restart
.

4.4.3. Enabling the TFTP Server

To get the TFTP server ready to go, you should first make sure that tftpd is
enabled.

In the case of tftpd-hpa there are two ways the service can be run. It can be
started on demand by the system's inetd daemon, or it can be set up to run as
an independent daemon. Which of these methods is used is selected when the
package is installed and can be changed by reconfiguring the package.

Note

Historically, TFTP servers used /tftpboot as directory to serve images from.
However, Debian GNU/Linux packages may use other directories to comply with the
Filesystem Hierarchy Standard. For example, tftpd-hpa by default uses /srv/
tftp. You may have to adjust the configuration examples in this section
accordingly.

All in.tftpd alternatives available in Debian should log TFTP requests to the
system logs by default. Some of them support a -v argument to increase
verbosity. It is recommended to check these log messages in case of boot
problems as they are a good starting point for diagnosing the cause of errors.

4.4.4. Move TFTP Images Into Place

Next, place the TFTP boot image you need, as found in Section 4.2.1, "Where to
Find Installation Files", in the tftpd boot image directory. You may have to
make a link from that file to the file which tftpd will use for booting a
particular client. Unfortunately, the file name is determined by the TFTP
client, and there are no strong standards.

4.5. Automatic Installation

For installing on multiple computers it's possible to do fully automatic
installations. Debian packages intended for this include fai-quickstart (which
can use an install server) and the Debian Installer itself. Have a look at the
FAI home page for detailed information.

4.5.1. Automatic Installation Using the Debian Installer

The Debian Installer supports automating installs via preconfiguration files. A
preconfiguration file can be loaded from the network or from removable media,
and used to fill in answers to questions asked during the installation process.

Full documentation on preseeding including a working example that you can edit
is in Appendix B, Automating the installation using preseeding.

4.6. Verifying the integrity of installation files

You can verify the integrity of downloaded files against checksums provided in
SHA256SUMS or SHA512SUMS files on Debian mirrors. You can find them in the same
places as the installation images itself. Visit the following locations:

  • checksum files for CD images,

  • checksum files for DVD images,

  • checksum files for other installation files.

To compute the checksum of a downloaded installation file, use

sha256sum filename.iso

respective

sha512sum filename.iso

and then compare the shown checksum against the corresponding one in the
SHA256SUMS respective SHA512SUMS file.

The Debian CD FAQ has more useful information on this topic (such as the script
check_debian_iso, to semi-automate above procedure), as well as instructions,
how to verify the integrity of the above checksum files themselves.

Chapter 5. Booting the Installation System

Table of Contents

5.1. Booting the Installer on 64-bit PowerPC (little-endian)

    5.1.1. Booting a ppc64el machine

5.2. Accessibility

    5.2.1. Installer front-end
    5.2.2. USB Braille Displays
    5.2.3. Serial Braille Displays
    5.2.4. Board Devices
    5.2.5. High-Contrast Theme
    5.2.6. Zoom
    5.2.7. Expert install, rescue mode, automated install
    5.2.8. Accessibility of the installed system

5.3. Boot Parameters

    5.3.1. Boot console
    5.3.2. Debian Installer Parameters
    5.3.3. Using boot parameters to answer questions
    5.3.4. Passing parameters to kernel modules
    5.3.5. Blacklisting kernel modules

5.4. Troubleshooting the Installation Process

    5.4.1. Reliability of optical media
    5.4.2. Boot Configuration
    5.4.3. Interpreting the Kernel Startup Messages
    5.4.4. Reporting Installation Problems
    5.4.5. Submitting Installation Reports

5.1. Booting the Installer on 64-bit PowerPC (little-endian)

5.1.1. Booting a ppc64el machine

How to boot a ppc64el machine:

5.1.1.1. Petitboot

Petitboot is a platform independent bootloader based on the Linux kexec.
Petitboot supports loading kernel, initrd and device tree files from any Linux
mountable filesystem, plus can load files from the network using the FTP, SFTP,
TFTP, NFS, HTTP and HTTPS protocols. Petitboot can boot any operating system
that includes kexec boot support.

Petitboot looks for bootloader configuration files on mountable devices in the
system, and can also be configured to use boot information from a DHCP server.

5.2. Accessibility

Some users may need specific support because of e.g. some visual impairment. 
USB braille displays are detected automatically (not serial displays connected
via a serial-to-USB converter), but most other accessibility features have to
be enabled manually. Some boot parameters can be appended to enable
accessibility features. Note that on most architectures the boot loader
interprets your keyboard as a QWERTY keyboard.

5.2.1. Installer front-end

The Debian installer supports several front-ends for asking questions, with
varying convenience for accessibility: notably, text uses plain text while newt
uses text-based dialog boxes. The choice can be made at the boot prompt, see
the documentation for DEBIAN_FRONTEND in Section 5.3.2, "Debian Installer
Parameters".

With the newt front-end (used mostly with braille), one mostly just selects
answers with arrow keys and presses Enter to validate the choice. Pressing Tab
or Shift - Tab allows to switch between dialog elements, and notably to access
the Go Back button, which brings back again to previous questions. Some dialogs
contain check boxes, which can be ticked on and off by pressing Space.

With the text front-end (used mostly with speech), one mostly selects answers
either by typing their number followed by pressing Enter, or by selecting an
answer with arrow keys, and pressing Enter to validate the choice. One can also
not type anything and just press Enter to simply accept the default value.
Typing < and pressing Enter brings back again to previous questions. When a
selection of choices has to be made (e.g. during task selection), one can type
! to express an empty selection.

5.2.2. USB Braille Displays

USB braille displays should be automatically detected. A textual version of the
installer will then be automatically selected, and support for the braille
display will be automatically installed on the target system. You can thus just
press Enter at the boot menu. Once brltty is started, you can choose a braille
table by entering the preference menu. Documentation on key bindings for
braille devices is available on the brltty website.

5.2.3. Serial Braille Displays

Serial braille displays cannot safely be automatically detected (since that may
damage some of them). You thus need to append the brltty=driver,port boot
parameter to tell brltty which driver and port it should use. driver should be
replaced by the two-letter driver code for your terminal (see the BRLTTY manual
). port should be replaced by the name of the serial port the display is
connected to, ttyS0 is the default, ttyUSB0 can be typically used when using a
serial-to-USB converter. A third parameter can be provided, to choose the name
of the braille table to be used (see the BRLTTY manual); the English table is
the default. Note that the table can be changed later by entering the
preference menu. A fourth parameter can be provided to pass parameters to the
braille driver, such as protocol=foo which is needed for some rare models.
Documentation on key bindings for braille devices is available on the brltty
website.

5.2.4. Board Devices

Some accessibility devices are actual boards that are plugged inside the
machine and that read text directly from the video memory. To get them to work
framebuffer support must be disabled by using the fb=false boot parameter. This
will however reduce the number of available languages.

5.2.5. High-Contrast Theme

For users with low vision, the installer can use a high-contrast color theme
that makes it more readable. To enable it, you can use the "Accessible high
contrast" entry from the boot screen with the d shortcut, or append the theme=
dark boot parameter.

5.2.6. Zoom

For users with low vision, the graphical installer has a very basic zoom
support: the Control++ and Control+- shortcuts increase and decrease the font
size.

5.2.7. Expert install, rescue mode, automated install

Expert, Rescue, and Automated installation choices are also available with
accessibility support. To access them, one has to first enter the "Advanced
options" submenu from the boot menu by typing a. When using a BIOS system (the
boot menu will have beeped only once), this has to be followed by Enter ; for
UEFI systems (the boot menu will have beeped twice) that must not be done.
Then, to enable speech synthesis, s can optionally be pressed (followed again
by Enter on BIOS systems but not on UEFI systems). From there, various
shortcuts can be used: x for expert installation, r for rescue mode, or a for
automated installation. Again these need to be followed by Enter when using a
BIOS system.

The automated install choice allows to install Debian completely automatically
by using preseeding, whose source can be entered after accessibility features
get started. Preseeding itself is documented in Appendix B, Automating the
installation using preseeding.

5.2.8. Accessibility of the installed system

Documentation on accessibility of the installed system is available on the
Debian Accessibility wiki page.

5.3. Boot Parameters

Boot parameters are Linux kernel parameters which are generally used to make
sure that peripherals are dealt with properly. For the most part, the kernel
can auto-detect information about your peripherals. However, in some cases
you'll have to help the kernel a bit.

If this is the first time you're booting the system, try the default boot
parameters (i.e., don't try setting parameters) and see if it works correctly.
It probably will. If not, you can reboot later and look for any special
parameters that inform the system about your hardware.

Information on many boot parameters can be found in the Linux BootPrompt HOWTO,
including tips for obscure hardware. This section contains only a sketch of the
most salient parameters. Some common gotchas are included below in Section 5.4,
"Troubleshooting the Installation Process".

5.3.1. Boot console

If you are booting with a serial console, generally the kernel will autodetect
this. If you have a videocard (framebuffer) and a keyboard also attached to the
computer which you wish to boot via serial console, you may have to pass the
console=device argument to the kernel, where device is a serial device of the
target, which is usually something like ttyS0.

You may need to specify parameters for the serial port, such as speed and
parity, for instance console=ttyS0,9600n8; other typical speeds may be 57600 or
115200. Be sure to specify this option after "---", so that it is copied into
the bootloader configuration for the installed system (if supported by the
installer for the bootloader).

In order to ensure the terminal type used by the installer matches your
terminal emulator, the parameter TERM=type can be added. Note that the
installer only supports the following terminal types: linux, bterm, ansi, vt102
and dumb. The default for serial console in debian-installer is vt102. If you
are using an IPMI console, or a virtualization tool which does not provide
conversion into such terminals types itself, e.g. QEMU/KVM, you can start it
inside a screen session. That will indeed perform translation into the screen
terminal type, which is very close to vt102.

5.3.2. Debian Installer Parameters

The installation system recognizes a few additional boot parameters^[2] which
may be useful.

A number of parameters have a "short form" that helps avoid the limitations of
the kernel command line options and makes entering the parameters easier. If a
parameter has a short form, it will be listed in brackets behind the (normal)
long form. Examples in this manual will normally use the short form too.

debconf/priority (priority)

    This parameter sets the lowest priority of messages to be displayed.

    The default installation uses priority=high. This means that both high and
    critical priority messages are shown, but medium and low priority messages
    are skipped. If problems are encountered, the installer adjusts the
    priority as needed.

    If you add priority=medium as boot parameter, you will be shown the
    installation menu and gain more control over the installation. When
    priority=low is used, all messages are shown (this is equivalent to the 
    expert boot method). With priority=critical, the installation system will
    display only critical messages and try to do the right thing without fuss.

DEBIAN_FRONTEND

    This boot parameter controls the type of user interface used for the
    installer. The current possible parameter settings are:

      □ DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive

      □ DEBIAN_FRONTEND=text

      □ DEBIAN_FRONTEND=newt

      □ DEBIAN_FRONTEND=gtk

    The default frontend is DEBIAN_FRONTEND=newt. DEBIAN_FRONTEND=text may be
    preferable for serial console installs. Some specialized types of install
    media may only offer a limited selection of frontends, but the newt and
    text frontends are available on most default install media. On
    architectures that support it, the graphical installer uses the gtk
    frontend.

BOOT_DEBUG

    Setting this boot parameter to 2 will cause the installer's boot process to
    be verbosely logged. Setting it to 3 makes debug shells available at
    strategic points in the boot process. (Exit the shells to continue the boot
    process.)

    BOOT_DEBUG=0

        This is the default.

    BOOT_DEBUG=1

        More verbose than usual.

    BOOT_DEBUG=2

        Lots of debugging information.

    BOOT_DEBUG=3

        Shells are run at various points in the boot process to allow detailed
        debugging. Exit the shell to continue the boot.

log_host, log_port

    Causes the installer to send log messages to a remote syslog on the
    specified host and port as well as to a local file. If not specified, the
    port defaults to the standard syslog port 514.

lowmem

    Can be used to force the installer to a lowmem level higher than the one
    the installer sets by default based on available memory. Possible values
    are 1 and 2. See also Section 6.3.1.1, "Check available memory / low memory
    mode".

noshell

    Prevents the installer from offering interactive shells on tty2 and tty3.
    Useful for unattended installations where physical security is limited.

debian-installer/framebuffer (fb)

    Some architectures use the kernel framebuffer to offer installation in a
    number of languages. If framebuffer causes a problem on your system you can
    disable the feature using the parameter fb=false. Problem symptoms are
    error messages about bterm or bogl, a blank screen, or a freeze within a
    few minutes after starting the install.

debian-installer/theme (theme)

    A theme determines how the user interface of the installer looks (colors,
    icons, etc.). Which themes are available may differ per frontend. Currently
    both the newt and gtk frontend have (apart from the default look) only one
    additional theme named "dark" theme, which was designed for visually
    impaired users. Set this theme by booting with theme=dark (there is also
    the keyboard shortcut d for this in the boot menu).

netcfg/disable_autoconfig

    By default, the debian-installer automatically probes for network
    configuration via IPv6 autoconfiguration and DHCP. If the probe succeeds,
    you won't have a chance to review and change the obtained settings. You can
    get to the manual network setup only in case the automatic configuration
    fails.

    If you have an IPv6 router or a DHCP server on your local network, but want
    to avoid them because e.g. they give wrong answers, you can use the
    parameter netcfg/disable_autoconfig=true to prevent any automatic
    configuration of the network (neither v4 nor v6) and to enter the
    information manually.

hw-detect/start_pcmcia

    Set to false to prevent starting PCMCIA services, if that causes problems.
    Some laptops are well known for this misbehavior.

preseed/url (url)

    Specify the url to a preconfiguration file to download and use for
    automating the install. See Section 4.5, "Automatic Installation".

preseed/file (file)

    Specify the path to a preconfiguration file to load for automating the
    install. See Section 4.5, "Automatic Installation".

preseed/interactive

    Set to true to display questions even if they have been preseeded. Can be
    useful for testing or debugging a preconfiguration file. Note that this
    will have no effect on parameters that are passed as boot parameters, but
    for those a special syntax can be used. See Section B.5.2, "Using
    preseeding to change default values" for details.

auto-install/enable (auto)

    Delay questions that are normally asked before preseeding is possible until
    after the network is configured. See Section B.2.3, "Auto mode" for details
    about using this to automate installs.

finish-install/keep-consoles

    During installations from serial or management console, the regular virtual
    consoles (VT1 to VT6) are normally disabled in /etc/inittab. Set to true to
    prevent this.

cdrom-detect/eject

    By default, before rebooting, debian-installer automatically ejects the
    optical media used during the installation. This can be unnecessary if the
    system does not automatically boot off such media. In some cases it may
    even be undesirable, for example if the optical drive cannot reinsert the
    media itself and the user is not there to do it manually. Many slot
    loading, slim-line, and caddy style drives cannot reload media
    automatically.

    Set to false to disable automatic ejection, and be aware that you may need
    to ensure that the system does not automatically boot from the optical
    drive after the initial installation.

base-installer/install-recommends (recommends)

    By setting this option to false, the package management system will be
    configured to not automatically install "Recommends", both during the
    installation and for the installed system. See also Section 6.3.5,
    "Installing the Base System".

    Note that this option allows to have a leaner system, but can also result
    in features being missing that you might normally expect to be available.
    You may have to manually install some of the recommended packages to obtain
    the full functionality you want. This option should therefore only be used
    by very experienced users.

debian-installer/allow_unauthenticated

    By default the installer requires that repositories be authenticated using
    a known gpg key. Set to true to disable that authentication. Warning:
    insecure, not recommended.

rescue/enable

    Set to true to enter rescue mode rather than performing a normal
    installation. See Section 8.6, "Recovering a Broken System".

5.3.3. Using boot parameters to answer questions

With some exceptions, a value can be set at the boot prompt for any question
asked during the installation, though this is only really useful in specific
cases. General instructions how to do this can be found in Section B.2.2,
"Using boot parameters to preseed questions". Some specific examples are listed
below.

debian-installer/language (language), debian-installer/country (country), 
    debian-installer/locale (locale)

    There are two ways to specify the language, country and locale to use for
    the installation and the installed system.

    The first and easiest is to pass only the parameter locale. Language and
    country will then be derived from its value. You can for example use locale
    =de_CH to select German as language and Switzerland as country (de_CH.UTF-8
    will be set as default locale for the installed system). Limitation is that
    not all possible combinations of language, country and locale can be
    achieved this way.

    The second, more flexible option is to specify language and country
    separately. In this case locale can optionally be added to specify a
    specific default locale for the installed system. Example: language=en
    country=DE locale=en_GB.UTF-8.

anna/choose_modules (modules)

    Can be used to automatically load installer components that are not loaded
    by default. Examples of optional components that may be useful are
    openssh-client-udeb (so you can use scp during the installation) and
    ppp-udeb (see Section D.4, "Installing Debian GNU/Linux using PPP over
    Ethernet (PPPoE)").

netcfg/disable_autoconfig

    Set to true if you want to disable IPv6 autoconfiguration and DHCP and
    instead force static network configuration.

mirror/protocol (protocol)

    By default the installer will use the http protocol to download files from
    Debian mirrors and changing that to ftp is not possible during
    installations at normal priority. By setting this parameter to ftp, you can
    force the installer to use that protocol instead. Note that you cannot
    select an ftp mirror from a list, you have to enter the hostname manually.

tasksel:tasksel/first (tasks)

    Can be used to select tasks that are not available from the interactive
    task list, such as the kde-desktop task. See Section 6.3.6.2, "Selecting
    and Installing Software" for additional information.

5.3.4. Passing parameters to kernel modules

If drivers are compiled into the kernel, you can pass parameters to them as
described in the kernel documentation. However, if drivers are compiled as
modules and because kernel modules are loaded a bit differently during an
installation than when booting an installed system, it is not possible to pass
parameters to modules as you would normally do. Instead, you need to use a
special syntax recognized by the installer which will then make sure that the
parameters are saved in the proper configuration files and will thus be used
when the modules are actually loaded. The parameters will also be propagated
automatically to the configuration for the installed system.

Note that it is now quite rare that parameters need to be passed to modules. In
most cases the kernel will be able to probe the hardware present in a system
and set good defaults that way. However, in some situations it may still be
needed to set parameters manually.

The syntax to use to set parameters for modules is:

module_name.parameter_name=value

If you need to pass multiple parameters to the same or different modules, just
repeat this. For example, to set an old 3Com network interface card to use the
BNC (coax) connector and IRQ 10, you would pass:

3c509.xcvr=3 3c509.irq=10

5.3.5. Blacklisting kernel modules

Sometimes it may be necessary to blacklist a module to prevent it from being
loaded automatically by the kernel and udev. One reason could be that a
particular module causes problems with your hardware. The kernel also sometimes
lists two different drivers for the same device. This can cause the device to
not work correctly if the drivers conflict or if the wrong driver is loaded
first.

You can blacklist a module using the following syntax: module_name.blacklist=
yes. This will cause the module to be blacklisted in /etc/modprobe.d/
blacklist.local both during the installation and for the installed system.

Note that a module may still be loaded by the installation system itself. You
can prevent that from happening by running the installation in expert mode and
unselecting the module from the list of modules displayed during the hardware
detection phases.

5.4. Troubleshooting the Installation Process

5.4.1. Reliability of optical media

Sometimes, especially with older drives, the installer may fail to boot from an
optical disc. The installer may also -- even after booting successfully from
such disc -- fail to recognize the disc or return errors while reading from it
during the installation.

There are many different possible causes for these problems. We can only list
some common issues and provide general suggestions on how to deal with them.
The rest is up to you.

There are two very simple things that you should try first.

  • If the disc does not boot, check that it was inserted correctly and that it
    is not dirty.

  • If the installer fails to recognize the disc, try just running the option 
    Detect and mount installation media a second time. Some DMA related issues
    with very old CD-ROM drives are known to be resolved in this way.

If this does not work, then try the suggestions in the subsections below. Most,
but not all, suggestions discussed there are valid for CD-ROM and DVD.

If you cannot get the installation working from optical disc, try one of the
other installation methods that are available.

5.4.1.1. Common issues

  • Some older CD-ROM drives do not support reading from discs that were burned
    at high speeds using a modern CD writer.

  • Some very old CD-ROM drives do not work correctly if "direct memory access"
    (DMA) is enabled for them.

5.4.1.2. How to investigate and maybe solve issues

If the optical disc fails to boot, try the suggestions listed below.

  • Check that your BIOS/UEFI actually supports booting from optical disc (only
    an issue for very old systems) and that booting from such media is enabled
    in the BIOS/UEFI.

  • If you downloaded an iso image, check that the md5sum of that image matches
    the one listed for the image in the MD5SUMS file that should be present in
    the same location as where you downloaded the image from.

    $ md5sum debian-testing-i386-netinst.iso
    a20391b12f7ff22ef705cee4059c6b92  debian-testing-i386-netinst.iso

    Next, check that the md5sum of the burned disc matches as well. The
    following command should work. It uses the size of the image to read the
    correct number of bytes from the disc.

    $ dd if=/dev/cdrom | \
    > head -c `stat --format=%s debian-testing-i386-netinst.iso` | \
    > md5sum
    a20391b12f7ff22ef705cee4059c6b92  -
    262668+0 records in
    262668+0 records out
    134486016 bytes (134 MB) copied, 97.474 seconds, 1.4 MB/s

If, after the installer has been booted successfully, the disc is not detected,
sometimes simply trying again may solve the problem. If you have more than one
optical drive, try changing the disc to the other drive. If that does not work
or if the disc is recognized but there are errors when reading from it, try the
suggestions listed below. Some basic knowledge of Linux is required for this.
To execute any of the commands, you should first switch to the second virtual
console (VT2) and activate the shell there.

  • Switch to VT4 or view the contents of /var/log/syslog (use nano as editor)
    to check for any specific error messages. After that, also check the output
    of dmesg.

  • Check in the output of dmesg if your optical drive was recognized. You
    should see something like (the lines do not necessarily have to be
    consecutive):

    ata1.00: ATAPI: MATSHITADVD-RAM UJ-822S, 1.61, max UDMA/33
    ata1.00: configured for UDMA/33
    scsi 0:0:0:0: CD-ROM            MATSHITA DVD-RAM UJ-822S  1.61 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
    sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 24x/24x writer dvd-ram cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
    cdrom: Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20

    If you don't see something like that, chances are the controller your drive
    is connected to was not recognized or may be not supported at all. If you
    know what driver is needed for the controller, you can try loading it
    manually using modprobe.

  • Check that there is a device node for your optical drive under /dev/. In
    the example above, this would be /dev/sr0. There should also be a /dev/
    cdrom.

  • Use the mount command to check if the optical disc is already mounted; if
    not, try mounting it manually:

    $ mount /dev/hdc /cdrom

    Check if there are any error messages after that command.

  • Check if DMA is currently enabled:

    $ cd /proc/ide/hdc
    $ grep using_dma settings
    using_dma      1       0       1       rw

    A "1" in the first column after using_dma means it is enabled. If it is,
    try disabling it:

    $ echo -n "using_dma:0" >settings

    Make sure that you are in the directory for the device that corresponds to
    your optical drive.

  • If there are any problems during the installation, try checking the
    integrity of the installation media using the option near the bottom of the
    installer's main menu. This option can also be used as a general test if
    the disc can be read reliably.

5.4.2. Boot Configuration

If you have problems and the kernel hangs during the boot process, doesn't
recognize peripherals you actually have, or drives are not recognized properly,
the first thing to check is the boot parameters, as discussed in Section 5.3,
"Boot Parameters".

In some cases, malfunctions can be caused by missing device firmware (see
Section 2.2, "Devices Requiring Firmware" and Section 6.4, "Loading Missing
Firmware").

5.4.3. Interpreting the Kernel Startup Messages

During the boot sequence, you may see many messages in the form can't find
something, or something not present, can't initialize something, or even this
driver release depends on something. Most of these messages are harmless. You
see them because the kernel for the installation system is built to run on
computers with many different peripheral devices. Obviously, no one computer
will have every possible peripheral device, so the operating system may emit a
few complaints while it looks for peripherals you don't own. You may also see
the system pause for a while. This happens when it is waiting for a device to
respond, and that device is not present on your system. If you find the time it
takes to boot the system unacceptably long, you can create a custom kernel
later (see Section 8.5, "Compiling a New Kernel").

5.4.4. Reporting Installation Problems

If you get through the initial boot phase but cannot complete the install, the
menu option Save debug logs may be helpful. It lets you store system error logs
and configuration information from the installer on a storage medium, or
download them using a web browser. This information may provide clues as to
what went wrong and how to fix it. If you are submitting a bug report, you may
want to attach this information to the bug report.

Other pertinent installation messages may be found in /var/log/ during the
installation, and /var/log/installer/ after the computer has been booted into
the installed system.

5.4.5. Submitting Installation Reports

If you still have problems, please submit an installation report (in English
please, whenever possible). We also encourage installation reports to be sent
even if the installation is successful, so that we can get as much information
as possible on the largest number of hardware configurations.

Note that your installation report will be published in the Debian Bug Tracking
System (BTS) and forwarded to a public mailing list. Make sure that you use an
e-mail address that you do not mind being made public.

If you have a working Debian system, the easiest way to send an installation
report is to install the installation-report and reportbug packages (apt
install installation-report reportbug), configure reportbug as explained in
Section 8.4.2, "Sending E-Mails Outside The System", and run the command 
reportbug installation-reports.

Alternatively you can use this template when filling out installation reports,
and file the report as a bug report against the installation-reports pseudo
package, by sending it to <submit@bugs.debian.org>.

Package: installation-reports

Boot method: <How did you boot the installer? CD/DVD? USB stick? Network?>
Image version: <Full URL to image you downloaded is best>
Date: <Date and time of the install>

Machine: <Description of machine (eg, IBM Thinkpad R32)>
Processor:
Memory:
Partitions: <df -Tl will do; the raw partition table is preferred>

Output of lspci -knn (or lspci -nn):

Base System Installation Checklist:
[O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it

Initial boot:           [ ]
Detect network card:    [ ]
Configure network:      [ ]
Detect media:           [ ]
Load installer modules: [ ]
Detect hard drives:     [ ]
Partition hard drives:  [ ]
Install base system:    [ ]
Clock/timezone setup:   [ ]
User/password setup:    [ ]
Install tasks:          [ ]
Install boot loader:    [ ]
Overall install:        [ ]

Comments/Problems:

<Description of the install, in prose, and any thoughts, comments
      and ideas you had during the initial install.>

Please make sure that any installation logs that you think would
be useful are attached to this report. (You can find them in the installer
system in /var/log/ and later on the installed system under
/var/log/installer.) Please compress large files using gzip.


In the bug report, describe what the problem is, including the last visible
kernel messages in the event of a kernel hang. Describe the steps that you did
which brought the system into the problem state.


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

^[2] With current kernels (2.6.9 or newer) you can use 32 command line options
and 32 environment options. If these numbers are exceeded, the kernel will
panic. Also there is a limit of 255 characters for the whole kernel command
line, everything above this limit may be silently truncated.

Chapter 6. Using the Debian Installer

Table of Contents

6.1. How the Installer Works
6.2. Components Introduction
6.3. Using Individual Components

    6.3.1. Setting up Debian Installer and Hardware Configuration
    6.3.2. Setting Up Users And Passwords
    6.3.3. Configuring the Clock and Time Zone
    6.3.4. Partitioning and Mount Point Selection
    6.3.5. Installing the Base System
    6.3.6. Installing Additional Software
    6.3.7. Making Your System Bootable
    6.3.8. Finishing the Installation
    6.3.9. Troubleshooting
    6.3.10. Installation over network-console

6.4. Loading Missing Firmware

    6.4.1. Preparing a medium
    6.4.2. Firmware and the Installed System
    6.4.3. Completing the Installed System

6.5. Customization

    6.5.1. Installing an alternative init system

6.1. How the Installer Works

The Debian Installer consists of a number of special-purpose components to
perform each installation task. Each component performs its task, asking the
user questions as necessary to do its job. The questions themselves are given
priorities, and the priority of questions to be asked is set when the installer
is started.

When a default installation is performed, only essential (high priority)
questions will be asked. This results in a highly automated installation
process with little user interaction. Components are automatically run in
sequence; which components are run depends mainly on the installation method
you use and on your hardware. The installer will use default values for
questions that are not asked.

If there is a problem, the user will see an error screen, and the installer
menu may be shown in order to select some alternative action. If there are no
problems, the user will never see the installer menu, but will simply answer
questions for each component in turn. Serious error notifications are set to
priority "critical" so the user will always be notified.

Some of the defaults that the installer uses can be influenced by passing boot
arguments when debian-installer is started. If, for example, you wish to force
static network configuration (IPv6 autoconfiguration and DHCP are used by
default if available), you could add the boot parameter netcfg/
disable_autoconfig=true. See Section 5.3.2, "Debian Installer Parameters" for
available options.

Power users may be more comfortable with a menu-driven interface, where each
step is controlled by the user rather than the installer performing each step
automatically in sequence. To use the installer in a manual, menu-driven way,
add the boot argument priority=medium.

If your hardware requires you to pass options to kernel modules as they are
installed, you will need to start the installer in "expert" mode. This can be
done by either using the expert command to start the installer or by adding the
boot argument priority=low. Expert mode gives you full control over
debian-installer.

In the text-based environment the use of a mouse is not supported. Here are the
keys you can use to navigate within the various dialogs. The Tab or right arrow
keys move "forward", and the Shift+Tab or left arrow keys move "backward"
between displayed buttons and selections. The up and down arrow select
different items within a scrollable list, and also scroll the list itself. In
addition, in long lists, you can type a letter to cause the list to scroll
directly to the section with items starting with the letter you typed and use 
Pg-Up and Pg-Down to scroll the list in sections. The space bar selects an item
such as a checkbox. Use Enter to activate choices.

Some dialogs may offer additional help information. If help is available this
will be indicated on the bottom line of the screen by displaying that help
information can be accessed by pressing the F1 key.

Error messages and logs are redirected to the fourth console. You can access
this console by pressing Left Alt+F4 (hold the left Alt key while pressing the 
F4 function key); get back to the main installer process with Left Alt+F1.

These messages can also be found in /var/log/syslog. After installation, this
log is copied to /var/log/installer/syslog on your new system. Other
installation messages may be found in /var/log/ during the installation, and /
var/log/installer/ after the computer has been booted into the installed
system.

6.2. Components Introduction

Here is a list of installer components with a brief description of each
component's purpose. Details you might need to know about using a particular
component are in Section 6.3, "Using Individual Components".

main-menu

    Shows the list of components to the user during installer operation, and
    starts a component when it is selected. Main-menu's questions are set to
    priority medium, so if your priority is set to high or critical (high is
    the default), you will not see the menu. On the other hand, if there is an
    error which requires your intervention, the question priority may be
    downgraded temporarily to allow you to resolve the problem, and in that
    case the menu may appear.

    You can get to the main menu by selecting the Go Back button repeatedly to
    back all the way out of the currently running component.

localechooser

    Allows the user to select localization options for the installation and the
    installed system: language, country and locales. The installer will display
    messages in the selected language, unless the translation for that language
    is not complete in which case some messages may be shown in English.

console-setup

    Shows a list of keyboard (layouts), from which the user chooses the one
    which matches his own model.

hw-detect

    Automatically detects most of the system's hardware, including network
    cards, disk drives, and PCMCIA.

cdrom-detect

    Looks for and mounts a Debian installation media.

netcfg

    Configures the computer's network connections so it can communicate over
    the internet.

iso-scan

    Searches for ISO images (.iso files) on hard drives.

choose-mirror

    Presents a list of Debian archive mirrors. The user may choose the source
    of his installation packages.

cdrom-checker

    Checks integrity of installation media. This way, the user may assure him/
    herself that the installation image was not corrupted.

lowmem

    Lowmem tries to detect systems with low memory and then does various tricks
    to remove unnecessary parts of debian-installer from the memory (at the
    cost of some features).

anna

    Anna's Not Nearly APT. Installs packages which have been retrieved from the
    chosen mirror or installation media.

user-setup

    Sets up the root password, and adds a non-root user.

clock-setup

    Updates the system clock and determines whether the clock is set to UTC or
    not.

tzsetup

    Selects the time zone, based on the location selected earlier.

partman

    Allows the user to partition disks attached to the system, create file
    systems on the selected partitions, and attach them to the mountpoints.
    Included are also interesting features like a fully automatic mode or LVM
    support. This is the preferred partitioning tool in Debian.

partman-lvm

    Helps the user with the configuration of the LVM (Logical Volume Manager).

partman-md

    Allows the user to set up Software RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive
    Disks). This Software RAID is usually superior to the cheap IDE (pseudo
    hardware) RAID controllers found on newer motherboards.

base-installer

    Installs the most basic set of packages which would allow the computer to
    operate under Debian GNU/Linux when rebooted.

apt-setup

    Configures apt, mostly automatically, based on what media the installer is
    running from.

pkgsel

    Uses tasksel to select and install additional software.

os-prober

    Detects currently installed operating systems on the computer and passes
    this information to the bootloader-installer, which may offer you an
    ability to add discovered operating systems to the bootloader's start menu.
    This way the user could easily choose at the boot time which operating
    system to start.

bootloader-installer

    The various bootloader installers each install a boot loader program on the
    hard disk, which is necessary for the computer to start up using Linux
    without using a USB stick or CD-ROM. Many boot loaders allow the user to
    choose an alternate operating system each time the computer boots.

shell

    Allows the user to execute a shell from the menu, or in the second console.

save-logs

    Provides a way for the user to record information on a USB stick, network,
    hard disk, or other media when trouble is encountered, in order to
    accurately report installer software problems to Debian developers later.

6.3. Using Individual Components

In this section we will describe each installer component in detail. The
components have been grouped into stages that should be recognizable for users.
They are presented in the order they appear during the install. Note that not
all modules will be used for every installation; which modules are actually
used depends on the installation method you use and on your hardware.

6.3.1. Setting up Debian Installer and Hardware Configuration

Let's assume the Debian Installer has booted and you are facing its first
screen. At this time, the capabilities of debian-installer are still quite
limited. It doesn't know much about your hardware, preferred language, or even
the task it should perform. Don't worry. Because debian-installer is quite
clever, it can automatically probe your hardware, locate the rest of its
components and upgrade itself to a capable installation system. However, you
still need to help debian-installer with some information it can't determine
automatically (like selecting your preferred language, keyboard layout or
desired network mirror).

You will notice that debian-installer performs hardware detection several times
during this stage. The first time is targeted specifically at the hardware
needed to load installer components (e.g. your CD-ROM or network card). As not
all drivers may be available during this first run, hardware detection needs to
be repeated later in the process.

During hardware detection debian-installer checks if any of the drivers for the
hardware devices in your system require firmware to be loaded. If any firmware
is requested but unavailable, a dialog will be displayed that allows the
missing firmware to be loaded from a removable medium. See Section 6.4,
"Loading Missing Firmware" for further details.

6.3.1.1. Check available memory / low memory mode

One of the first things debian-installer does, is to check available memory. If
the available memory is limited, this component will make some changes in the
installation process which hopefully will allow you to install Debian GNU/Linux
on your system.

The first measure taken to reduce memory consumption by the installer is to
disable translations, which means that the installation can only be done in
English. Of course, you can still localize the installed system after the
installation has completed.

If that is not sufficient, the installer will further reduce memory consumption
by loading only those components essential to complete a basic installation.
This reduces the functionality of the installation system. You will be given
the opportunity to load additional components manually, but you should be aware
that each component you select will use additional memory and thus may cause
the installation to fail.

If the installer runs in low memory mode, it is recommended to create a
relatively large swap partition (64-128MB). The swap partition will be used as
virtual memory and thus increases the amount of memory available to the system.
The installer will activate the swap partition as early as possible in the
installation process. Note that heavy use of swap will reduce performance of
your system and may lead to high disk activity.

Despite these measures, it is still possible that your system freezes, that
unexpected errors occur or that processes are killed by the kernel because the
system runs out of memory (which will result in "Out of memory" messages on VT4
and in the syslog).

For example, it has been reported that creating a big ext3 file system fails in
low memory mode when there is insufficient swap space. If a larger swap doesn't
help, try creating the file system as ext2 (which is an essential component of
the installer) instead. It is possible to change an ext2 partition to ext3
after the installation.

It is possible to force the installer to use a higher lowmem level than the one
based on available memory by using the boot parameter "lowmem" as described in
Section 5.3.2, "Debian Installer Parameters".

6.3.1.2. Selecting Localization Options

In most cases the first questions you will be asked concern the selection of
localization options to be used both for the installation and for the installed
system. The localization options consist of language, location and locales.

The language you choose will be used for the rest of the installation process,
provided a translation of the different dialogs is available. If no valid
translation is available for the selected language, the installer will default
to English.

The selected geographic location (in most cases a country) will be used later
in the installation process to select the correct time zone and a Debian mirror
appropriate for that country. Language and country together will help determine
the default locale for your system and select the correct keyboard layout.

You will first be asked to select your preferred language. The language names
are listed both in English (left side) and in the language itself (right side);
the names on the right side are also shown in the proper script for the
language. The list is sorted on the English names. At the top of the list is an
extra option that allows you to select the "C" locale instead of a language.
Choosing the "C" locale will result in the installation proceeding in English;
the installed system will have no localization support as the locales package
will not be installed.

Next you will be asked to select your geographic location. If you selected a
language that is recognized as an official language for more than one country^
[3], you will be shown a list of only those countries. To select a country that
is not in that list, choose other (the last option). You will then be presented
with a list of continents; selecting a continent will lead to a list of
relevant countries on that continent.

If the language has only one country associated with it, a list of countries
will be displayed for the continent or region the country belongs to, with that
country selected as the default. Use the Go Back option to select countries on
a different continent.

Note

It is important to select the country where you live or where you are located
as it determines the time zone that will be configured for the installed
system.

If you selected a combination of language and country for which no locale is
defined and there exist multiple locales for the language, then the installer
will allow you to choose which of those locales you prefer as the default
locale for the installed system^[4]. In all other cases a default locale will
be selected based on the selected language and country.

Any default locale selected as described in the previous paragraph will use
UTF-8 as character encoding.

If you are installing at low priority, you will have the option of selecting
additional locales, including so-called "legacy" locales^[5], to be generated
for the installed system; if you do, you will be asked which of the selected
locales should be the default for the installed system.

6.3.1.3. Choosing a Keyboard

Keyboards are often tailored to the characters used in a language. Select a
layout that conforms to the keyboard you are using, or select something close
if the keyboard layout you want isn't represented. Once the system installation
is complete, you'll be able to select a keyboard layout from a wider range of
choices (run dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration as root after you have
completed the installation).

Move the highlight to the keyboard selection you desire and press Enter. Use
the arrow keys to move the highlight -- they are in the same place in all
national language keyboard layouts, so they are independent of the keyboard
configuration.

6.3.1.4. Looking for the Debian Installer ISO Image

When installing via the hd-media method, there will be a moment where you need
to find and mount the Debian Installer iso image in order to get the rest of
the installation files. The component iso-scan does exactly this.

At first, iso-scan automatically mounts all block devices (e.g. partitions and
logical volumes) which have some known filesystem on them and sequentially
searches for filenames ending with .iso (or .ISO for that matter). Beware that
the first attempt scans only files in the root directory and in the first level
of subdirectories (i.e. it finds /whatever.iso, /data/whatever.iso, but not /
data/tmp/whatever.iso). After an iso image has been found, iso-scan checks its
content to determine if the image is a valid Debian iso image or not. In the
former case we are done, in the latter iso-scan seeks for another image.

In case the previous attempt to find an installer iso image fails, iso-scan
will ask you whether you would like to perform a more thorough search. This
pass doesn't just look into the topmost directories, but really traverses whole
filesystem.

If iso-scan does not discover your installer iso image, reboot back to your
original operating system and check if the image is named correctly (ending in
.iso), if it is placed on a filesystem recognizable by debian-installer, and if
it is not corrupted (verify the checksum). Experienced Unix users could do this
without rebooting on the second console.

Note that the partition (or disk) hosting the ISO image can't be reused during
the installation process as it will be in use by the installer. To work-around
this, and provided that you have enough system memory, the installer can copy
the ISO image into RAM before mounting it. This is controlled by the low
priority iso-scan/copy_iso_to_ram debconf question (it is only asked if the
memory requirement is met).

6.3.1.5. Configuring the Network

As you enter this step, if the system detects that you have more than one
network device, you'll be asked to choose which device will be your primary
network interface, i.e. the one which you want to use for installation. The
other interfaces won't be configured at this time. You may configure additional
interfaces after installation is complete; see the interfaces(5) man page.

6.3.1.5.1. Automatic network configuration

By default, debian-installer tries to configure your computer's network
automatically as far as possible. If the automatic configuration fails, that
may be caused by many factors ranging from an unplugged network cable to
missing infrastructure for automatic configuration. For further explanation in
case of errors, check the error messages on the fourth console. In any case,
you will be asked if you want to retry, or if you want to perform a manual
setup. Sometimes the network services used for autoconfiguration can be slow in
their responses, so if you are sure everything is in place, simply start the
autoconfiguration attempt again. If autoconfiguration fails repeatedly, you can
instead choose the manual network setup.

6.3.1.5.2. Manual network configuration

The manual network setup in turn asks you a number of questions about your
network, notably IP address, Netmask, Gateway, Name server addresses, and a
Hostname. Moreover, if you have a wireless network interface, you will be asked
to provide your Wireless ESSID ("wireless network name") and a WEP key or WPA/
WPA2 passphrase. Fill in the answers from Section 3.3, "Information You Will
Need".

Note

Some technical details you might, or might not, find handy: the program assumes
the network IP address is the bitwise-AND of your system's IP address and your
netmask. The default broadcast address is calculated as the bitwise OR of your
system's IP address with the bitwise negation of the netmask. It will also
guess your gateway. If you can't find any of these answers, use the offered
defaults -- if necessary, you can change them by editing /etc/network/
interfaces once the system has been installed.

6.3.1.5.3. IPv4 and IPv6

From Debian GNU/Linux 7.0 ("Wheezy") onwards, debian-installer supports IPv6 as
well as the "classic" IPv4. All combinations of IPv4 and IPv6 (IPv4-only,
IPv6-only and dual-stack configurations) are supported.

Autoconfiguration for IPv4 is done via DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration
Protocol). Autoconfiguration for IPv6 supports stateless autoconfiguration
using NDP (Neighbor Discovery Protocol, including recursive DNS server (RDNSS)
assignment), stateful autoconfiguration via DHCPv6 and mixed stateless/stateful
autoconfiguration (address configuration via NDP, additional parameters via
DHCPv6).

6.3.2. Setting Up Users And Passwords

Just before configuring the clock, the installer will allow you to set up the "
root" account and/or an account for the first user. Other user accounts can be
created after the installation has been completed.

6.3.2.1. Set the Root Password

The root account is also called the super-user; it is a login that bypasses all
security protection on your system. The root account should only be used to
perform system administration, and only used for as short a time as possible.

Any password you create should contain at least 6 characters, and should
contain both upper- and lower-case characters, as well as punctuation
characters. Take extra care when setting your root password, since it is such a
powerful account. Avoid dictionary words or use of any personal information
which could be guessed.

If anyone ever tells you they need your root password, be extremely wary. You
should normally never give your root password out, unless you are administering
a machine with more than one system administrator.

In case you do not specify a password for the "root" user here, this account
will be disabled but the sudo package will be installed later to enable
administrative tasks to be carried out on the new system. By default, the first
user created on the system will be allowed to use the sudo command to become
root.

6.3.2.2. Create an Ordinary User

The system will ask you whether you wish to create an ordinary user account at
this point. This account should be your main personal log-in. You should not
use the root account for daily use or as your personal login.

Why not? Well, one reason to avoid using root's privileges is that it is very
easy to do irreparable damage as root. Another reason is that you might be
tricked into running a Trojan-horse program -- that is a program that takes
advantage of your super-user powers to compromise the security of your system
behind your back. Any good book on Unix system administration will cover this
topic in more detail -- consider reading one if it is new to you.

You will first be prompted for the user's full name. Then you'll be asked for a
name for the user account; generally your first name or something similar will
suffice and indeed will be the default. Finally, you will be prompted for a
password for this account.

If at any point after installation you would like to create another account,
use the adduser command.

6.3.3. Configuring the Clock and Time Zone

The installer will first attempt to connect to a time server on the Internet
(using the NTP protocol) in order to correctly set the system time. If this
does not succeed, the installer will assume the time and date obtained from the
system clock when the installation system was booted are correct. It is not
possible to manually set the system time during the installation process.

Depending on the location selected earlier in the installation process, you may
be shown a list of time zones relevant for that location. If your location has
only one time zone and you are doing a default installation, you will not be
asked anything and the system will assume that time zone.

In expert mode or when installing at medium priority, you will have the
additional option to select "Coordinated Universal Time" (UTC) as time zone.

If for some reason you wish to set a time zone for the installed system that
does not match the selected location, there are two options.

 1. The simplest option is to just select a different time zone after the
    installation has been completed and you've booted into the new system. The
    command to do this is:

    # dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

 2. Alternatively, the time zone can be set at the very start of the
    installation by passing the parameter time/zone=value when you boot the
    installation system. The value should of course be a valid time zone, for
    example Europe/London or UTC.

For automated installations the time zone can be set to any desired value using
preseeding.

6.3.4. Partitioning and Mount Point Selection

At this time, after hardware detection has been executed a final time,
debian-installer should be at its full strength, customized for the user's
needs and ready to do some real work. As the title of this section indicates,
the main task of the next few components lies in partitioning your disks,
creating filesystems, assigning mountpoints and optionally configuring closely
related options like RAID, LVM or encrypted devices.

If you are uncomfortable with partitioning, or just want to know more details,
see Appendix C, Partitioning for Debian.

First you will be given the opportunity to automatically partition either an
entire drive, or available free space on a drive. This is also called "guided"
partitioning. If you do not want to autopartition, choose Manual from the menu.

6.3.4.1. Supported partitioning options

The partitioner used in debian-installer is fairly versatile. It allows to
create many different partitioning schemes, using various partition tables,
file systems and advanced block devices.

Exactly which options are available depends mainly on the architecture, but
also on other factors. For example, on systems with limited internal memory
some options may not be available. Defaults may vary as well. The type of
partition table used by default can for example be different for large capacity
hard disks than for smaller hard disks. Some options can only be changed when
installing at medium or low debconf priority; at higher priorities sensible
defaults will be used.

The installer supports various forms of advanced partitioning and use of
storage devices, which in many cases can be used in combination.

  • Logical Volume Management (LVM)

  • Software RAID

    Supported are RAID levels 0, 1, 4, 5, 6 and 10.

  • Encryption

  • Multipath (experimental)

    See our Wiki for information. Support for multipath is currently only
    available if enabled when the installer is booted.

The following file systems are supported.

  • ext2, ext3, ext4

    The default file system selected in most cases is ext4; for /boot
    partitions ext2 will be selected by default when guided partitioning is
    used.

  • jfs (not available on all architectures)

  • xfs (not available on all architectures)

  • reiserfs (optional; not available on all architectures)

    Support for the Reiser file system is no longer available by default. When
    the installer is running at medium or low debconf priority it can be
    enabled by selecting the partman-reiserfs component. Only version 3 of the
    file system is supported.

  • FAT16, FAT32

6.3.4.2. Guided Partitioning

If you choose guided partitioning, you may have three options: to create
partitions directly on the hard disk (classic method), or to create them using
Logical Volume Management (LVM), or to create them using encrypted LVM^[6].

Note

The option to use (encrypted) LVM may not be available on all architectures.

When using LVM or encrypted LVM, the installer will create most partitions
inside one big partition; the advantage of this method is that partitions
inside this big partition can be resized relatively easily later. In the case
of encrypted LVM the big partition will not be readable without knowing a
special key phrase, thus providing extra security of your (personal) data.

When using encrypted LVM, the installer will also automatically erase the disk
by writing random data to it. This further improves security (as it makes it
impossible to tell which parts of the disk are in use and also makes sure that
any traces of previous installations are erased), but may take some time
depending on the size of your disk.

Note

If you choose guided partitioning using LVM or encrypted LVM, some changes in
the partition table will need to be written to the selected disk while LVM is
being set up. These changes effectively erase all data that is currently on the
selected hard disk and you will not be able to undo them later. However, the
installer will ask you to confirm these changes before they are written to
disk.

If you choose guided partitioning (either classic or using (encrypted) LVM) for
a whole disk, you will first be asked to select the disk you want to use. Check
that all your disks are listed and, if you have several disks, make sure you
select the correct one. The order they are listed in may differ from what you
are used to. The size of the disks may help to identify them.

Any data on the disk you select will eventually be lost, but you will always be
asked to confirm any changes before they are written to the disk. If you have
selected the classic method of partitioning, you will be able to undo any
changes right until the end; when using (encrypted) LVM this is not possible.

Next, you will be able to choose from the schemes listed in the table below.
All schemes have their pros and cons, some of which are discussed in
Appendix C, Partitioning for Debian. If you are unsure, choose the first one.
Bear in mind that guided partitioning needs a certain minimal amount of free
space to operate with. If you don't give it at least about 1GB of space
(depends on chosen scheme), guided partitioning will fail.

┌──────────────────────────────────────┬────────────┬─────────────────────────┐
│         Partitioning scheme          │  Minimum   │   Created partitions    │
│                                      │   space    │                         │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼────────────┼─────────────────────────┤
│All files in one partition            │600MB       │/, swap                  │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼────────────┼─────────────────────────┤
│Separate /home partition              │500MB       │/, /home, swap           │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼────────────┼─────────────────────────┤
│Separate /home, /var and /tmp         │1GB         │/, /home, /var, /tmp,    │
│partitions                            │            │swap                     │
└──────────────────────────────────────┴────────────┴─────────────────────────┘

If you choose guided partitioning using (encrypted) LVM, the installer will
also create a separate /boot partition. The other partitions, including the
swap partition, will be created inside the LVM partition.

After selecting a scheme, the next screen will show your new partition table,
including information on whether and how partitions will be formatted and where
they will be mounted.

The list of partitions might look like this:

  SCSI1 (0,0,0) (sda) - 6.4 GB WDC AC36400L
        #1 primary   16.4 MB  B f ext2       /boot
        #2 primary  551.0 MB      swap       swap
        #3 primary    5.8 GB      ntfs
           pri/log    8.2 MB      FREE SPACE

  SCSI2 (1,0,0) (sdb) - 80.0 GB ST380021A
        #1 primary   15.9 MB      ext3
        #2 primary  996.0 MB      fat16
        #3 primary    3.9 GB      xfs        /home
        #5 logical    6.0 GB    f ext4       /
        #6 logical    1.0 GB    f ext3       /var
        #7 logical  498.8 MB      ext3

This example shows two hard drives divided into several partitions; the first
disk has some free space. Each partition line consists of the partition number,
its type, size, optional flags, file system, and mountpoint (if any). Note:
this particular setup cannot be created using guided partitioning but it does
show possible variation that can be achieved using manual partitioning.

This concludes the guided partitioning. If you are satisfied with the generated
partition table, you can choose Finish partitioning and write changes to disk
from the menu to implement the new partition table (as described at the end of
this section). If you are not happy, you can choose to Undo changes to
partitions and run guided partitioning again, or modify the proposed changes as
described below for manual partitioning.

6.3.4.3. Manual Partitioning

A similar screen to the one shown just above will be displayed if you choose
manual partitioning except that your existing partition table will be shown and
without the mount points. How to manually set up your partition table and the
usage of partitions by your new Debian system will be covered in the remainder
of this section.

If you select a pristine disk which has neither partitions nor free space on
it, you will be asked if a new partition table should be created (this is
needed so you can create new partitions). After this, a new line entitled "FREE
SPACE" should appear in the table under the selected disk.

If you select some free space, you will have the opportunity to create a new
partition. You will have to answer a quick series of questions about its size,
type (primary or logical), and location (beginning or end of the free space).
After this, you will be presented with a detailed overview of your new
partition. The main setting is Use as:, which determines if the partition will
have a file system on it, or be used for swap, software RAID, LVM, an encrypted
file system, or not be used at all. Other settings include mountpoint, mount
options, and bootable flag; which settings are shown depends on how the
partition is to be used. If you don't like the preselected defaults, feel free
to change them to your liking. E.g. by selecting the option Use as:, you can
choose a different filesystem for this partition, including options to use the
partition for swap, software RAID, LVM, or not use it at all. When you are
satisfied with your new partition, select Done setting up the partition and you
will return to partman's main screen.

If you decide you want to change something about your partition, simply select
the partition, which will bring you to the partition configuration menu. This
is the same screen as is used when creating a new partition, so you can change
the same settings. One thing that may not be very obvious at a first glance is
that you can resize the partition by selecting the item displaying the size of
the partition. Filesystems known to work are at least fat16, fat32, ext2, ext3
and swap. This menu also allows you to delete a partition.

Be sure to create at least two partitions: one for the root filesystem (which
must be mounted as /) and one for swap. If you forget to mount the root
filesystem, partman won't let you continue until you correct this issue.

Capabilities of partman can be extended with installer modules, but are
dependent on your system's architecture. So if you can't see all promised
goodies, check if you have loaded all required modules (e.g. partman-ext3,
partman-xfs, or partman-lvm).

After you are satisfied with partitioning, select Finish partitioning and write
changes to disk from the partitioning menu. You will be presented with a
summary of changes made to the disks and asked to confirm that the filesystems
should be created as requested.

6.3.4.4. Configuring Multidisk Devices (Software RAID)

If you have more than one harddrive^[7] in your computer, you can use 
partman-md to set up your drives for increased performance and/or better
reliability of your data. The result is called Multidisk Device (or after its
most famous variant software RAID).

MD is basically a bunch of partitions located on different disks and combined
together to form a logical device. This device can then be used like an
ordinary partition (i.e. in partman you can format it, assign a mountpoint,
etc.).

What benefits this brings depends on the type of MD device you are creating.
Currently supported are:

RAID0

    Is mainly aimed at performance. RAID0 splits all incoming data into stripes
    and distributes them equally over each disk in the array. This can increase
    the speed of read/write operations, but when one of the disks fails, you
    will lose everything (part of the information is still on the healthy disk
    (s), the other part was on the failed disk).

    The typical use for RAID0 is a partition for video editing.

RAID1

    Is suitable for setups where reliability is the first concern. It consists
    of several (usually two) equally-sized partitions where every partition
    contains exactly the same data. This essentially means three things. First,
    if one of your disks fails, you still have the data mirrored on the
    remaining disks. Second, you can use only a fraction of the available
    capacity (more precisely, it is the size of the smallest partition in the
    RAID). Third, file-reads are load-balanced among the disks, which can
    improve performance on a server, such as a file server, that tends to be
    loaded with more disk reads than writes.

    Optionally you can have a spare disk in the array which will take the place
    of the failed disk in the case of failure.

RAID5

    Is a good compromise between speed, reliability and data redundancy. RAID5
    splits all incoming data into stripes and distributes them equally on all
    but one disk (similar to RAID0). Unlike RAID0, RAID5 also computes parity
    information, which gets written on the remaining disk. The parity disk is
    not static (that would be called RAID4), but is changing periodically, so
    the parity information is distributed equally on all disks. When one of the
    disks fails, the missing part of information can be computed from remaining
    data and its parity. RAID5 must consist of at least three active
    partitions. Optionally you can have a spare disk in the array which will
    take the place of the failed disk in the case of failure.

    As you can see, RAID5 has a similar degree of reliability to RAID1 while
    achieving less redundancy. On the other hand, it might be a bit slower on
    write operations than RAID0 due to computation of parity information.

RAID6

    Is similar to RAID5 except that it uses two parity devices instead of one.

    A RAID6 array can survive up to two disk failures.

RAID10

    RAID10 combines striping (as in RAID0) and mirroring (as in RAID1). It
    creates n copies of incoming data and distributes them across the
    partitions so that none of the copies of the same data are on the same
    device. The default value of n is 2, but it can be set to something else in
    expert mode. The number of partitions used must be at least n. RAID10 has
    different layouts for distributing the copies. The default is near copies.
    Near copies have all of the copies at about the same offset on all of the
    disks. Far copies have the copies at different offsets on the disks. Offset
    copies copy the stripe, not the individual copies.

    RAID10 can be used to achieve reliability and redundancy without the
    drawback of having to calculate parity.

To sum it up:

┌──────┬───────┬────────┬───────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│      │Minimum│ Spare  │ Survives  │                                         │
│ Type │Devices│ Device │   disk    │             Available Space             │
│      │       │        │ failure?  │                                         │
├──────┼───────┼────────┼───────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│RAID0 │2      │no      │no         │Size of the smallest partition multiplied│
│      │       │        │           │by number of devices in RAID             │
├──────┼───────┼────────┼───────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│RAID1 │2      │optional│yes        │Size of the smallest partition in RAID   │
├──────┼───────┼────────┼───────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│RAID5 │3      │optional│yes        │Size of the smallest partition multiplied│
│      │       │        │           │by (number of devices in RAID minus one) │
├──────┼───────┼────────┼───────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│RAID6 │4      │optional│yes        │Size of the smallest partition multiplied│
│      │       │        │           │by (number of devices in RAID minus two) │
├──────┼───────┼────────┼───────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│RAID10│2      │optional│yes        │Total of all partitions divided by the   │
│      │       │        │           │number of chunk copies (defaults to two) │
└──────┴───────┴────────┴───────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────┘

If you want to know more about Software RAID, have a look at Software RAID
HOWTO.

To create an MD device, you need to have the desired partitions it should
consist of marked for use in a RAID. (This is done in partman in the Partition
settings menu where you should select Use as: → physical volume for RAID.)

Note

Make sure that the system can be booted with the partitioning scheme you are
planning. In general it will be necessary to create a separate file system for
/boot when using RAID for the root (/) file system. Most boot loaders do
support mirrored (not striped!) RAID1, so using for example RAID5 for / and
RAID1 for /boot can be an option.

Next, you should choose Configure software RAID from the main partman menu.
(The menu will only appear after you mark at least one partition for use as 
physical volume for RAID.) On the first screen of partman-md simply select 
Create MD device. You will be presented with a list of supported types of MD
devices, from which you should choose one (e.g. RAID1). What follows depends on
the type of MD you selected.

  • RAID0 is simple -- you will be issued with the list of available RAID
    partitions and your only task is to select the partitions which will form
    the MD.

  • RAID1 is a bit more tricky. First, you will be asked to enter the number of
    active devices and the number of spare devices which will form the MD.
    Next, you need to select from the list of available RAID partitions those
    that will be active and then those that will be spare. The count of
    selected partitions must be equal to the number provided earlier. Don't
    worry. If you make a mistake and select a different number of partitions,
    debian-installer won't let you continue until you correct the issue.

  • RAID5 has a setup procedure similar to RAID1 with the exception that you
    need to use at least three active partitions.

  • RAID6 also has a setup procedure similar to RAID1 except that at least four
    active partitions are required.

  • RAID10 again has a setup procedure similar to RAID1 except in expert mode.
    In expert mode, debian-installer will ask you for the layout. The layout
    has two parts. The first part is the layout type. It is either n (for near
    copies), f (for far copies), or o (for offset copies). The second part is
    the number of copies to make of the data. There must be at least that many
    active devices so that all of the copies can be distributed onto different
    disks.

It is perfectly possible to have several types of MD at once. For example, if
you have three 200 GB hard drives dedicated to MD, each containing two 100 GB
partitions, you can combine the first partitions on all three disks into the
RAID0 (fast 300 GB video editing partition) and use the other three partitions
(2 active and 1 spare) for RAID1 (quite reliable 100 GB partition for /home).

After you set up MD devices to your liking, you can Finish partman-md to return
back to the partman to create filesystems on your new MD devices and assign
them the usual attributes like mountpoints.

6.3.4.5. Configuring the Logical Volume Manager (LVM)

If you are working with computers at the level of system administrator or "
advanced" user, you have surely seen the situation where some disk partition
(usually the most important one) was short on space, while some other partition
was grossly underused and you had to manage this situation by moving stuff
around, symlinking, etc.

To avoid the described situation you can use Logical Volume Manager (LVM).
Simply said, with LVM you can combine your partitions (physical volumes in LVM
lingo) to form a virtual disk (so called volume group), which can then be
divided into virtual partitions (logical volumes). The point is that logical
volumes (and of course underlying volume groups) can span across several
physical disks.

Now when you realize you need more space for your old 160GB /home partition,
you can simply add a new 300GB disk to the computer, join it with your existing
volume group and then resize the logical volume which holds your /home
filesystem and voila -- your users have some room again on their renewed 460GB
partition. This example is of course a bit oversimplified. If you haven't read
it yet, you should consult the LVM HOWTO.

LVM setup in debian-installer is quite simple and completely supported inside 
partman. First, you have to mark the partition(s) to be used as physical
volumes for LVM. This is done in the Partition settings menu where you should
select Use as: → physical volume for LVM.

Warning

Be aware: the new LVM setup will destroy all data on all partitions marked with
an LVM type code. So, if you already have an LVM on some of your disks, and
want to install Debian additionally to that machine, the old (already existing)
LVM will be wiped out! The same counts for partitions, which are (for any
reason) misleadingly marked with an LVM type code, but contain something
different (like an encrypted volume). You need to remove such disks from the
system, before performing a new LVM setup!

When you return to the main partman screen, you will see a new option Configure
the Logical Volume Manager. When you select that, you will first be asked to
confirm pending changes to the partition table (if any) and after that the LVM
configuration menu will be shown. Above the menu a summary of the LVM
configuration is shown. The menu itself is context sensitive and only shows
valid actions. The possible actions are:

  • Display configuration details: shows LVM device structure, names and sizes
    of logical volumes and more

  • Create volume group

  • Create logical volume

  • Delete volume group

  • Delete logical volume

  • Extend volume group

  • Reduce volume group

  • Finish: return to the main partman screen

Use the options in that menu to first create a volume group and then create
your logical volumes inside it.

After you return to the main partman screen, any created logical volumes will
be displayed in the same way as ordinary partitions (and you should treat them
as such).

6.3.4.6. Configuring Encrypted Volumes

debian-installer allows you to set up encrypted partitions. Every file you
write to such a partition is immediately saved to the device in encrypted form.
Access to the encrypted data is granted only after entering the passphrase used
when the encrypted partition was originally created. This feature is useful to
protect sensitive data in case your laptop or hard drive gets stolen. The thief
might get physical access to the hard drive, but without knowing the right
passphrase, the data on the hard drive will look like random characters.

The two most important partitions to encrypt are: the home partition, where
your private data resides, and the swap partition, where sensitive data might
be stored temporarily during operation. Of course, nothing prevents you from
encrypting any other partitions that might be of interest. For example /var
where database servers, mail servers or print servers store their data, or /tmp
which is used by various programs to store potentially interesting temporary
files. Some people may even want to encrypt their whole system. Generally the
only exception here is the /boot partition which must remain unencrypted,
because historically there was no way to load the kernel from an encrypted
partition. (GRUB is now able to do that, but debian-installer currently lacks
native support for encrypted /boot. The setup is therefore covered in a
separate document.)

Note

Please note that the performance of encrypted partitions will be less than that
of unencrypted ones because the data needs to be decrypted or encrypted for
every read or write. The performance impact depends on your CPU speed, chosen
cipher and a key length.

To use encryption, you have to create a new partition by selecting some free
space in the main partitioning menu. Another option is to choose an existing
partition (e.g. a regular partition, an LVM logical volume or a RAID volume).
In the Partition settings menu, you need to select physical volume for
encryption at the Use as: option. The menu will then change to include several
cryptographic options for the partition.

The encryption method supported by debian-installer is dm-crypt (included in
newer Linux kernels, able to host LVM physical volumes).

Let's have a look at the options available when you select encryption via
Device-mapper (dm-crypt). As always: when in doubt, use the defaults, because
they have been carefully chosen with security in mind.

Encryption: aes

    This option lets you select the encryption algorithm (cipher) which will be
    used to encrypt the data on the partition. debian-installer currently
    supports the following block ciphers: aes, blowfish, serpent, and twofish.
    It is beyond the scope of this document to discuss the qualities of these
    different algorithms, however, it might help your decision to know that in
    2000, AES was chosen by the American National Institute of Standards and
    Technology as the standard encryption algorithm for protecting sensitive
    information in the 21st century.

Key size: 256

    Here you can specify the length of the encryption key. With a larger key
    size, the strength of the encryption is generally improved. On the other
    hand, increasing the length of the key usually has a negative impact on
    performance. Available key sizes vary depending on the cipher.

IV algorithm: xts-plain64

    The Initialization Vector or IV algorithm is used in cryptography to ensure
    that applying the cipher on the same clear text data with the same key
    always produces a unique cipher text. The idea is to prevent the attacker
    from deducing information from repeated patterns in the encrypted data.

    From the provided alternatives, the default xts-plain64 is currently the
    least vulnerable to known attacks. Use the other alternatives only when you
    need to ensure compatibility with some previously installed system that is
    not able to use newer algorithms.

Encryption key: Passphrase

    Here you can choose the type of the encryption key for this partition.

    Passphrase

        The encryption key will be computed^[8] on the basis of a passphrase
        which you will be able to enter later in the process.

    Random key

        A new encryption key will be generated from random data each time you
        try to bring up the encrypted partition. In other words: on every
        shutdown the content of the partition will be lost as the key is
        deleted from memory. (Of course, you could try to guess the key with a
        brute force attack, but unless there is an unknown weakness in the
        cipher algorithm, it is not achievable in our lifetime.)

        Random keys are useful for swap partitions because you do not need to
        bother yourself with remembering the passphrase or wiping sensitive
        information from the swap partition before shutting down your computer.
        However, it also means that you will not be able to use the "
        suspend-to-disk" functionality offered by newer Linux kernels as it
        will be impossible (during a subsequent boot) to recover the suspended
        data written to the swap partition.

Erase data: yes

    Determines whether the content of this partition should be overwritten with
    random data before setting up the encryption. This is recommended because
    it might otherwise be possible for an attacker to discern which parts of
    the partition are in use and which are not. In addition, this will make it
    harder to recover any leftover data from previous installations^[9].

After you have selected the desired parameters for your encrypted partitions,
return back to the main partitioning menu. There should now be a new menu item
called Configure encrypted volumes. After you select it, you will be asked to
confirm the deletion of data on partitions marked to be erased and possibly
other actions such as writing a new partition table. For large partitions this
might take some time.

Next you will be asked to enter a passphrase for partitions configured to use
one. Good passphrases should be longer than 8 characters, should be a mixture
of letters, numbers and other characters and should not contain common
dictionary words or information easily associable with you (such as birthdates,
hobbies, pet names, names of family members or relatives, etc.).

Warning

Before you input any passphrases, you should have made sure that your keyboard
is configured correctly and generates the expected characters. If you are
unsure, you can switch to the second virtual console and type some text at the
prompt. This ensures that you won't be surprised later, e.g. by trying to input
a passphrase using a qwerty keyboard layout when you used an azerty layout
during the installation. This situation can have several causes. Maybe you
switched to another keyboard layout during the installation, or the selected
keyboard layout might not have been set up yet when entering the passphrase for
the root file system.

If you selected to use methods other than a passphrase to create encryption
keys, they will be generated now. Because the kernel may not have gathered a
sufficient amount of entropy at this early stage of the installation, the
process may take a long time. You can help speed up the process by generating
entropy: e.g. by pressing random keys, or by switching to the shell on the
second virtual console and generating some network and disk traffic
(downloading some files, feeding big files into /dev/null, etc.). This will be
repeated for each partition to be encrypted.

After returning to the main partitioning menu, you will see all encrypted
volumes as additional partitions which can be configured in the same way as
ordinary partitions. The following example shows a volume encrypted via
dm-crypt.

Encrypted volume (sda2_crypt) - 115.1 GB Linux device-mapper
     #1 115.1 GB  F ext3

Now is the time to assign mount points to the volumes and optionally change the
file system types if the defaults do not suit you.

Pay attention to the identifiers in parentheses (sda2_crypt in this case) and
the mount points you assigned to each encrypted volume. You will need this
information later when booting the new system. The differences between the
ordinary boot process and the boot process with encryption involved will be
covered later in Section 7.2, "Mounting encrypted volumes".

Once you are satisfied with the partitioning scheme, continue with the
installation.

6.3.5. Installing the Base System

Although this stage is the least problematic, it consumes a significant
fraction of the install because it downloads, verifies and unpacks the whole
base system. If you have a slow computer or network connection, this could take
some time.

During installation of the base system, package unpacking and setup messages
are redirected to tty4. You can access this terminal by pressing Left Alt+F4;
get back to the main installer process with Left Alt+F1.

The unpack/setup messages generated during this phase are also saved in /var/
log/syslog. You can check them there if the installation is performed over a
serial console.

As part of the installation, a Linux kernel will be installed. At the default
priority, the installer will choose one for you that best matches your
hardware. In lower priority modes, you will be able to choose from a list of
available kernels.

When packages are installed using the package management system, it will by
default also install packages that are recommended by those packages.
Recommended packages are not strictly required for the core functionality of
the selected software, but they do enhance that software and should, in the
view of the package maintainers, normally be installed together with that
software.

Note

For technical reasons packages installed during the installation of the base
system are installed without their "Recommends". The rule described above only
takes effect after this point in the installation process.

6.3.6. Installing Additional Software

At this point you have a usable but limited system. Most users will want to
install additional software on the system to tune it to their needs, and the
installer allows you do so. This step can take even longer than installing the
base system if you have a slow computer or network connection.

6.3.6.1. Configuring apt

One of the tools used to install packages on a Debian GNU/Linux system is the
program apt, from the apt package^[10]. Other front-ends for package
management, like aptitude and synaptic, are also in use. These front-ends are
recommended for new users, since they integrate some additional features
(package searching and status checks) in a nice user interface.

apt must be configured so that it knows from where to retrieve packages. The
results of this configuration are written to the file /etc/apt/sources.list.
You can examine and edit this file to your liking after the installation is
complete.

If you are installing at default priority, the installer will largely take care
of the configuration automatically, based on the installation method you are
using and possibly using choices made earlier in the installation. In most
cases the installer will automatically add a security mirror and, if you are
installing the stable distribution, a mirror for the "stable-updates" service.

If you are installing at a lower priority (e.g. in expert mode), you will be
able to make more decisions yourself. You can choose whether or not to use the
security and/or stable-updates services, and you can choose to add packages
from the "contrib", "non-free", and "non-free-firmware" sections of the
archive.

6.3.6.1.1. Installing from more than one CD or DVD image

If you are installing from a CD or DVD image that is part of a larger set, the
installer will ask if you want to scan additional installation media. If you
have such additional media available, you probably want to do this so the
installer can use the packages included on them.

If you do not have any additional media, that is no problem: using them is not
required. If you also do not use a network mirror (as explained in the next
section), it can mean that not all packages belonging to the tasks you select
in the next step of the installation can be installed.

Note

Packages are included on CD and DVD images in the order of their popularity.
This means that for most uses only the first image of a set is needed and that
only very few people actually use any of the packages included on the last
images of a set.

It also means that buying or downloading and burning a full CD set is just a
waste of money as you'll never use most of them. In most cases you are better
off getting only the first 3 to 8 CDs and installing any additional packages
you may need from the Internet by using a mirror. The same goes for DVD sets:
the first DVD, or maybe the first two DVDs will cover most needs.

If you do scan multiple installation media, the installer will prompt you to
exchange them when it needs packages from one that isn't currently in the
drive. Note that only discs that belong to the same set should be scanned. The
order in which they are scanned does not really matter, but scanning them in
ascending order will reduce the chance of mistakes.

6.3.6.1.2. Using a network mirror

One question that will be asked during most installs is whether or not to use a
network mirror as a source for packages. In most cases the default answer
should be fine, but there are some exceptions.

If you are not installing from a full CD/DVD image, you really should use a
network mirror as otherwise you will end up with only a very minimal system.
However, if you have a limited Internet connection it is best not to select the
desktop task in the next step of the installation.

If you are installing from a single full CD image, using a network mirror is
not required, but is still strongly recommended because a single CD image
contains only a fairly limited number of packages. If you have a limited
Internet connection it may still be best to not select a network mirror here,
but to finish the installation using only what's available on the CD image and
selectively install additional packages after the installation (i.e. after you
have rebooted into the new system).

If you are installing from DVD, any packages needed during the installation
should be present on the first DVD image. Use of a network mirror is optional.

One advantage of adding a network mirror is that updates, that have occurred
since the CD/DVD images were created and have been included in a point release,
will become available for installation, thus extending the life of your CD/DVD
set without compromising the security or stability of the installed system.

In summary: selecting a network mirror is generally a good idea, except if you
do not have a good Internet connection. If the current version of a package is
available from installation media, the installer will always use that. The
amount of data that will be downloaded if you do select a mirror thus depends
on

 1. the tasks you select in the next step of the installation,

 2. which packages are needed for those tasks,

 3. which of those packages are present on the installation media you have
    scanned, and

 4. whether any updated versions of packages included on the installation media
    are available from a mirror (either a regular package mirror, or a mirror
    for security or stable-updates).

Note that the last point means that, even if you choose not to use a network
mirror, some packages may still be downloaded from the Internet if there is a
security or stable-updates update available for them and those services have
been configured.

6.3.6.1.3. Choosing a network mirror

Unless you chose not to use a network mirror, you will be presented with a list
of network mirrors based upon your country selection earlier in the
installation process. Choosing the offered default is usually fine.

The offered default is deb.debian.org, which is not a mirror itself but will
redirect to a mirror that should be up-to-date and fast. These mirrors support
TLS (https protocol) and IPv6. This service is maintained by the Debian System
Administration (DSA) team.

A mirror can also be specified by hand by choosing "enter information manually"
. You can then specify a mirror host name and an optional port number. This
actually has to be a URL base, i.e. when specifying an IPv6 address, one has to
add square brackets around it, for instance "[2001:db8::1]".

If your computer is on an IPv6-only network (which is probably not the case for
the vast majority of users), using the default mirror for your country might
not work. All the mirrors in the list are reachable via IPv4, but only some of
them can be used via IPv6. As connectivity of individual mirrors can change
over time, this information is not available in the installer. If there is no
IPv6 connectivity for the default mirror for your country, you can either try
some of the other mirrors offered to you or choose the "enter information
manually" option. You can then specify "ftp.ipv6.debian.org" as the mirror
name, which is an alias for a mirror available via IPv6, although it will
probably not be the fastest possible one.

6.3.6.2. Selecting and Installing Software

During the installation process, you are given the opportunity to select
additional software to install. Rather than picking individual software
packages from the 95196 available packages, this stage of the installation
process focuses on selecting and installing predefined collections of software
to quickly set up your computer to perform various tasks.

These tasks loosely represent a number of different jobs or things you want to
do with your computer, such as "Desktop environment", "Web server", or "SSH
server"^[11]. Section D.2, "Disk Space Needed for Tasks" lists the space
requirements for the available tasks.

Some tasks may be pre-selected based on the characteristics of the computer you
are installing. If you disagree with these selections you can deselect them.
You can even opt to install no tasks at all at this point.

Tip

In the standard user interface of the installer, you can use the space bar to
toggle selection of a task.

Note

The "Desktop environment" task will install a graphical desktop environment.

By default, debian-installer installs the desktop environment. It is possible
to interactively select a different desktop environment during the
installation. It is also possible to install multiple desktops, but some
combinations of desktop may not be co-installable.

Note that this will only work if the packages needed for the desired desktop
environment are actually available. If you are installing using a single full
CD image, they will possibly need to be downloaded from a network mirror as
they might not be available on the CD image due to its limited amount of space.
Installing any of the available desktop environments this way should work fine
if you are using a DVD image or any other installation method.

The various server tasks will install software roughly as follows. Web server:
apache2; SSH server: openssh.

The "Standard system" task will install any package that has a priority "
standard". This includes a lot of common utilities that are normally available
on any Linux or Unix system. You should leave this task selected unless you
know what you are doing and want a really minimal system.

If during language selection a default locale other than the "C" locale was
selected, tasksel will check if any localization tasks are defined for that
locale and will automatically try to install relevant localization packages.
This includes for example packages containing word lists or special fonts for
your language. If a desktop environment was selected, it will also install
appropriate localization packages for that (if available).

Once you've selected your tasks, select Continue. At this point, apt will
install the packages that are part of the selected tasks. If a particular
program needs more information from the user, it will prompt you during this
process.

You should be aware that especially the Desktop task is very large. Especially
when installing from a normal CD-ROM in combination with a mirror for packages
not on the CD-ROM, the installer may want to retrieve a lot of packages over
the network. If you have a relatively slow Internet connection, this can take a
long time. There is no option to cancel the installation of packages once it
has started.

Even when packages are included on the CD-ROM, the installer may still retrieve
them from the mirror if the version available on the mirror is more recent than
the one included on the CD-ROM. If you are installing the stable distribution,
this can happen after a point release (an update of the original stable
release); if you are installing the testing distribution this will happen if
you are using an older image.

6.3.7. Making Your System Bootable

If you are installing a diskless workstation, obviously, booting off the local
disk isn't a meaningful option, and this step will be skipped.

6.3.7.1. Detecting other operating systems

Before a boot loader is installed, the installer will attempt to probe for
other operating systems which are installed on the machine. If it finds a
supported operating system, you will be informed of this during the boot loader
installation step, and the computer will be configured to boot this other
operating system in addition to Debian.

Note that multiple operating systems booting on a single machine is still
something of a black art. The automatic support for detecting and setting up
boot loaders to boot other operating systems varies by architecture and even by
subarchitecture. If it does not work you should consult your boot manager's
documentation for more information.

6.3.7.2. Install the Grub Boot Loader on a Hard Disk

The main ppc64el boot loader is called "grub". Grub is a flexible and robust
boot loader and a good default choice for new users and old hands alike.

By default, Grub will be installed into the PReP partition, where it will take
over complete control of the boot process.

6.3.7.3. Continue Without Boot Loader

This option can be used to complete the installation even when no boot loader
is to be installed, either because the arch/subarch doesn't provide one, or
because none is desired (e.g. you will use existing boot loader).

If you plan to manually configure your bootloader, you should check the name of
the installed kernel in /target/boot. You should also check that directory for
the presence of an initrd; if one is present, you will probably have to
instruct your bootloader to use it. Other information you will need are the
disk and partition you selected for your / filesystem and, if you chose to
install /boot on a separate partition, also your /boot filesystem.

6.3.8. Finishing the Installation

This is the last step in the Debian installation process during which the
installer will do any last minute tasks. It mostly consists of tidying up after
the debian-installer.

6.3.8.1. Setting the System Clock

The installer may ask you if the computer's clock is set to UTC. Normally this
question is avoided if possible and the installer tries to work out whether the
clock is set to UTC based on things like what other operating systems are
installed.

In expert mode you will always be able to choose whether or not the clock is
set to UTC.

At this point debian-installer will also attempt to save the current time to
the system's hardware clock. This will be done either in UTC or local time,
depending on the selection that was just made.

6.3.8.2. Reboot the System

You will be prompted to remove the boot media (CD, USB stick, etc) that you
used to boot the installer. After that the system will be rebooted into your
new Debian system.

6.3.9. Troubleshooting

The components listed in this section are usually not involved in the
installation process, but are waiting in the background to help the user in
case something goes wrong.

6.3.9.1. Saving the installation logs

If the installation is successful, the logfiles created during the installation
process will be automatically saved to /var/log/installer/ on your new Debian
system.

Choosing Save debug logs from the main menu allows you to save the log files to
a USB stick, network, hard disk, or other media. This can be useful if you
encounter fatal problems during the installation and wish to study the logs on
another system or attach them to an installation report.

6.3.9.2. Using the Shell and Viewing the Logs

There are several methods you can use to get a shell while running an
installation. On most systems, and if you are not installing over serial
console, the easiest method is to switch to the second virtual console by
pressing Left Alt+F2^[12] (on a Mac keyboard, Option+F2). Use Left Alt+F1 to
switch back to the installer itself.

If you cannot switch consoles, there is also an Execute a Shell item on the
main menu that can be used to start a shell. You can get to the main menu from
most dialogs by using the Go Back button one or more times. Type exit to close
the shell and return to the installer.

At this point you are booted from the RAM disk, and there is a limited set of
Unix utilities available for your use. You can see what programs are available
with the command ls /bin /sbin /usr/bin /usr/sbin and by typing help. The shell
is a Bourne shell clone called ash and has some nice features like
autocompletion and history.

To edit and view files, use the text editor nano. Log files for the
installation system can be found in the /var/log directory.

Note

Although you can do basically anything in a shell that the available commands
allow you to do, the option to use a shell is really only there in case
something goes wrong and for debugging.

Doing things manually from the shell may interfere with the installation
process and result in errors or an incomplete installation. In particular, you
should always use let the installer activate your swap partition and not do
this yourself from a shell.

6.3.10. Installation over network-console

One of the more interesting components is network-console. It allows you to do
a large part of the installation over the network via SSH. The use of the
network implies you will have to perform the first steps of the installation
from the console, at least to the point of setting up the networking. (Although
you can automate that part with Section 4.5, "Automatic Installation".)

This component is not loaded into the main installation menu by default, so you
have to explicitly ask for it. If you are installing from optical media, you
need to boot with medium priority or otherwise invoke the main installation
menu and choose Load installer components from installation media and from the
list of additional components select network-console: Continue installation
remotely using SSH. Successful load is indicated by a new menu entry called 
Continue installation remotely using SSH.

After selecting this new entry, you will be asked for a new password to be used
for connecting to the installation system and for its confirmation. That's all.
Now you should see a screen which instructs you to login remotely as the user 
installer with the password you just provided. Another important detail to
notice on this screen is the fingerprint of this system. You need to transfer
the fingerprint securely to the person who will continue the installation
remotely.

Should you decide to continue with the installation locally, you can always
press Enter, which will bring you back to the main menu, where you can select
another component.

Now let's switch to the other side of the wire. As a prerequisite, you need to
configure your terminal for UTF-8 encoding, because that is what the
installation system uses. If you do not, remote installation will be still
possible, but you may encounter strange display artefacts like destroyed dialog
borders or unreadable non-ascii characters. Establishing a connection with the
installation system is as simple as typing:

$ ssh -l installer install_host

Where install_host is either the name or IP address of the computer being
installed. Before the actual login the fingerprint of the remote system will be
displayed and you will have to confirm that it is correct.

Note

The ssh server in the installer uses a default configuration that does not send
keep-alive packets. In principle, a connection to the system being installed
should be kept open indefinitely. However, in some situations -- depending on
your local network setup -- the connection may be lost after some period of
inactivity. One common case where this can happen is when there is some form of
Network Address Translation (NAT) somewhere between the client and the system
being installed. Depending on at which point of the installation the connection
was lost, you may or may not be able to resume the installation after
reconnecting.

You may be able to avoid the connection being dropped by adding the option
-o ServerAliveInterval=value when starting the ssh connection, or by adding
that option in your ssh configuration file. Note however that in some cases
adding this option may also cause a connection to be dropped (for example if
keep-alive packets are sent during a brief network outage, from which ssh would
otherwise have recovered), so it should only be used when needed.

Note

If you install several computers in turn and they happen to have the same IP
address or hostname, ssh will refuse to connect to such host. The reason is
that it will have different fingerprint, which is usually a sign of a spoofing
attack. If you are sure this is not the case, you will need to delete the
relevant line from ~/.ssh/known_hosts^[13] and try again.

After the login you will be presented with an initial screen where you have two
possibilities called Start menu and Start shell. The former brings you to the
main installer menu, where you can continue with the installation as usual. The
latter starts a shell from which you can examine and possibly fix the remote
system. You should only start one SSH session for the installation menu, but
may start multiple sessions for shells.

Warning

After you have started the installation remotely over SSH, you should not go
back to the installation session running on the local console. Doing so may
corrupt the database that holds the configuration of the new system. This in
turn may result in a failed installation or problems with the installed system.

6.4. Loading Missing Firmware

As described in Section 2.2, "Devices Requiring Firmware", some devices require
firmware to be loaded. In most cases the device will not work at all if the
firmware is not available; sometimes basic functionality is not impaired if it
is missing and the firmware is only needed to enable additional features.

Starting with Debian GNU/Linux 12.0, following the 2022 General Resolution
about non-free firmware, official installation images (like netinst) can
include non-free firmware packages. Even with those firmware packages
available, some firmware files might still be missing. Or one might be using
netboot files, which don't include firmware packages.

If a device driver requests firmware that is not available, debian-installer
will display a dialog offering to load the missing firmware. If this option is
selected, debian-installer will scan available devices for either loose
firmware files or packages containing firmware. If found, the firmware will be
copied to the correct location (/lib/firmware) and the driver module will be
reloaded.

Note

Which devices are scanned and which file systems are supported depends on the
architecture, the installation method and the stage of the installation.
Especially during the early stages of the installation, loading the firmware is
most likely to succeed from a FAT-formatted USB stick.

Note that it is possible to skip loading the firmware if you know the device
will also function without it, or if the device is not needed during the
installation.

6.4.1. Preparing a medium

The most common method to load such firmware is from some removable medium such
as a USB stick. To prepare a USB stick (or other medium like a hard drive
partition), the firmware files or packages must be placed in either the root
directory or a directory named /firmware of the file system on the medium. The
recommended file system to use is FAT as that is most certain to be supported
during the early stages of the installation.

Tarballs and zip files containing current packages for the most common
firmware, and the associated metadata to ensure a proper detection by the
installer (dep11 directory), are available from:

  • https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/firmware/bookworm/

Just download the tarball or zip file for the correct release and unpack it to
the file system on the medium.

It is also possible to copy individual firmware files to the medium. Loose
firmware could be obtained for example from an already installed system or from
a hardware vendor.

6.4.2. Firmware and the Installed System

Any firmware loaded during the installation will be copied automatically to the
installed system. In most cases this will ensure that the device that requires
the firmware will also work correctly after the system is rebooted into the
installed system. However, if the installed system runs a different kernel
version than the installer, there is a slight chance that the firmware cannot
be loaded due to version skew.

If the firmware was loaded from a firmware package, debian-installer will also
install this package for the installed system and will automatically add the
non-free-firmware section of the package archive in APT's sources.list. This
has the advantage that the firmware should be updated automatically if a new
version becomes available.

If loading the firmware was skipped during the installation, the relevant
device will probably not work with the installed system until the firmware
(package) is installed manually.

Note

If the firmware was loaded from loose firmware files, the firmware copied to
the installed system will not be automatically updated unless the corresponding
firmware package (if available) is installed after the installation is
completed.

6.4.3. Completing the Installed System

Depending on how the installation was performed, it might be that the need for
some firmware was not detected during installation, that the relevant firmware
was not available, or that one chose not to install some firmware at that time.
In some cases, a successful installation can still end up in a black screen or
a garbled display when rebooting into the installed system. When that happens,
the following workarounds can be tried:

  • Pass the nomodeset option on the kernel command line. This might help boot
    into a "fallback graphics" mode.

  • Use the Ctrl+Alt+F2 key combination to switch to VT2, which might offer a
    functional login prompt.

6.5. Customization

Using the shell (see Section 6.3.9.2, "Using the Shell and Viewing the Logs"),
the installation process can be carefully customized, to fit exceptional use
cases:

6.5.1. Installing an alternative init system

Debian uses systemd as its default init system. However, other init systems
(such as sysvinit and OpenRC) are supported, and the easiest time to select an
alternative init system is during the installation process. For detailed
instructions on how to do so, please see the Init page on the Debian wiki.


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^[3] In technical terms: where multiple locales exist for that language with
differing country codes.

^[4] At medium and low priority you can always select your preferred locale
from those available for the selected language (if there's more than one).

^[5] Legacy locales are locales which do not use UTF-8, but one of the older
standards for character encoding such as ISO 8859-1 (used by West European
languages) or EUC-JP (used by Japanese).

^[6] The installer will encrypt the LVM volume group using a 256 bit AES key
and makes use of the kernel's "dm-crypt" support.

^[7] To be honest, you can construct an MD device even from partitions residing
on single physical drive, but that won't give any benefits.

^[8] Using a passphrase as the key currently means that the partition will be
set up using LUKS.

^[9] It is believed that the guys from three-letter agencies can restore the
data even after several rewrites of the magnetooptical media, though.

^[10] Note that the program which actually installs the packages is called dpkg
. However, this program is more of a low-level tool. apt is a higher-level
tool, which will invoke dpkg as appropriate. It knows how to retrieve packages
from your installation media, the network, or wherever. It is also able to
automatically install other packages which are required to make the package
you're trying to install work correctly.

^[11] You should know that to present this list, the installer is merely
invoking the tasksel program. It can be run at any time after installation to
install more packages (or remove them), or you can use a more fine-grained tool
such as aptitude. If you are looking for a specific single package, after
installation is complete, simply run aptitude install package, where package is
the name of the package you are looking for.

^[12] That is: press the Alt key on the left-hand side of the space bar and the
F2 function key at the same time.

^[13] The following command will remove an existing entry for a host: 
ssh-keygen -R <hostname|IP address>.

Chapter 7. Booting Into Your New Debian System

Table of Contents

7.1. The Moment of Truth
7.2. Mounting encrypted volumes

    7.2.1. Troubleshooting

7.3. Log In

7.1. The Moment of Truth

Your system's first boot on its own power is what electrical engineers call the
"smoke test".

If the system fails to start up correctly, don't panic. If the installation was
successful, chances are good that there is only a relatively minor problem that
is preventing the system from booting Debian. In most cases such problems can
be fixed without having to repeat the installation. One available option to fix
boot problems is to use the installer's built-in rescue mode (see Section 8.6,
"Recovering a Broken System").

If you are new to Debian and Linux, you may need some help from more
experienced users. For less common architectures like 64-bit PowerPC
(little-endian), your best option is to ask on the debian-powerpc mailing list.
You can also file an installation report as described in Section 5.4.5,
"Submitting Installation Reports". Please make sure that you describe your
problem clearly and include any messages that are displayed and may help others
to diagnose the issue.

7.2. Mounting encrypted volumes

If you created encrypted volumes during the installation and assigned them
mount points, you will be asked to enter the passphrase for each of these
volumes during the boot.

For partitions encrypted using dm-crypt you will be shown the following prompt
during the boot:

Starting early crypto disks... part_crypt(starting)
Enter LUKS passphrase:

In the first line of the prompt, part is the name of the underlying partition,
e.g. sda2 or md0. You are now probably wondering for which volume you are
actually entering the passphrase. Does it relate to your /home? Or to /var? Of
course, if you have just one encrypted volume, this is easy and you can just
enter the passphrase you used when setting up this volume. If you set up more
than one encrypted volume during the installation, the notes you wrote down as
the last step in Section 6.3.4.6, "Configuring Encrypted Volumes" come in
handy. If you did not make a note of the mapping between part_crypt and the
mount points before, you can still find it in /etc/crypttab and /etc/fstab of
your new system.

The prompt may look somewhat different when an encrypted root file system is
mounted. This depends on which initramfs generator was used to generate the
initrd used to boot the system. The example below is for an initrd generated
using initramfs-tools:

Begin: Mounting root file system... ...
Begin: Running /scripts/local-top ...
Enter LUKS passphrase:

No characters (even asterisks) will be shown while entering the passphrase. If
you enter the wrong passphrase, you have two more tries to correct it. After
the third try the boot process will skip this volume and continue to mount the
next filesystem. Please see Section 7.2.1, "Troubleshooting" for further
information.

After entering all passphrases the boot should continue as usual.

7.2.1. Troubleshooting

If some of the encrypted volumes could not be mounted because a wrong
passphrase was entered, you will have to mount them manually after the boot.
There are several cases.

  • The first case concerns the root partition. When it is not mounted
    correctly, the boot process will halt and you will have to reboot the
    computer to try again.

  • The easiest case is for encrypted volumes holding data like /home or /srv.
    You can simply mount them manually after the boot.

    However for dm-crypt this is a bit tricky. First you need to register the
    volumes with device mapper by running:

    # /etc/init.d/cryptdisks start

    This will scan all volumes mentioned in /etc/crypttab and will create
    appropriate devices under the /dev directory after entering the correct
    passphrases. (Already registered volumes will be skipped, so you can repeat
    this command several times without worrying.) After successful registration
    you can simply mount the volumes the usual way:

    # mount /mount_point

  • If any volume holding noncritical system files could not be mounted (/usr
    or /var), the system should still boot and you should be able to mount the
    volumes manually like in the previous case. However, you will also need to
    (re)start any services usually running in your default runlevel because it
    is very likely that they were not started. The easiest way is to just
    reboot the computer.

7.3. Log In

Once your system boots, you'll be presented with the login prompt. Log in using
the personal login and password you selected during the installation process.
Your system is now ready for use.

If you are a new user, you may want to explore the documentation which is
already installed on your system as you start to use it. There are currently
several documentation systems, work is proceeding on integrating the different
types of documentation. Here are a few starting points.

Documentation accompanying programs you have installed can be found in /usr/
share/doc/, under a subdirectory named after the program (or, more precise, the
Debian package that contains the program). However, more extensive
documentation is often packaged separately in special documentation packages
that are mostly not installed by default. For example, documentation about the
package management tool apt can be found in the packages apt-doc or apt-howto.

In addition, there are some special folders within the /usr/share/doc/
hierarchy. Linux HOWTOs are installed in .gz (compressed) format, in /usr/share
/doc/HOWTO/en-txt/. After installing dhelp, you will find a browsable index of
documentation in /usr/share/doc/HTML/index.html.

One easy way to view these documents using a text based browser is to enter the
following commands:

$ cd /usr/share/doc/
$ w3m .

The dot after the w3m command tells it to show the contents of the current
directory.

If you have a graphical desktop environment installed, you can also use its web
browser. Start the web browser from the application menu and enter /usr/share/
doc/ in the address bar.

You can also type info command or man command to see documentation on most
commands available at the command prompt. Typing help will display help on
shell commands. And typing a command followed by --help will usually display a
short summary of the command's usage. If a command's results scroll past the
top of the screen, type | more after the command to cause the results to pause
before scrolling past the top of the screen. To see a list of all commands
available which begin with a certain letter, type the letter and then two tabs.

Chapter 8. Next Steps and Where to Go From Here

Table of Contents

8.1. Shutting down the system
8.2. Orienting Yourself to Debian

    8.2.1. Debian Packaging System
    8.2.2. Additional Software Available for Debian
    8.2.3. Application Version Management
    8.2.4. Cron Job Management

8.3. Further Reading and Information
8.4. Setting Up Your System To Use E-Mail

    8.4.1. Default E-Mail Configuration
    8.4.2. Sending E-Mails Outside The System
    8.4.3. Configuring the Exim4 Mail Transport Agent

8.5. Compiling a New Kernel
8.6. Recovering a Broken System

8.1. Shutting down the system

To shut down a running Debian GNU/Linux system, you must not reboot with the
reset switch on the front or back of your computer, or just turn off the
computer. Debian GNU/Linux should be shut down in a controlled manner,
otherwise files might get lost and/or disk damage might occur. If you run a
desktop environment, there is usually an option to "log out" available from the
application menu that allows you to shutdown (or reboot) the system.

Alternatively you can press the key combination Ctrl+Alt+Del . If the key
combinations do not work, a last option is to log in as root and type the
necessary commands. Use reboot to reboot the system. Use halt to halt the
system without powering it off ^[14]. To power off the machine, use poweroff or
shutdown -h now. The systemd init system provides additional commands that
perform the same functions; for example systemctl reboot or systemctl poweroff.

8.2. Orienting Yourself to Debian

Debian is a little different from other distributions. Even if you're familiar
with Linux in other distributions, there are things you should know about
Debian to help you to keep your system in a good, clean state. This chapter
contains material to help you get oriented; it is not intended to be a tutorial
for how to use Debian, but just a very brief glimpse of the system for the very
rushed.

8.2.1. Debian Packaging System

The most important concept to grasp is the Debian packaging system. In essence,
large parts of your system should be considered under the control of the
packaging system. These include:

  • /usr (excluding /usr/local)

  • /var (you could make /var/local and be safe in there)

  • /bin

  • /sbin

  • /lib

For instance, if you replace /usr/bin/perl, that will work, but then if you
upgrade your perl package, the file you put there will be replaced. Experts can
get around this by putting packages on "hold" in aptitude.

One of the best installation methods is apt. You can use the command line
version of apt as well as tools like aptitude or synaptic (which are just
graphical frontends for apt). Note that apt will also let you merge main,
contrib, non-free, and non-free-firmware so you can have restricted packages
(strictly speaking not belonging to Debian) as well as packages from Debian GNU
/Linux at the same time.

8.2.2. Additional Software Available for Debian

There are official and unofficial software repositories that are not enabled in
the default Debian install. These contain software which many find important
and expect to have. Information on these additional repositories can be found
on the Debian Wiki page titled The Software Available for Debian's Stable
Release.

8.2.3. Application Version Management

Alternative versions of applications are managed by update-alternatives. If you
are maintaining multiple versions of your applications, read the
update-alternatives man page.

8.2.4. Cron Job Management

Any jobs under the purview of the system administrator should be in /etc, since
they are configuration files. If you have a root cron job for daily, weekly, or
monthly runs, put them in /etc/cron.{daily,weekly,monthly}. These are invoked
from /etc/crontab, and will run in alphabetic order, which serializes them.

On the other hand, if you have a cron job that (a) needs to run as a special
user, or (b) needs to run at a special time or frequency, you can use either /
etc/crontab, or, better yet, /etc/cron.d/whatever. These particular files also
have an extra field that allows you to stipulate the user account under which
the cron job runs.

In either case, you just edit the files and cron will notice them
automatically. There is no need to run a special command. For more information
see cron(8), crontab(5), and /usr/share/doc/cron/README.Debian.

8.3. Further Reading and Information

The Debian web site contains a large quantity of documentation about Debian. In
particular, see the Debian GNU/Linux FAQ and the Debian Reference. An index of
more Debian documentation is available from the Debian Documentation Project.
The Debian community is self-supporting; to subscribe to one or more of the
Debian mailing lists, see the Mail List Subscription page. Last, but not least,
the Debian Mailing List Archives contain a wealth of information on Debian.

If you need information about a particular program, you should first try man 
program, or info program.

There is lots of useful documentation in /usr/share/doc as well. In particular,
/usr/share/doc/HOWTO and /usr/share/doc/FAQ contain lots of interesting
information. To submit bugs, look at /usr/share/doc/debian/bug*. To read about
Debian-specific issues for particular programs, look at /usr/share/doc/(package
name)/README.Debian.

A general source of information on GNU/Linux is the Linux Documentation Project
. There you will find the HOWTOs and pointers to other very valuable
information on parts of a GNU/Linux system.

Linux is an implementation of Unix. The Linux Documentation Project (LDP)
collects a number of HOWTOs and online books relating to Linux.

If you are new to Unix, you probably should go out and buy some books and do
some reading. This list of Unix FAQs contains a number of UseNet documents
which provide a nice historical reference.

8.4. Setting Up Your System To Use E-Mail

Today, email is an important part of many people's life. As there are many
options as to how to set it up, and as having it set up correctly is important
for some Debian utilities, we will try to cover the basics in this section.

There are three main functions that make up an e-mail system. First there is
the Mail User Agent (MUA) which is the program a user actually uses to compose
and read mails. Then there is the Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) that takes care of
transferring messages from one computer to another. And last there is the Mail
Delivery Agent (MDA) that takes care of delivering incoming mail to the user's
inbox.

These three functions can be performed by separate programs, but they can also
be combined in one or two programs. It is also possible to have different
programs handle these functions for different types of mail.

On Linux and Unix systems mutt is historically a very popular MUA. Like most
traditional Linux programs it is text based. It is often used in combination
with exim or sendmail as MTA and procmail as MDA.

With the increasing popularity of graphical desktop systems, the use of
graphical e-mail programs like GNOME's evolution, KDE's kmail or Mozilla's 
thunderbird has becoming more popular. These programs combine the function of a
MUA, MTA and MDA, but can -- and often are -- also be used in combination with
the traditional Linux tools.

8.4.1. Default E-Mail Configuration

Even if you are planning to use a graphical mail program, it would be useful,
to have a traditional MTA/MDA installed and correctly set up on your Debian GNU
/Linux system. Reason is that various utilities running on the system^[15] can
send important notices by e-mail to inform the system administrator of
(potential) problems or changes.

For this you can install exim4 and mutt with apt install exim4 mutt. exim4 is a
combination MTA/MDA that is relatively small but very flexible. By default it
will be configured to only handle e-mail local to the system itself and e-mails
addressed to the system administrator (root account) will be delivered to the
regular user account created during the installation^[16].

When system e-mails are delivered they are added to a file in /var/mail/
account_name. The e-mails can be read using mutt.

8.4.2. Sending E-Mails Outside The System

As mentioned earlier, the installed Debian system is only set up to handle
e-mail local to the system, not for sending mail to others nor for receiving
mail from others.

If you would like exim4 to handle external e-mail, please refer to the next
subsection for the basic available configuration options. Make sure to test
that mail can be sent and received correctly.

If you intend to use a graphical mail program and use a mail server of your
Internet Service Provider (ISP) or your company, there is not really any need
to configure exim4 for handling external e-mail. Just configure your favorite
graphical mail program to use the correct servers to send and receive e-mail
(how is outside the scope of this manual).

However, in that case you may need to configure individual utilities to
correctly send e-mails. One such utility is reportbug, a program that
facilitates submitting bug reports against Debian packages. By default it
expects to be able to use exim4 to submit bug reports.

To correctly set up reportbug to use an external mail server, please run the
command reportbug --configure and answer "no" to the question if an MTA is
available. You will then be asked for the SMTP server to be used for submitting
bug reports.

8.4.3. Configuring the Exim4 Mail Transport Agent

If you would like your system to also handle external e-mail, you will need to
reconfigure the exim4 package^[17]:

# dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config

After entering that command (as root), you will be asked if you want split the
configuration into small files. If you are unsure, select the default option.

Next you will be presented with several common mail scenarios. Choose the one
that most closely resembles your needs.

internet site

    Your system is connected to a network and your mail is sent and received
    directly using SMTP. On the following screens you will be asked a few basic
    questions, like your machine's mail name, or a list of domains for which
    you accept or relay mail.

mail sent by smarthost

    In this scenario your outgoing mail is forwarded to another machine, called
    a "smarthost", which takes care of sending the message on to its
    destination. The smarthost also usually stores incoming mail addressed to
    your computer, so you don't need to be permanently online. That also means
    you have to download your mail from the smarthost via programs like
    fetchmail.

    In a lot of cases the smarthost will be your ISP's mail server, which makes
    this option very suitable for dial-up users. It can also be a company mail
    server, or even another system on your own network.

mail sent by smarthost; no local mail

    This option is basically the same as the previous one except that the
    system will not be set up to handle mail for a local e-mail domain. Mail on
    the system itself (e.g. for the system administrator) will still be
    handled.

local delivery only

    This is the option your system is configured for by default.

no configuration at this time

    Choose this if you are absolutely convinced you know what you are doing.
    This will leave you with an unconfigured mail system -- until you configure
    it, you won't be able to send or receive any mail and you may miss some
    important messages from your system utilities.

If none of these scenarios suits your needs, or if you need a finer grained
setup, you will need to edit configuration files under the /etc/exim4 directory
after the installation is complete. More information about exim4 may be found
under /usr/share/doc/exim4; the file README.Debian.gz has further details about
configuring exim4 and explains where to find additional documentation.

Note that sending mail directly to the Internet when you don't have an official
domain name, can result in your mail being rejected because of anti-spam
measures on receiving servers. Using your ISP's mail server is preferred. If
you still do want to send out mail directly, you may want to use a different
e-mail address than is generated by default. If you use exim4 as your MTA, this
is possible by adding an entry in /etc/email-addresses.

8.5. Compiling a New Kernel

Why would someone want to compile a new kernel? It is most probably not
necessary since the default kernel shipped with Debian handles almost all
configurations.

If you want to compile your own kernel nevertheless, this is of course possible
and we recommend the use of the "make deb-pkg" target. For more information
read the Debian Linux Kernel Handbook.

8.6. Recovering a Broken System

Sometimes, things go wrong, and the system you've carefully installed is no
longer bootable. Perhaps the boot loader configuration broke while trying out a
change, or perhaps a new kernel you installed won't boot, or perhaps cosmic
rays hit your disk and flipped a bit in /sbin/init. Regardless of the cause,
you'll need to have a system to work from while you fix it, and rescue mode can
be useful for this.

To access rescue mode, select rescue from the boot menu, type rescue at the
boot: prompt, or boot with the rescue/enable=true boot parameter. You'll be
shown the first few screens of the installer, with a note in the corner of the
display to indicate that this is rescue mode, not a full installation. Don't
worry, your system is not about to be overwritten! Rescue mode simply takes
advantage of the hardware detection facilities available in the installer to
ensure that your disks, network devices, and so on are available to you while
repairing your system.

Instead of the partitioning tool, you should now be presented with a list of
the partitions on your system, and asked to select one of them. Normally, you
should select the partition containing the root file system that you need to
repair. You may select partitions on RAID and LVM devices as well as those
created directly on disks.

If possible, the installer will now present you with a shell prompt in the file
system you selected, which you can use to perform any necessary repairs.

If the installer cannot run a usable shell in the root file system you
selected, perhaps because the file system is corrupt, then it will issue a
warning and offer to give you a shell in the installer environment instead. You
may not have as many tools available in this environment, but they will often
be enough to repair your system anyway. The root file system you selected will
be mounted on the /target directory.

In either case, after you exit the shell, the system will reboot.

Finally, note that repairing broken systems can be difficult, and this manual
does not attempt to go into all the things that might have gone wrong or how to
fix them. If you have problems, consult an expert.


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^[14] Under the SysV init system halt had the same effect as poweroff, but with
systemd as init system (the default since jessie) their effects are different.

^[15] Examples are: cron, quota, logcheck, aide, ...

^[16] The forwarding of mail for root to the regular user account is configured
in /etc/aliases. If no regular user account was created, the mail will of
course be delivered to the root account itself.

^[17] You can of course also remove exim4 and replace it with an alternative
MTA/MDA.

Appendix A. Installation Howto

Table of Contents

A.1. Preliminaries
A.2. Booting the installer

    A.2.1. Optical disc
    A.2.2. Booting from network
    A.2.3. Booting from hard disk

A.3. Installation
A.4. Send us an installation report
A.5. And finally...

This document describes how to install Debian GNU/Linux bookworm for the 64-bit
PowerPC (little-endian) ("ppc64el") with the new debian-installer. It is a
quick walkthrough of the installation process which should contain all the
information you will need for most installs. When more information can be
useful, we will link to more detailed explanations in other parts of this
document.

A.1. Preliminaries

If you encounter bugs during your install, please refer to Section 5.4.5,
"Submitting Installation Reports" for instructions on how to report them. If
you have questions which cannot be answered by this document, please direct
them to the debian-boot mailing list (debian-boot@lists.debian.org) or ask on
IRC (#debian-boot on the OFTC network).

A.2. Booting the installer

The debian-cd team provides builds of installation images using
debian-installer on the Debian CD/DVD page. For more information on where to
get installation images, see Section 4.1, "Official Debian GNU/Linux
installation images".

Some installation methods require other images than those for optical media.
Section 4.2.1, "Where to Find Installation Files" explains how to find images
on Debian mirrors.

The subsections below will give the details about which images you should get
for each possible means of installation.

A.2.1. Optical disc

The netinst CD image is a popular image which can be used to install bookworm
with the debian-installer. This installation method is intended to boot from
the image and install additional packages over a network; hence the name "
netinst". The image has the software components needed to run the installer and
the base packages to provide a minimal bookworm system. If you'd rather, you
can get a full size CD/DVD image which will not need the network to install.
You only need the first image of such set.

Download whichever type you prefer and burn it to an optical disc.

A.2.2. Booting from network

It's also possible to boot debian-installer completely from the net. The
various methods to netboot depend on your architecture and netboot setup. The
files in netboot/ can be used to netboot debian-installer.

A.2.3. Booting from hard disk

It's possible to boot the installer using no removable media, but just an
existing hard disk, which can have a different OS on it. Download hd-media/
initrd.gz, hd-media/vmlinuz, and a Debian CD/DVD image to the top-level
directory of the hard disk. Make sure that the image has a filename ending in
.iso. Now it's just a matter of booting linux with the initrd.

A.3. Installation

Once the installer starts, you will be greeted with an initial screen. Press 
Enter to boot, or read the instructions for other boot methods and parameters
(see Section 5.3, "Boot Parameters").

After a while you will be asked to select your language. Use the arrow keys to
pick a language and press Enter to continue. Next you'll be asked to select
your country, with the choices including countries where your language is
spoken. If it's not on the short list, a list of all the countries in the world
is available.

You may be asked to confirm your keyboard layout. Choose the default unless you
know better.

Now sit back while debian-installer detects some of your hardware, and loads
the rest of the installation image.

Next the installer will try to detect your network hardware and set up
networking by DHCP. If you are not on a network or do not have DHCP, you will
be given the opportunity to configure the network manually.

Setting up the network is followed by the creation of user accounts. By default
you are asked to provide a password for the "root" (administrator) account and
information necessary to create one regular user account. If you do not specify
a password for the "root" user, this account will be disabled but the sudo
package will be installed later to enable administrative tasks to be carried
out on the new system. By default, the first user created on the system will be
allowed to use the sudo command to become root.

The next step is setting up your clock and time zone. The installer will try to
contact a time server on the Internet to ensure the clock is set correctly. The
time zone is based on the country selected earlier and the installer will only
ask to select one if a country has multiple zones.

Now it is time to partition your disks. First you will be given the opportunity
to automatically partition either an entire drive, or available free space on a
drive (see Section 6.3.4.2, "Guided Partitioning"). This is recommended for new
users or anyone in a hurry. If you do not want to autopartition, choose Manual
from the menu.

On the next screen you will see your partition table, how the partitions will
be formatted, and where they will be mounted. Select a partition to modify or
delete it. If you did automatic partitioning, you should just be able to choose
Finish partitioning and write changes to disk from the menu to use what it set
up. Remember to assign at least one partition for swap space and to mount a
partition on /. For more detailed information on how to use the partitioner,
please refer to Section 6.3.4, "Partitioning and Mount Point Selection"; the
appendix Appendix C, Partitioning for Debian has more general information about
partitioning.

Now debian-installer formats your partitions and starts to install the base
system, which can take a while. That is followed by installing a kernel.

The base system that was installed earlier is a working, but very minimal
installation. To make the system more functional the next step allows you to
install additional packages by selecting tasks. Before packages can be
installed apt needs to be configured as that defines from where the packages
will be retrieved. The "Standard system" task will be selected by default and
should normally be installed. Select the "Desktop environment" task if you
would like to have a graphical desktop after the installation. See
Section 6.3.6.2, "Selecting and Installing Software" for additional information
about this step.

The last step is to install a boot loader. If the installer detects other
operating systems on your computer, it will add them to the boot menu and let
you know.

debian-installer will now tell you that the installation has finished. Remove
the cdrom or other boot media and hit Enter to reboot your machine. It should
boot up into the newly installed system and allow you to log in. This is
explained in Chapter 7, Booting Into Your New Debian System.

If you need more information on the install process, see Chapter 6, Using the
Debian Installer.

A.4. Send us an installation report

If you successfully managed an installation with debian-installer, please take
time to provide us with a report. The simplest way to do so is to install the
reportbug package (apt install reportbug), configure reportbug as explained in
Section 8.4.2, "Sending E-Mails Outside The System", and run reportbug
installation-reports.

If you did not complete the install, you probably found a bug in
debian-installer. To improve the installer it is necessary that we know about
them, so please take the time to report them. You can use an installation
report to report problems; if the install completely fails, see Section 5.4.4,
"Reporting Installation Problems".

A.5. And finally...

We hope that your Debian installation is pleasant and that you find Debian
useful. You might want to read Chapter 8, Next Steps and Where to Go From Here.

Appendix B. Automating the installation using preseeding

Table of Contents

B.1. Introduction

    B.1.1. Preseeding methods
    B.1.2. Limitations

B.2. Using preseeding

    B.2.1. Loading the preconfiguration file
    B.2.2. Using boot parameters to preseed questions
    B.2.3. Auto mode
    B.2.4. Aliases useful with preseeding
    B.2.5. Examples of boot prompt preseeding
    B.2.6. Using a DHCP server to specify preconfiguration files

B.3. Creating a preconfiguration file
B.4. Contents of the preconfiguration file (for bookworm)

    B.4.1. Localization
    B.4.2. Network configuration
    B.4.3. Network console
    B.4.4. Mirror settings
    B.4.5. Account setup
    B.4.6. Clock and time zone setup
    B.4.7. Partitioning
    B.4.8. Base system installation
    B.4.9. Apt setup
    B.4.10. Package selection
    B.4.11. Finishing up the installation
    B.4.12. Preseeding other packages

B.5. Advanced options

    B.5.1. Running custom commands during the installation
    B.5.2. Using preseeding to change default values
    B.5.3. Chainloading preconfiguration files

This appendix explains how to preseed answers to questions in debian-installer
to automate your installation.

The configuration fragments used in this appendix are also available as an
example preconfiguration file from https://www.debian.org/releases/bookworm/
example-preseed.txt.

B.1. Introduction

Preseeding provides a way to set answers to questions asked during the
installation process, without having to manually enter the answers while the
installation is running. This makes it possible to fully automate most types of
installation and even offers some features not available during normal
installations.

Preseeding is not required. If you use an empty preseed file, the installer
will behave just the same way as in a normal manual installation. Each question
you preseed will (if you got it right!) modify the installation in some way
from that baseline.

B.1.1. Preseeding methods

There are three methods that can be used for preseeding: initrd, file and
network. Initrd preseeding will work with any installation method and supports
preseeding of more things, but it requires the most preparation. File and
network preseeding each can be used with different installation methods.

The following table shows which preseeding methods can be used with which
installation methods.

┌──────────────────────────────────────┬────────────┬────────┬──────────────┐
│         Installation method          │   initrd   │  file  │   network    │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼────────────┼────────┼──────────────┤
│CD/DVD/USB                            │yes         │yes     │yes^[a]       │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼────────────┼────────┼──────────────┤
│netboot                               │yes         │no      │yes           │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼────────────┼────────┼──────────────┤
│hd-media                              │yes         │yes     │yes^[a]       │
├──────────────────────────────────────┴────────────┴────────┴──────────────┤
│^[a] but only if you have network access, and set preseed/url appropriately│
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

An important difference between the preseeding methods is the point at which
the preconfiguration file is loaded and processed. For initrd preseeding this
is right at the start of the installation, before the first question is even
asked. Preseeding from the kernel command line happens just after. It is thus
possible to override configuration set in the initrd by editing the kernel
command line (either in the bootloader configuration or manually at boot time
for bootloaders that allow it). For file preseeding this is after the
installation image has been loaded. For network preseeding it is only after the
network has been configured.

Important

Obviously, any questions that have been processed before the preconfiguration
file is loaded cannot be preseeded (this will include questions that are only
displayed at medium or low priority, like the first hardware detection run). A
not so convenient way to avoid these questions from being asked is to preseed
them through the boot parameters, as described in Section B.2.2, "Using boot
parameters to preseed questions".

In order to easily avoid the questions that would normally appear before the
preseeding occurs, you can start the installer in "auto" mode. This delays
questions that would normally be asked too early for preseeding (i.e. language,
country and keyboard selection) until after the network comes up, thus allowing
them to be preseeded. It also runs the installation at critical priority, which
avoids many unimportant questions. See Section B.2.3, "Auto mode" for details.

B.1.2. Limitations

Although most questions used by debian-installer can be preseeded using this
method, there are some notable exceptions. You must (re)partition an entire
disk or use available free space on a disk; it is not possible to use existing
partitions.

B.2. Using preseeding

You will first need to create a preconfiguration file and place it in the
location from where you want to use it. Creating the preconfiguration file is
covered later in this appendix. Putting it in the correct location is fairly
straightforward for network preseeding or if you want to read the file off a
usb-stick. If you want to include the file in an installation ISO image, you
will have to remaster the image. How to get the preconfiguration file included
in the initrd is outside the scope of this document; please consult the
developers' documentation for debian-installer.

An example preconfiguration file that you can use as basis for your own
preconfiguration file is available from https://www.debian.org/releases/
bookworm/example-preseed.txt. This file is based on the configuration fragments
included in this appendix.

B.2.1. Loading the preconfiguration file

If you are using initrd preseeding, you only have to make sure a file named
preseed.cfg is included in the root directory of the initrd. The installer will
automatically check if this file is present and load it.

For the other preseeding methods you need to tell the installer what file to
use when you boot it. This is normally done by passing the kernel a boot
parameter, either manually at boot time or by editing the bootloader
configuration file (e.g. syslinux.cfg) and adding the parameter to the end of
the append line(s) for the kernel.

If you do specify the preconfiguration file in the bootloader configuration,
you might change the configuration so you don't need to hit enter to boot the
installer. For syslinux this means setting the timeout to 1 in syslinux.cfg.

To make sure the installer gets the right preconfiguration file, you can
optionally specify a checksum for the file. Currently this needs to be a
md5sum, and if specified it must match the preconfiguration file or the
installer will refuse to use it.

Boot parameters to specify:
- if you're netbooting:
  preseed/url=http://host/path/to/preseed.cfg
  preseed/url/checksum=5da499872becccfeda2c4872f9171c3d
- or
  preseed/url=tftp://host/path/to/preseed.cfg
  preseed/url/checksum=5da499872becccfeda2c4872f9171c3d

- if you're booting a remastered installation image:
  preseed/file=/cdrom/preseed.cfg
  preseed/file/checksum=5da499872becccfeda2c4872f9171c3d

- if you're installing from USB media (put the preconfiguration file in the
  toplevel directory of the USB stick):
  preseed/file=/hd-media/preseed.cfg
  preseed/file/checksum=5da499872becccfeda2c4872f9171c3d

Note that preseed/url can be shortened to just url, preseed/file to just file
and preseed/file/checksum to just preseed-md5 when they are passed as boot
parameters.

B.2.2. Using boot parameters to preseed questions

If a preconfiguration file cannot be used to preseed some steps, the install
can still be fully automated, since you can pass preseed values on the command
line when booting the installer.

Boot parameters can also be used if you do not really want to use preseeding,
but just want to provide an answer for a specific question. Some examples where
this can be useful are documented elsewhere in this manual.

To set a value to be used inside debian-installer, just pass path/to/variable=
value for any of the preseed variables listed in the examples in this appendix.
If a value is to be used to configure packages for the target system, you will
need to prepend the owner^[18] of the variable as in owner:path/to/variable=
value. If you don't specify the owner, the value for the variable will not be
copied to the debconf database in the target system and thus remain unused
during the configuration of the relevant package.

Normally, preseeding a question in this way will mean that the question will
not be asked. To set a specific default value for a question, but still have
the question asked, use "?=" instead of "=" as operator. See also
Section B.5.2, "Using preseeding to change default values".

Note that some variables that are frequently set at the boot prompt have a
shorter alias. If an alias is available, it is used in the examples in this
appendix instead of the full variable. The preseed/url variable for example has
been aliased as url. Another example is the tasks alias, which translates to
tasksel:tasksel/first.

A "---" in the boot options has special meaning. Kernel parameters that appear
after the last "---" may be copied into the bootloader configuration for the
installed system (if supported by the installer for the bootloader). The
installer will automatically filter out any options (like preconfiguration
options) that it recognizes.

Note

Current linux kernels (2.6.9 and later) accept a maximum of 32 command line
options and 32 environment options, including any options added by default for
the installer. If these numbers are exceeded, the kernel will panic (crash).
(For earlier kernels, these numbers were lower.)

For most installations some of the default options in your bootloader
configuration file, like vga=normal, may be safely removed which may allow you
to add more options for preseeding.

Note

It may not always be possible to specify values with spaces for boot
parameters, even if you delimit them with quotes.

B.2.3. Auto mode

There are several features of Debian Installer that combine to allow fairly
simple command lines at the boot prompt to result in arbitrarily complex
customized automatic installs.

This is enabled by using the Automated install boot choice, also called auto
for some architectures or boot methods. In this section, auto is thus not a
parameter, it means selecting that boot choice, and appending the following
boot parameters on the boot prompt.

To illustrate this, here are some examples that can be used at the boot prompt:

auto url=autoserver

This relies on there being a DHCP server that will get the machine to the point
where autoserver can be resolved by DNS, perhaps after adding the local domain
if that was provided by DHCP. If this was done at a site where the domain is
example.com, and they have a reasonably sane DHCP setup, it would result in the
preseed file being retrieved from http://autoserver.example.com/d-i/bookworm/./
preseed.cfg.

The last part of that url (d-i/bookworm/./preseed.cfg) is taken from
auto-install/defaultroot. By default this includes the directory bookworm to
allow future versions to specify their own codename and let people migrate
forwards in a controlled manner. The /./ bit is used to indicate a root,
relative to which subsequent paths can be anchored (for use in preseed/include
and preseed/run). This allows files to be specified either as full URLs, paths
starting with / that are thus anchored, or even paths relative to the location
where the last preseed file was found. This can be used to construct more
portable scripts where an entire hierarchy of scripts can be moved to a new
location without breaking it, for example copying the files onto a USB stick
when they started out on a web server. In this example, if the preseed file
sets preseed/run to /scripts/late_command.sh then the file will be fetched from
http://autoserver.example.com/d-i/bookworm/./scripts/late_command.sh.

If there is no local DHCP or DNS infrastructure, or if you do not want to use
the default path to preseed.cfg, you can still use an explicit url, and if you
don't use the /./ element it will be anchored to the start of the path (i.e.
the third / in the URL). Here is an example that requires minimal support from
the local network infrastructure:

auto url=http://192.168.1.2/path/to/mypreseed.file

The way this works is that:

  • if the URL is missing a protocol, http is assumed,

  • if the hostname section contains no periods, it has the domain derived from
    DHCP appended to it, and

  • if there's no /'s after the hostname, then the default path is added.

In addition to specifying the url, you can also specify settings that do not
directly affect the behavior of debian-installer itself, but can be passed
through to scripts specified using preseed/run in the loaded preseed file. At
present, the only example of this is auto-install/classes, which has an alias
classes. This can be used thus:

auto url=example.com classes=class_A;class_B

The classes could for example denote the type of system to be installed, or the
localization to be used.

It is of course possible to extend this concept, and if you do, it is
reasonable to use the auto-install namespace for this. So one might have
something like auto-install/style which is then used in your scripts. If you
feel the need to do this, please mention it on the <
debian-boot@lists.debian.org> mailing list so that we can avoid namespace
conflicts, and perhaps add an alias for the parameter for you.

The auto boot choice is not yet defined on all arches. The same effect may be
achieved by simply adding the two parameters auto=true priority=critical to the
kernel command line. The auto kernel parameter is an alias for auto-install/
enable and setting it to true delays the locale and keyboard questions until
after there has been a chance to preseed them, while priority is an alias for
debconf/priority and setting it to critical stops any questions with a lower
priority from being asked.

Additional options that may be of interest while attempting to automate an
install while using DHCP are: interface=auto netcfg/dhcp_timeout=60 which makes
the machine choose the first viable NIC and be more patient about getting a
reply to its DHCP query.

Tip

An extensive example of how to use this framework, including example scripts
and classes, can be found on the website of its developer. The examples
available there also show many other nice effects that can be achieved by
creative use of preconfiguration.

B.2.4. Aliases useful with preseeding

The following aliases can be useful when using (auto mode) preseeding. Note
that these are simply short aliases for question names, and you always need to
specify a value as well: for example, auto=true or interface=eth0.

priority    debconf/priority
fb          debian-installer/framebuffer
auto        auto-install/enable
classes     auto-install/classes
file        preseed/file
url         preseed/url
theme       debian-installer/theme
language    debian-installer/language
country     debian-installer/country
locale      debian-installer/locale
keymap      keyboard-configuration/xkb-keymap
modules     anna/choose_modules
firmware    hw-detect/firmware-lookup
interface   netcfg/choose_interface
domain      netcfg/get_domain
hostname    netcfg/get_hostname
protocol    mirror/protocol
suite       mirror/suite
recommends  base-installer/install-recommends
tasks       tasksel:tasksel/first
desktop     tasksel:tasksel/desktop
preseed-md5 preseed/file/checksum

B.2.5. Examples of boot prompt preseeding

Here are some examples of how the boot prompt might look like (you will need to
adapt this to your needs).

# To set French as language and France as country:
/install.amd/vmlinuz vga=788 initrd=/install.amd/gtk/initrd.gz language=fr country=FR --- quiet
# To set English as language and Germany as country, and use a German keyboard layout:
/install.amd/vmlinuz vga=788 initrd=/install.amd/gtk/initrd.gz language=en country=DE locale=en_US.UTF-8 keymap=de --- quiet
# To install the MATE desktop:
/install.amd/vmlinuz vga=788 initrd=/install.amd/gtk/initrd.gz desktop=mate-desktop --- quiet
# To install the web-server task:
/install.amd/vmlinuz initrd=/install.amd/initrd.gz tasksel:tasksel/first=web-server ---

B.2.6. Using a DHCP server to specify preconfiguration files

It's also possible to use DHCP to specify a preconfiguration file to download
from the network. DHCP allows specifying a filename. Normally this is a file to
netboot, but if it appears to be an URL then installation media that support
network preseeding will download the file from the URL and use it as a
preconfiguration file. Here is an example of how to set it up in the dhcpd.conf
for version 3 of the ISC DHCP server (the isc-dhcp-server Debian package).

if substring (option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 3) = "d-i" {
    filename "http://host/preseed.cfg";
}

Note that the above example limits this filename to DHCP clients that identify
themselves as "d-i", so it will not affect regular DHCP clients, but only the
installer. You can also put the text in a stanza for only one particular host
to avoid preseeding all installs on your network.

A good way to use the DHCP preseeding is to only preseed values specific to
your network, such as the Debian mirror to use. This way installs on your
network will automatically get a good mirror selected, but the rest of the
installation can be performed interactively. Using DHCP preseeding to fully
automate Debian installs should only be done with care.

B.3. Creating a preconfiguration file

The preconfiguration file is in the format used by the debconf-set-selections
command. The general format of a line in a preconfiguration file is:

<owner> <question name> <question type> <value>

The file should start with #_preseed_V1

There are a few rules to keep in mind when writing a preconfiguration file.

  • Put only a single space or tab between type and value: any additional
    whitespace will be interpreted as belonging to the value.

  • A line can be split into multiple lines by appending a backslash ("\") as
    the line continuation character. A good place to split a line is after the
    question name; a bad place is between type and value. Split lines will be
    joined into a single line with all leading/trailing whitespace condensed to
    a single space.

  • For debconf variables (templates) used only in the installer itself, the
    owner should be set to "d-i"; to preseed variables used in the installed
    system, the name of the package that contains the corresponding debconf
    template should be used. Only variables that have their owner set to
    something other than "d-i" will be propagated to the debconf database for
    the installed system.

  • Most questions need to be preseeded using the values valid in English and
    not the translated values. However, there are some questions (for example
    in partman) where the translated values need to be used.

  • Some questions take a code as value instead of the English text that is
    shown during installation.

  • Start with #_preseed_V1

  • A comment consists of a line which starts with a hash character ("#") and
    extends up to the length of that line.

The easiest way to create a preconfiguration file is to use the example file
linked in Section B.4, "Contents of the preconfiguration file (for bookworm)"
as basis and work from there.

An alternative method is to do a manual installation and then, after rebooting,
use the debconf-get-selections from the debconf-utils package to dump both the
debconf database and the installer's cdebconf database to a single file:

$ echo "#_preseed_V1" > file
$ debconf-get-selections --installer >> file
$ debconf-get-selections >> file

However, a file generated in this manner will have some items that should not
be preseeded, and the example file is a better starting place for most users.

Note

This method relies on the fact that, at the end of the installation, the
installer's cdebconf database is saved to the installed system in /var/log/
installer/cdebconf. However, because the database may contain sensitive
information, by default the files are only readable by root.

The directory /var/log/installer and all files in it will be deleted from your
system if you purge the package installation-report.

To check possible values for questions, you can use nano to examine the files
in /var/lib/cdebconf while an installation is in progress. View templates.dat
for the raw templates and questions.dat for the current values and for the
values assigned to variables.

To check if the format of your preconfiguration file is valid before performing
an install, you can use the command debconf-set-selections -c preseed.cfg.

B.4. Contents of the preconfiguration file (for bookworm)

The configuration fragments used in this appendix are also available as an
example preconfiguration file from https://www.debian.org/releases/bookworm/
example-preseed.txt.

Note that this example is based on an installation for the Intel x86
architecture. If you are installing a different architecture, some of the
examples (like keyboard selection and bootloader installation) may not be
relevant and will need to be replaced by debconf settings appropriate for your
architecture.

Details on how the different Debian Installer components actually work can be
found in Section 6.3, "Using Individual Components".

B.4.1. Localization

During a normal install the questions about localization are asked first, so
these values can only be preseeded via the initrd or kernel boot parameter
methods. Auto mode (Section B.2.3, "Auto mode") includes the setting of
auto-install/enable=true (normally via the auto preseed alias). This delays the
asking of the localisation questions, so that they can be preseeded by any
method.

The locale can be used to specify both language and country and can be any
combination of a language supported by debian-installer and a recognized
country. If the combination does not form a valid locale, the installer will
automatically select a locale that is valid for the selected language. To
specify the locale as a boot parameter, use locale=en_US.

Although this method is very easy to use, it does not allow preseeding of all
possible combinations of language, country and locale^[19]. So alternatively
the values can be preseeded individually. Language and country can also be
specified as boot parameters.

# Preseeding only locale sets language, country and locale.
d-i debian-installer/locale string en_US

# The values can also be preseeded individually for greater flexibility.
#d-i debian-installer/language string en
#d-i debian-installer/country string NL
#d-i debian-installer/locale string en_GB.UTF-8
# Optionally specify additional locales to be generated.
#d-i localechooser/supported-locales multiselect en_US.UTF-8, nl_NL.UTF-8

Keyboard configuration consists of selecting a keymap and (for non-latin
keymaps) a toggle key to switch between the non-latin keymap and the US keymap.
Only basic keymap variants are available during installation. Advanced variants
are available only in the installed system, through dpkg-reconfigure
keyboard-configuration.

# Keyboard selection.
d-i keyboard-configuration/xkb-keymap select us
# d-i keyboard-configuration/toggle select No toggling

To skip keyboard configuration, preseed keymap with skip-config. This will
result in the kernel keymap remaining active.

B.4.2. Network configuration

Of course, preseeding the network configuration won't work if you're loading
your preconfiguration file from the network. But it's great when you're booting
from optical disc or USB stick. If you are loading preconfiguration files from
the network, you can pass network config parameters by using kernel boot
parameters.

If you need to pick a particular interface when netbooting before loading a
preconfiguration file from the network, use a boot parameter such as interface=
eth1.

Although preseeding the network configuration is normally not possible when
using network preseeding (using "preseed/url"), you can use the following hack
to work around that, for example if you'd like to set a static address for the
network interface. The hack is to force the network configuration to run again
after the preconfiguration file has been loaded by creating a "preseed/run"
script containing the following commands:

kill-all-dhcp; netcfg

The following debconf variables are relevant for network configuration.

# Disable network configuration entirely. This is useful for cdrom
# installations on non-networked devices where the network questions,
# warning and long timeouts are a nuisance.
#d-i netcfg/enable boolean false

# netcfg will choose an interface that has link if possible. This makes it
# skip displaying a list if there is more than one interface.
d-i netcfg/choose_interface select auto

# To pick a particular interface instead:
#d-i netcfg/choose_interface select eth1

# To set a different link detection timeout (default is 3 seconds).
# Values are interpreted as seconds.
#d-i netcfg/link_wait_timeout string 10

# If you have a slow dhcp server and the installer times out waiting for
# it, this might be useful.
#d-i netcfg/dhcp_timeout string 60
#d-i netcfg/dhcpv6_timeout string 60

# Automatic network configuration is the default.
# If you prefer to configure the network manually, uncomment this line and
# the static network configuration below.
#d-i netcfg/disable_autoconfig boolean true

# If you want the preconfiguration file to work on systems both with and
# without a dhcp server, uncomment these lines and the static network
# configuration below.
#d-i netcfg/dhcp_failed note
#d-i netcfg/dhcp_options select Configure network manually

# Static network configuration.
#
# IPv4 example
#d-i netcfg/get_ipaddress string 192.168.1.42
#d-i netcfg/get_netmask string 255.255.255.0
#d-i netcfg/get_gateway string 192.168.1.1
#d-i netcfg/get_nameservers string 192.168.1.1
#d-i netcfg/confirm_static boolean true
#
# IPv6 example
#d-i netcfg/get_ipaddress string fc00::2
#d-i netcfg/get_netmask string ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff::
#d-i netcfg/get_gateway string fc00::1
#d-i netcfg/get_nameservers string fc00::1
#d-i netcfg/confirm_static boolean true

# Any hostname and domain names assigned from dhcp take precedence over
# values set here. However, setting the values still prevents the questions
# from being shown, even if values come from dhcp.
d-i netcfg/get_hostname string unassigned-hostname
d-i netcfg/get_domain string unassigned-domain

# If you want to force a hostname, regardless of what either the DHCP
# server returns or what the reverse DNS entry for the IP is, uncomment
# and adjust the following line.
#d-i netcfg/hostname string somehost

# Disable that annoying WEP key dialog.
d-i netcfg/wireless_wep string
# The wacky dhcp hostname that some ISPs use as a password of sorts.
#d-i netcfg/dhcp_hostname string radish

# If you want to completely disable firmware lookup (i.e. not use firmware
# files or packages that might be available on installation images):
#d-i hw-detect/firmware-lookup string never

# If non-free firmware is needed for the network or other hardware, you can
# configure the installer to always try to load it, without prompting. Or
# change to false to disable asking.
#d-i hw-detect/load_firmware boolean true

Please note that netcfg will automatically determine the netmask if netcfg/
get_netmask is not preseeded. In this case, the variable has to be marked as
seen for automatic installations. Similarly, netcfg will choose an appropriate
address if netcfg/get_gateway is not set. As a special case, you can set netcfg
/get_gateway to "none" to specify that no gateway should be used.

B.4.3. Network console

# Use the following settings if you wish to make use of the network-console
# component for remote installation over SSH. This only makes sense if you
# intend to perform the remainder of the installation manually.
#d-i anna/choose_modules string network-console
#d-i network-console/authorized_keys_url string http://10.0.0.1/openssh-key
#d-i network-console/password password r00tme
#d-i network-console/password-again password r00tme

More information related to network-console can be found in Section 6.3.10,
"Installation over network-console".

B.4.4. Mirror settings

Depending on the installation method you use, a mirror may be used to download
additional components of the installer, to install the base system, and to set
up the /etc/apt/sources.list for the installed system.

The parameter mirror/suite determines the suite for the installed system.

The parameter mirror/udeb/suite determines the suite for additional components
for the installer. It is only useful to set this if components are actually
downloaded over the network and should match the suite that was used to build
the initrd for the installation method used for the installation. Normally the
installer will automatically use the correct value and there should be no need
to set this.

# Mirror protocol:
# If you select ftp, the mirror/country string does not need to be set.
# Default value for the mirror protocol: http.
#d-i mirror/protocol string ftp
d-i mirror/country string manual
d-i mirror/http/hostname string http.us.debian.org
d-i mirror/http/directory string /debian
d-i mirror/http/proxy string

# Suite to install.
#d-i mirror/suite string testing
# Suite to use for loading installer components (optional).
#d-i mirror/udeb/suite string testing

B.4.5. Account setup

The password for the root account and name and password for a first regular
user's account can be preseeded. For the passwords you can use either clear
text values or crypt(3) hashes.

Warning

Be aware that preseeding passwords is not completely secure as everyone with
access to the preconfiguration file will have the knowledge of these passwords.
Storing hashed passwords is considered secure unless a weak hashing algorithm
like DES or MD5 is used which allow for bruteforce attacks. Recommended
password hashing algorithms are SHA-256 and SHA512.

# Skip creation of a root account (normal user account will be able to
# use sudo).
#d-i passwd/root-login boolean false
# Alternatively, to skip creation of a normal user account.
#d-i passwd/make-user boolean false

# Root password, either in clear text
#d-i passwd/root-password password r00tme
#d-i passwd/root-password-again password r00tme
# or encrypted using a crypt(3)  hash.
#d-i passwd/root-password-crypted password [crypt(3) hash]

# To create a normal user account.
#d-i passwd/user-fullname string Debian User
#d-i passwd/username string debian
# Normal user's password, either in clear text
#d-i passwd/user-password password insecure
#d-i passwd/user-password-again password insecure
# or encrypted using a crypt(3) hash.
#d-i passwd/user-password-crypted password [crypt(3) hash]
# Create the first user with the specified UID instead of the default.
#d-i passwd/user-uid string 1010

# The user account will be added to some standard initial groups. To
# override that, use this.
#d-i passwd/user-default-groups string audio cdrom video

The passwd/root-password-crypted and passwd/user-password-crypted variables can
also be preseeded with "!" as their value. In that case, the corresponding
account is disabled. This may be convenient for the root account, provided of
course that an alternative method is set up to allow administrative activities
or root login (for instance by using SSH key authentication or sudo).

The following command (available from the whois package) can be used to
generate a SHA-512 based crypt(3) hash for a password:

mkpasswd -m sha-512

B.4.6. Clock and time zone setup

# Controls whether or not the hardware clock is set to UTC.
d-i clock-setup/utc boolean true

# You may set this to any valid setting for $TZ; see the contents of
# /usr/share/zoneinfo/ for valid values.
d-i time/zone string US/Eastern

# Controls whether to use NTP to set the clock during the install
d-i clock-setup/ntp boolean true
# NTP server to use. The default is almost always fine here.
#d-i clock-setup/ntp-server string ntp.example.com

B.4.7. Partitioning

Using preseeding to partition the harddisk is limited to what is supported by
partman-auto. You can choose to partition either existing free space on a disk
or a whole disk. The layout of the disk can be determined by using a predefined
recipe, a custom recipe from a recipe file or a recipe included in the
preconfiguration file.

Preseeding of advanced partition setups using RAID, LVM and encryption is
supported, but not with the full flexibility possible when partitioning during
a non-preseeded install.

The examples below only provide basic information on the use of recipes. For
detailed information see the files partman-auto-recipe.txt and
partman-auto-raid-recipe.txt included in the debian-installer package. Both
files are also available from the debian-installer source repository. Note that
the supported functionality may change between releases.

Warning

The identification of disks is dependent on the order in which their drivers
are loaded. If there are multiple disks in the system, make very sure the
correct one will be selected before using preseeding.

B.4.7.1. Partitioning example

# If the system has free space you can choose to only partition that space.
# This is only honoured if partman-auto/method (below) is not set.
#d-i partman-auto/init_automatically_partition select biggest_free

# Alternatively, you may specify a disk to partition. If the system has only
# one disk the installer will default to using that, but otherwise the device
# name must be given in traditional, non-devfs format (so e.g. /dev/sda
# and not e.g. /dev/discs/disc0/disc).
# For example, to use the first SCSI/SATA hard disk:
#d-i partman-auto/disk string /dev/sda
# In addition, you'll need to specify the method to use.
# The presently available methods are:
# - regular: use the usual partition types for your architecture
# - lvm:     use LVM to partition the disk
# - crypto:  use LVM within an encrypted partition
d-i partman-auto/method string lvm

# You can define the amount of space that will be used for the LVM volume
# group. It can either be a size with its unit (eg. 20 GB), a percentage of
# free space or the 'max' keyword.
d-i partman-auto-lvm/guided_size string max

# If one of the disks that are going to be automatically partitioned
# contains an old LVM configuration, the user will normally receive a
# warning. This can be preseeded away...
d-i partman-lvm/device_remove_lvm boolean true
# The same applies to pre-existing software RAID array:
d-i partman-md/device_remove_md boolean true
# And the same goes for the confirmation to write the lvm partitions.
d-i partman-lvm/confirm boolean true
d-i partman-lvm/confirm_nooverwrite boolean true

# You can choose one of the three predefined partitioning recipes:
# - atomic: all files in one partition
# - home:   separate /home partition
# - multi:  separate /home, /var, and /tmp partitions
d-i partman-auto/choose_recipe select atomic

# Or provide a recipe of your own...
# If you have a way to get a recipe file into the d-i environment, you can
# just point at it.
#d-i partman-auto/expert_recipe_file string /hd-media/recipe

# If not, you can put an entire recipe into the preconfiguration file in one
# (logical) line. This example creates a small /boot partition, suitable
# swap, and uses the rest of the space for the root partition:
#d-i partman-auto/expert_recipe string                         \
#      boot-root ::                                            \
#              40 50 100 ext3                                  \
#                      $primary{ } $bootable{ }                \
#                      method{ format } format{ }              \
#                      use_filesystem{ } filesystem{ ext3 }    \
#                      mountpoint{ /boot }                     \
#              .                                               \
#              500 10000 1000000000 ext3                       \
#                      method{ format } format{ }              \
#                      use_filesystem{ } filesystem{ ext3 }    \
#                      mountpoint{ / }                         \
#              .                                               \
#              64 512 300% linux-swap                          \
#                      method{ swap } format{ }                \
#              .

# The full recipe format is documented in the file partman-auto-recipe.txt
# included in the 'debian-installer' package or available from D-I source
# repository. This also documents how to specify settings such as file
# system labels, volume group names and which physical devices to include
# in a volume group.

## Partitioning for EFI
# If your system needs an EFI partition you could add something like
# this to the recipe above, as the first element in the recipe:
#               538 538 1075 free                              \
#                      $iflabel{ gpt }                         \
#                      $reusemethod{ }                         \
#                      method{ efi }                           \
#                      format{ }                               \
#               .                                              \
#
# The fragment above is for the amd64 architecture; the details may be
# different on other architectures. The 'partman-auto' package in the
# D-I source repository may have an example you can follow.

# This makes partman automatically partition without confirmation, provided
# that you told it what to do using one of the methods above.
d-i partman-partitioning/confirm_write_new_label boolean true
d-i partman/choose_partition select finish
d-i partman/confirm boolean true
d-i partman/confirm_nooverwrite boolean true

# Force UEFI booting ('BIOS compatibility' will be lost). Default: false.
#d-i partman-efi/non_efi_system boolean true
# Ensure the partition table is GPT - this is required for EFI
#d-i partman-partitioning/choose_label select gpt
#d-i partman-partitioning/default_label string gpt

# When disk encryption is enabled, skip wiping the partitions beforehand.
#d-i partman-auto-crypto/erase_disks boolean false

B.4.7.2. Partitioning using RAID

You can also use preseeding to set up partitions on software RAID arrays.
Supported are RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 6 and 10, creating degraded arrays and
specifying spare devices.

Warning

This type of automated partitioning is easy to get wrong. It is also
functionality that receives relatively little testing from the developers of
debian-installer. The responsibility to get the various recipes right (so they
make sense and don't conflict) lies with the user. Check /var/log/syslog if you
run into problems.

# The method should be set to "raid".
#d-i partman-auto/method string raid
# Specify the disks to be partitioned. They will all get the same layout,
# so this will only work if the disks are the same size.
#d-i partman-auto/disk string /dev/sda /dev/sdb

# Next you need to specify the physical partitions that will be used.
#d-i partman-auto/expert_recipe string \
#      multiraid ::                                         \
#              1000 5000 4000 raid                          \
#                      $primary{ } method{ raid }           \
#              .                                            \
#              64 512 300% raid                             \
#                      method{ raid }                       \
#              .                                            \
#              500 10000 1000000000 raid                    \
#                      method{ raid }                       \
#              .

# Last you need to specify how the previously defined partitions will be
# used in the RAID setup. Remember to use the correct partition numbers
# for logical partitions. RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 6 and 10 are supported;
# devices are separated using "#".
# Parameters are:
# <raidtype> <devcount> <sparecount> <fstype> <mountpoint> \
#          <devices> <sparedevices>

#d-i partman-auto-raid/recipe string \
#    1 2 0 ext3 /                    \
#          /dev/sda1#/dev/sdb1       \
#    .                               \
#    1 2 0 swap -                    \
#          /dev/sda5#/dev/sdb5       \
#    .                               \
#    0 2 0 ext3 /home                \
#          /dev/sda6#/dev/sdb6       \
#    .

# For additional information see the file partman-auto-raid-recipe.txt
# included in the 'debian-installer' package or available from D-I source
# repository.

# This makes partman automatically partition without confirmation.
d-i partman-md/confirm boolean true
d-i partman-partitioning/confirm_write_new_label boolean true
d-i partman/choose_partition select finish
d-i partman/confirm boolean true
d-i partman/confirm_nooverwrite boolean true

B.4.7.3. Controlling how partitions are mounted

Normally, filesystems are mounted using a universally unique identifier (UUID)
as a key; this allows them to be mounted properly even if their device name
changes. UUIDs are long and difficult to read, so, if you prefer, the installer
can mount filesystems based on the traditional device names, or based on a
label you assign. If you ask the installer to mount by label, any filesystems
without a label will be mounted using a UUID instead.

Devices with stable names, such as LVM logical volumes, will continue to use
their traditional names rather than UUIDs.

Warning

Traditional device names may change based on the order in which the kernel
discovers devices at boot, which may cause the wrong filesystem to be mounted.
Similarly, labels are likely to clash if you plug in a new disk or a USB drive,
and if that happens your system's behaviour when started will be random.

# The default is to mount by UUID, but you can also choose "traditional" to
# use traditional device names, or "label" to try filesystem labels before
# falling back to UUIDs.
#d-i partman/mount_style select uuid

B.4.8. Base system installation

There is actually not very much that can be preseeded for this stage of the
installation. The only questions asked concern the installation of the kernel.

# Configure APT to not install recommended packages by default. Use of this
# option can result in an incomplete system and should only be used by very
# experienced users.
#d-i base-installer/install-recommends boolean false

# The kernel image (meta) package to be installed; "none" can be used if no
# kernel is to be installed.
#d-i base-installer/kernel/image string linux-image-686

B.4.9. Apt setup

Setup of the /etc/apt/sources.list and basic configuration options is fully
automated based on your installation method and answers to earlier questions.
You can optionally add other (local) repositories.

# Choose, if you want to scan additional installation media
# (default: false).
d-i apt-setup/cdrom/set-first boolean false
# You can choose to install non-free firmware.
#d-i apt-setup/non-free-firmware boolean true
# You can choose to install non-free and contrib software.
#d-i apt-setup/non-free boolean true
#d-i apt-setup/contrib boolean true
# Uncomment the following line, if you don't want to have the sources.list
# entry for a DVD/BD installation image active in the installed system
# (entries for netinst or CD images will be disabled anyway, regardless of
# this setting).
#d-i apt-setup/disable-cdrom-entries boolean true
# Uncomment this if you don't want to use a network mirror.
#d-i apt-setup/use_mirror boolean false
# Select which update services to use; define the mirrors to be used.
# Values shown below are the normal defaults.
#d-i apt-setup/services-select multiselect security, updates
#d-i apt-setup/security_host string security.debian.org

# Additional repositories, local[0-9] available
#d-i apt-setup/local0/repository string \
#       http://local.server/debian stable main
#d-i apt-setup/local0/comment string local server
# Enable deb-src lines
#d-i apt-setup/local0/source boolean true
# URL to the public key of the local repository; you must provide a key or
# apt will complain about the unauthenticated repository and so the
# sources.list line will be left commented out.
#d-i apt-setup/local0/key string http://local.server/key
# or one can provide it in-line by base64 encoding the contents of the
# key file (with `base64 -w0`) and specifying it thus:
#d-i apt-setup/local0/key string base64://LS0tLS1CRUdJTiBQR1AgUFVCTElDIEtFWSBCTE9DSy0tLS0tCi4uLgo=
# The content of the key file is checked to see if it appears to be ASCII-armoured.
# If so it will be saved with an ".asc" extension, otherwise it gets a '.gpg' extension.
# "keybox database" format is currently not supported. (see generators/60local in apt-setup's source)

# By default the installer requires that repositories be authenticated
# using a known gpg key. This setting can be used to disable that
# authentication. Warning: Insecure, not recommended.
#d-i debian-installer/allow_unauthenticated boolean true

# Uncomment this to add multiarch configuration for i386
#d-i apt-setup/multiarch string i386


B.4.10. Package selection

You can choose to install any combination of tasks that are available.
Available tasks as of this writing include:

  • standard (standard tools)

  • desktop (graphical desktop)

  • gnome-desktop (Gnome desktop)

  • xfce-desktop (XFCE desktop)

  • kde-desktop (KDE Plasma desktop)

  • cinnamon-desktop (Cinnamon desktop)

  • mate-desktop (MATE desktop)

  • lxde-desktop (LXDE desktop)

  • web-server (web server)

  • ssh-server (SSH server)

You can also choose to install no tasks, and force the installation of a set of
packages in some other way. We recommend always including the standard task.

Or if you don't want the tasksel dialog to be shown at all, preseed pkgsel/
run_tasksel (no packages are installed via tasksel in that case).

If you want to install some individual packages in addition to packages
installed by tasks, you can use the parameter pkgsel/include. The value of this
parameter can be a list of packages separated by either commas or spaces, which
allows it to be used easily on the kernel command line as well.

#tasksel tasksel/first multiselect standard, web-server, kde-desktop

# Or choose to not get the tasksel dialog displayed at all (and don't install
# any packages):
#d-i pkgsel/run_tasksel boolean false

# Individual additional packages to install
#d-i pkgsel/include string openssh-server build-essential
# Whether to upgrade packages after debootstrap.
# Allowed values: none, safe-upgrade, full-upgrade
#d-i pkgsel/upgrade select none

# You can choose, if your system will report back on what software you have
# installed, and what software you use. The default is not to report back,
# but sending reports helps the project determine what software is most
# popular and should be included on the first CD/DVD.
#popularity-contest popularity-contest/participate boolean false

B.4.11. Finishing up the installation

# During installations from serial console, the regular virtual consoles
# (VT1-VT6) are normally disabled in /etc/inittab. Uncomment the next
# line to prevent this.
#d-i finish-install/keep-consoles boolean true

# Avoid that last message about the install being complete.
d-i finish-install/reboot_in_progress note

# This will prevent the installer from ejecting the CD during the reboot,
# which is useful in some situations.
#d-i cdrom-detect/eject boolean false

# This is how to make the installer shutdown when finished, but not
# reboot into the installed system.
#d-i debian-installer/exit/halt boolean true
# This will power off the machine instead of just halting it.
#d-i debian-installer/exit/poweroff boolean true

B.4.12. Preseeding other packages

# Depending on what software you choose to install, or if things go wrong
# during the installation process, it's possible that other questions may
# be asked. You can preseed those too, of course. To get a list of every
# possible question that could be asked during an install, do an
# installation, and then run these commands:
#   debconf-get-selections --installer > file
#   debconf-get-selections >> file

B.5. Advanced options

B.5.1. Running custom commands during the installation

A very powerful and flexible option offered by the preconfiguration tools is
the ability to run commands or scripts at certain points in the installation.

When the filesystem of the target system is mounted, it is available in /
target. If an installation CD is used, when it is mounted it is available in /
cdrom.

# d-i preseeding is inherently not secure. Nothing in the installer checks
# for attempts at buffer overflows or other exploits of the values of a
# preconfiguration file like this one. Only use preconfiguration files from
# trusted locations! To drive that home, and because it's generally useful,
# here's a way to run any shell command you'd like inside the installer,
# automatically.

# This first command is run as early as possible, just after
# preseeding is read.
#d-i preseed/early_command string anna-install some-udeb
# This command is run immediately before the partitioner starts. It may be
# useful to apply dynamic partitioner preseeding that depends on the state
# of the disks (which may not be visible when preseed/early_command runs).
#d-i partman/early_command \
#       string debconf-set partman-auto/disk "$(list-devices disk | head -n1)"
# This command is run just before the install finishes, but when there is
# still a usable /target directory. You can chroot to /target and use it
# directly, or use the apt-install and in-target commands to easily install
# packages and run commands in the target system.
#d-i preseed/late_command string apt-install zsh; in-target chsh -s /bin/zsh

B.5.2. Using preseeding to change default values

It is possible to use preseeding to change the default answer for a question,
but still have the question asked. To do this the seen flag must be reset to "
false" after setting the value for a question.

d-i foo/bar string value
d-i foo/bar seen false

The same effect can be achieved for all questions by setting the parameter
preseed/interactive=true at the boot prompt. This can also be useful for
testing or debugging your preconfiguration file.

Note that the "d-i" owner should only be used for variables used in the
installer itself. For variables belonging to packages installed on the target
system, you should use the name of that package instead. See the footnote to
Section B.2.2, "Using boot parameters to preseed questions".

If you are preseeding using boot parameters, you can make the installer ask the
corresponding question by using the "?=" operator, i.e. foo/bar?=value (or
owner:foo/bar?=value). This will of course only have effect for parameters that
correspond to questions that are actually displayed during an installation and
not for "internal" parameters.

For more debugging information, use the boot parameter DEBCONF_DEBUG=5. This
will cause debconf to print much more detail about the current settings of each
variable and about its progress through each package's installation scripts.

B.5.3. Chainloading preconfiguration files

It is possible to include other preconfiguration files from a preconfiguration
file. Any settings in those files will override pre-existing settings from
files loaded earlier. This makes it possible to put, for example, general
networking settings for your location in one file and more specific settings
for certain configurations in other files.

# More than one file can be listed, separated by spaces; all will be
# loaded. The included files can have preseed/include directives of their
# own as well. Note that if the filenames are relative, they are taken from
# the same directory as the preconfiguration file that includes them.
#d-i preseed/include string x.cfg

# The installer can optionally verify checksums of preconfiguration files
# before using them. Currently only md5sums are supported, list the md5sums
# in the same order as the list of files to include.
#d-i preseed/include/checksum string 5da499872becccfeda2c4872f9171c3d

# More flexibly, this runs a shell command and if it outputs the names of
# preconfiguration files, includes those files.
#d-i preseed/include_command \
#      string if [ "`hostname`" = bob ]; then echo bob.cfg; fi

# Most flexibly of all, this downloads a program and runs it. The program
# can use commands such as debconf-set to manipulate the debconf database.
# More than one script can be listed, separated by spaces.
# Note that if the filenames are relative, they are taken from the same
# directory as the preconfiguration file that runs them.
#d-i preseed/run string foo.sh

It is also possible to chainload from the initrd or file preseeding phase, into
network preseeding by setting preseed/url in the earlier files. This will cause
network preseeding to be performed when the network comes up. You need to be
careful when doing this, since there will be two distinct runs at preseeding,
meaning for example that you get another chance to run the preseed/early
command, the second one happening after the network comes up.


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

^[18] The owner of a debconf variable (or template) is normally the name of the
package that contains the corresponding debconf template. For variables used in
the installer itself the owner is "d-i". Templates and variables can have more
than one owner which helps to determine whether they can be removed from the
debconf database if the package is purged.

^[19] Preseeding locale to en_NL would for example result in en_US.UTF-8 as
default locale for the installed system. If e.g. en_GB.UTF-8 is preferred
instead, the values will need to be preseeded individually.

Appendix C. Partitioning for Debian

Table of Contents

C.1. Deciding on Debian Partitions and Sizes
C.2. The Directory Tree
C.3. Recommended Partitioning Scheme
C.4. Device Names in Linux
C.5. Debian Partitioning Programs

C.1. Deciding on Debian Partitions and Sizes

At a bare minimum, GNU/Linux needs one partition for itself. You can have a
single partition containing the entire operating system, applications, and your
personal files. Most people feel that a separate swap partition is also a
necessity, although it's not strictly true. "Swap" is scratch space for an
operating system, which allows the system to use disk storage as "virtual
memory". By putting swap on a separate partition, Linux can make much more
efficient use of it. It is possible to force Linux to use a regular file as
swap, but it is not recommended.

Most people choose to give GNU/Linux more than the minimum number of
partitions, however. There are two reasons you might want to break up the file
system into a number of smaller partitions. The first is for safety. If
something happens to corrupt the file system, generally only one partition is
affected. Thus, you only have to replace (from the backups you've been
carefully keeping) a portion of your system. At a bare minimum, you should
consider creating what is commonly called a "root partition". This contains the
most essential components of the system. If any other partitions get corrupted,
you can still boot into GNU/Linux to fix the system. This can save you the
trouble of having to reinstall the system from scratch.

The second reason is generally more important in a business setting, but it
really depends on your use of the machine. For example, a mail server getting
spammed with e-mail can easily fill a partition. If you made /var/mail a
separate partition on the mail server, most of the system will remain working
even if you get spammed.

The only real drawback to using more partitions is that it is often difficult
to know in advance what your needs will be. If you make a partition too small
then you will either have to reinstall the system or you will be constantly
moving things around to make room in the undersized partition. On the other
hand, if you make the partition too big, you will be wasting space that could
be used elsewhere. Disk space is cheap nowadays, but why throw your money away?

C.2. The Directory Tree

Debian GNU/Linux adheres to the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard for directory and
file naming. This standard allows users and software programs to predict the
location of files and directories. The root level directory is represented
simply by the slash /. At the root level, all Debian systems include these
directories:

┌─────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│Directory│                     Content                      │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│bin      │Essential command binaries                        │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│boot     │Static files of the boot loader                   │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│dev      │Device files                                      │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│etc      │Host-specific system configuration                │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│home     │User home directories                             │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│lib      │Essential shared libraries and kernel modules     │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│media    │Contains mount points for replaceable media       │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│mnt      │Mount point for mounting a file system temporarily│
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│proc     │Virtual directory for system information          │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│root     │Home directory for the root user                  │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│run      │Run-time variable data                            │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│sbin     │Essential system binaries                         │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│sys      │Virtual directory for system information          │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│tmp      │Temporary files                                   │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│usr      │Secondary hierarchy                               │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│var      │Variable data                                     │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│srv      │Data for services provided by the system          │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│opt      │Add-on application software packages              │
└─────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The following is a list of important considerations regarding directories and
partitions. Note that disk usage varies widely given system configuration and
specific usage patterns. The recommendations here are general guidelines and
provide a starting point for partitioning.

  • The root partition / must always physically contain /etc, /bin, /sbin, /
    lib, /dev and /usr, otherwise you won't be able to boot. This means that
    you should provide at least 600-750MB of disk space for the root partition
    including /usr, or 5-6GB for a workstation or a server installation.

  • /var: variable data like news articles, e-mails, web sites, databases, the
    packaging system cache, etc. will be placed under this directory. The size
    of this directory depends greatly on the usage of your system, but for most
    people will be dictated by the package management tool's overhead. If you
    are going to do a full installation of just about everything Debian has to
    offer, all in one session, setting aside 2 or 3 GB of space for /var should
    be sufficient. If you are going to install in pieces (that is to say,
    install services and utilities, followed by text stuff, then X, ...), you
    can get away with 300-500 MB. If hard drive space is at a premium and you
    don't plan on doing major system updates, you can get by with as little as
    30 or 40 MB.

  • /tmp: temporary data created by programs will most likely go in this
    directory. 40-100MB should usually be enough. Some applications --
    including archive manipulators, CD/DVD authoring tools, and multimedia
    software -- may use /tmp to temporarily store image files. If you plan to
    use such applications, you should adjust the space available in /tmp
    accordingly.

  • /home: every user will put his personal data into a subdirectory of this
    directory. Its size depends on how many users will be using the system and
    what files are to be stored in their directories. Depending on your planned
    usage you should reserve about 100MB for each user, but adapt this value to
    your needs. Reserve a lot more space if you plan to save a lot of
    multimedia files (pictures, MP3, movies) in your home directory.

C.3. Recommended Partitioning Scheme

For new users, personal Debian boxes, home systems, and other single-user
setups, a single / partition (plus swap) is probably the easiest, simplest way
to go. The recommended partition type is ext4.

For multi-user systems or systems with lots of disk space, it's best to put /
var, /tmp, and /home each on their own partitions separate from the /
partition.

You might need a separate /usr/local partition if you plan to install many
programs that are not part of the Debian distribution. If your machine will be
a mail server, you might need to make /var/mail a separate partition. If you
are setting up a server with lots of user accounts, it's generally good to have
a separate, large /home partition. In general, the partitioning situation
varies from computer to computer depending on its uses.

For very complex systems, you should see the Multi Disk HOWTO. This contains
in-depth information, mostly of interest to ISPs and people setting up servers.

With respect to the issue of swap partition size, there are many views. One
rule of thumb which works well is to use as much swap as you have system
memory. It also shouldn't be smaller than 512MB, in most cases. Of course,
there are exceptions to these rules.

As an example, an older home machine might have 512MB of RAM and a 20GB SATA
drive on /dev/sda. There might be a 8GB partition for another operating system
on /dev/sda1, a 512MB swap partition on /dev/sda3 and about 11.4GB on /dev/sda2
as the Linux partition.

For an idea of the space taken by tasks you might be interested in adding after
your system installation is complete, check Section D.2, "Disk Space Needed for
Tasks".

C.4. Device Names in Linux

Linux disks and partition names may be different from other operating systems.
You need to know the names that Linux uses when you create and mount
partitions. Here's the basic naming scheme:

  • The first hard disk detected is named /dev/sda.

  • The second hard disk detected is named /dev/sdb, and so on.

  • The first SCSI CD-ROM is named /dev/scd0, also known as /dev/sr0.

The partitions on each disk are represented by appending a decimal number to
the disk name: sda1 and sda2 represent the first and second partitions of the
first SCSI disk drive in your system.

Here is a real-life example. Let's assume you have a system with 2 SCSI disks,
one at SCSI address 2 and the other at SCSI address 4. The first disk (at
address 2) is then named sda, and the second sdb. If the sda drive has 3
partitions on it, these will be named sda1, sda2, and sda3. The same applies to
the sdb disk and its partitions.

Note that if you have two SCSI host bus adapters (i.e., controllers), the order
of the drives can get confusing. The best solution in this case is to watch the
boot messages, assuming you know the drive models and/or capacities.

C.5. Debian Partitioning Programs

Several varieties of partitioning programs have been adapted by Debian
developers to work on various types of hard disks and computer architectures.
Following is a list of the program(s) applicable for your architecture.

partman

    Recommended partitioning tool in Debian. This Swiss army knife can also
    resize partitions, create filesystems and assign them to the mountpoints.

fdisk

    The original Linux disk partitioner, good for gurus.

    Be careful if you have existing FreeBSD partitions on your machine. The
    installation kernels include support for these partitions, but the way that
    fdisk represents them (or not) can make the device names differ. See the
    Linux+FreeBSD HOWTO.

cfdisk

    A simple-to-use, full-screen disk partitioner for the rest of us.

    Note that cfdisk doesn't understand FreeBSD partitions at all, and, again,
    device names may differ as a result.

One of these programs will be run by default when you select Partition disks
(or similar). It may be possible to use a different partitioning tool from the
command line on VT2, but this is not recommended.

Appendix D. Random Bits

Table of Contents

D.1. Linux Devices

    D.1.1. Setting Up Your Mouse

D.2. Disk Space Needed for Tasks
D.3. Installing Debian GNU/Linux from a Unix/Linux System

    D.3.1. Getting Started
    D.3.2. Install debootstrap
    D.3.3. Run debootstrap
    D.3.4. Configure The Base System
    D.3.5. Install a Kernel
    D.3.6. Set up the Boot Loader
    D.3.7. Remote access: Installing SSH and setting up access
    D.3.8. Finishing touches

D.4. Installing Debian GNU/Linux using PPP over Ethernet (PPPoE)

D.1. Linux Devices

In Linux various special files can be found under the directory /dev. These
files are called device files and behave unlike ordinary files. The most common
types of device files are for block devices and character devices. These files
are an interface to the actual driver (part of the Linux kernel) which in turn
accesses the hardware. Another, less common, type of device file is the named
pipe. The most important device files are listed in the tables below.

┌────┬─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│sda │First hard disk                          │
├────┼─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│sdb │Second hard disk                         │
├────┼─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│sda1│First partition of the first hard disk   │
├────┼─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│sdb7│Seventh partition of the second hard disk│
└────┴─────────────────────────────────────────┘

┌───┬──────────────┐
│sr0│First CD-ROM  │
├───┼──────────────┤
│sr1│Second CD-ROM │
└───┴──────────────┘

┌───────┬────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ttyS0  │Serial port 0, COM1 under MS-DOS                    │
├───────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ttyS1  │Serial port 1, COM2 under MS-DOS                    │
├───────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│psaux  │PS/2 mouse device                                   │
├───────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│gpmdata│Pseudo device, repeater data from GPM (mouse) daemon│
└───────┴────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

┌─────┬──────────────────────────────────────┐
│cdrom│Symbolic link to the CD-ROM drive     │
├─────┼──────────────────────────────────────┤
│mouse│Symbolic link to the mouse device file│
└─────┴──────────────────────────────────────┘

┌────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│null│Anything written to this device will disappear │
├────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│zero│One can endlessly read zeros out of this device│
└────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────┘

D.1.1. Setting Up Your Mouse

The mouse can be used in both the Linux console (with gpm) and the X window
environment. Normally, this is a simple matter of installing gpm and the X
server itself. Both should be configured to use /dev/input/mice as the mouse
device. The correct mouse protocol is named exps2 in gpm, and ExplorerPS/2 in
X. The respective configuration files are /etc/gpm.conf and /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

Certain kernel modules must be loaded in order for your mouse to work. In most
cases the correct modules are autodetected, but not always for old-style serial
and bus mice^[20], which are quite rare except on very old computers. Summary
of Linux kernel modules needed for different mouse types:

┌────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Module │                    Description                    │
├────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│psmouse │PS/2 mice (should be autodetected)                 │
├────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│usbhid  │USB mice (should be autodetected)                  │
├────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│sermouse│Most serial mice                                   │
├────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│logibm  │Bus mouse connected to Logitech adapter card       │
├────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│inport  │Bus mouse connected to ATI or Microsoft InPort card│
└────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

To load a mouse driver module, you can use the modconf command (from the
package with the same name) and look in the category kernel/drivers/input/mouse
.

D.2. Disk Space Needed for Tasks

A standard installation for the amd64 architecture, including all standard
packages and using the default kernel, takes up 1242MB of disk space. A minimal
base installation, without the "Standard system" task selected, will take
1012MB.

Important

In both cases this is the actual disk space used after the installation is
finished and any temporary files deleted. It also does not take into account
overhead used by the file system, for example for journal files. This means
that significantly more disk space is needed both during the installation and
for normal system use.

The following table lists sizes reported by aptitude for the tasks listed in
tasksel. Note that some tasks have overlapping constituents, so the total
installed size for two tasks together may be less than the total obtained by
adding up the numbers.

By default the installer will install the GNOME desktop environment, but
alternative desktop environments can be selected either by using one of the
special installation images, or by specifying the desired desktop environment
during installation (see Section 6.3.6.2, "Selecting and Installing Software").

Note that you will need to add the sizes listed in the table to the size of the
standard installation when determining the size of partitions. Most of the size
listed as "Installed size" will end up in /usr and in /lib; the size listed as 
"Download size" is (temporarily) required in /var.

┌─────────────────┬─────────────────┬────────────────┬────────────────────────┐
│      Task       │ Installed size  │ Download size  │Space needed to install │
│                 │      (MB)       │      (MB)      │          (MB)          │
├─────────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────┤
│Desktop          │                 │                │                        │
│environment      │                 │                │                        │
├─────────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────┤
│  • GNOME        │3216             │859             │4075                    │
│(default)        │                 │                │                        │
├─────────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────┤
│  • KDE Plasma   │4584             │1316            │5900                    │
├─────────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────┤
│  • Xfce         │2509             │683             │3192                    │
├─────────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────┤
│  • LXDE         │2539             │693             │3232                    │
├─────────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────┤
│  • MATE         │2851             │762             │3613                    │
├─────────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────┤
│  • Cinnamon     │4676             │1324            │6000                    │
├─────────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────┤
│Web server       │85               │19              │104                     │
├─────────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────┤
│SSH server       │2                │1               │3                       │
└─────────────────┴─────────────────┴────────────────┴────────────────────────┘

If you install in a language other than English, tasksel may automatically
install a localization task, if one is available for your language. Space
requirements differ per language; you should allow up to 350MB in total for
download and installation.

D.3. Installing Debian GNU/Linux from a Unix/Linux System

This section explains how to install Debian GNU/Linux from an existing Unix or
Linux system, without using the menu-driven installer as explained in the rest
of the manual. This "cross-install" HOWTO has been requested by users switching
to Debian GNU/Linux from Red Hat, Mandriva, and SUSE. In this section some
familiarity with entering *nix commands and navigating the file system is
assumed. In this section, $ symbolizes a command to be entered in the user's
current system, while # refers to a command entered in the Debian chroot.

Once you've got the new Debian system configured to your preference, you can
migrate your existing user data (if any) to it, and keep on rolling. This is
therefore a "zero downtime" Debian GNU/Linux install. It's also a clever way
for dealing with hardware that otherwise doesn't play friendly with various
boot or installation media.

Note

As this is a mostly manual procedure, you should bear in mind that you will
need to do a lot of basic configuration of the system yourself, which will also
require more knowledge of Debian and of Linux in general than performing a
regular installation. You cannot expect this procedure to result in a system
that is identical to a system from a regular installation. You should also keep
in mind that this procedure only gives the basic steps to set up a system.
Additional installation and/or configuration steps may be needed.

D.3.1. Getting Started

With your current *nix partitioning tools, repartition the hard drive as
needed, creating at least one filesystem plus swap. You need around 1012MB of
space available for a console only install, or about 2539MB if you plan to
install X (more if you intend to install desktop environments like GNOME or KDE
Plasma).

Next, create file systems on the partitions. For example, to create an ext3
file system on partition /dev/sda6 (that's our example root partition):

# mke2fs -j /dev/sda6

To create an ext2 file system instead, omit -j.

Initialize and activate swap (substitute the partition number for your intended
Debian swap partition):

# mkswap /dev/sda5
# sync
# swapon /dev/sda5

Mount one partition as /mnt/debinst (the installation point, to be the root (/)
filesystem on your new system). The mount point name is strictly arbitrary, it
is referenced later below.

# mkdir /mnt/debinst
# mount /dev/sda6 /mnt/debinst

Note

If you want to have parts of the filesystem (e.g. /usr) mounted on separate
partitions, you will need to create and mount these directories manually before
proceeding with the next stage.

D.3.2. Install debootstrap

The utility used by the Debian installer, and recognized as the official way to
install a Debian base system, is debootstrap. It uses wget and ar, but
otherwise depends only on /bin/sh and basic Unix/Linux tools^[21]. Install wget
and ar if they aren't already on your current system, then download and install
debootstrap.

Or, you can use the following procedure to install it manually. Make a work
folder for extracting the .deb into:

# mkdir work
# cd work

The debootstrap binary is located in the Debian archive (be sure to select the
proper file for your architecture). Download the debootstrap .deb from the pool
, copy the package to the work folder, and extract the files from it. You will
need to have root privileges to install the files.

# ar -x debootstrap_0.X.X_all.deb
# cd /
# zcat /full-path-to-work/work/data.tar.gz | tar xv

D.3.3. Run debootstrap

debootstrap can download the needed files directly from the archive when you
run it. You can substitute any Debian archive mirror for http.us.debian.org/
debian in the command example below, preferably a mirror close to you
network-wise. Mirrors are listed at http://www.debian.org/mirror/list.

If you have a bookworm Debian GNU/Linux installation image mounted at /cdrom,
you could substitute a file URL instead of the http URL: file:/cdrom/debian/

Substitute one of the following for ARCH in the debootstrap command: amd64,
arm64, armel, armhf, i386, mips64el, mipsel, ppc64el, s390x.

# /usr/sbin/debootstrap --arch ARCH bookworm \
     /mnt/debinst http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian

If the target architecture is different than the host, you should add the
--foreign option.

D.3.4. Configure The Base System

Now you've got a real Debian system, though rather lean, on disk. chroot into
it:

# LANG=C.UTF-8 chroot /mnt/debinst /bin/bash

If the target architecture is different from the host, you will need to first
copy qemu-user-static to the new host:

# cp /usr/bin/qemu-ARCH-static /mnt/debinst/usr/bin
# LANG=C.UTF-8 chroot /mnt/debinst qemu-ARCH-static /bin/bash

After chrooting you may need to set the terminal definition to be compatible
with the Debian base system, for example:

# export TERM=xterm-color

Depending on the value of TERM, you may have to install the ncurses-term
package to get support for it.

If the target architecture is different from the host, you need to finish the
multi-stage boot strap:

/debootstrap/debootstrap --second-stage

D.3.4.1. Create device files

At this point /dev/ only contains very basic device files. For the next steps
of the installation additional device files may be needed. There are different
ways to go about this and which method you should use depends on the host
system you are using for the installation, on whether you intend to use a
modular kernel or not, and on whether you intend to use dynamic (e.g. using
udev) or static device files for the new system.

A few of the available options are:

  • install the makedev package, and create a default set of static device
    files using (after chrooting)

    # apt install makedev
    # mount none /proc -t proc
    # cd /dev
    # MAKEDEV generic

  • manually create only specific device files using MAKEDEV

  • bind mount /dev from your host system on top of /dev in the target system;
    note that the postinst scripts of some packages may try to create device
    files, so this option should only be used with care

D.3.4.2. Mount Partitions

You need to create /etc/fstab.

# editor /etc/fstab

Here is a sample you can modify to suit:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# file system    mount point   type    options                  dump pass
/dev/XXX         /             ext3    defaults                 0    1
/dev/XXX         /boot         ext3    ro,nosuid,nodev          0    2

/dev/XXX         none          swap    sw                       0    0
proc             /proc         proc    defaults                 0    0

/dev/cdrom       /media/cdrom  iso9660 noauto,ro,user,exec      0    0

/dev/XXX         /tmp          ext3    rw,nosuid,nodev          0    2
/dev/XXX         /var          ext3    rw,nosuid,nodev          0    2
/dev/XXX         /usr          ext3    rw,nodev                 0    2
/dev/XXX         /home         ext3    rw,nosuid,nodev          0    2

Use mount -a to mount all the file systems you have specified in your /etc/
fstab, or, to mount file systems individually, use:

# mount /path   # e.g.: mount /usr

Current Debian systems have mountpoints for removable media under /media, but
keep compatibility symlinks in /. Create these as as needed, for example:

# cd /media
# mkdir cdrom0
# ln -s cdrom0 cdrom
# cd /
# ln -s media/cdrom

You can mount the proc file system multiple times and to arbitrary locations,
though /proc is customary. If you didn't use mount -a, be sure to mount proc
before continuing:

# mount -t proc proc /proc

The command ls /proc should now show a non-empty directory. Should this fail,
you may be able to mount proc from outside the chroot:

# mount -t proc proc /mnt/debinst/proc

D.3.4.3. Setting Timezone

Setting the third line of the file /etc/adjtime to "UTC" or "LOCAL" determines
whether the system will interpret the hardware clock as being set to UTC
respective local time. The following command allows you to set that.

# editor /etc/adjtime

Here is a sample:

0.0 0 0.0
0
UTC

The following command allows you to choose your timezone.

# dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

D.3.4.4. Configure Networking

To configure networking, edit /etc/network/interfaces, /etc/resolv.conf, /etc/
hostname and /etc/hosts.

# editor /etc/network/interfaces

Here are some simple examples from /usr/share/doc/ifupdown/examples:

######################################################################
# /etc/network/interfaces -- configuration file for ifup(8), ifdown(8)
# See the interfaces(5) manpage for information on what options are
# available.
######################################################################

# The loopback interface isn't really required any longer, but can be used
# if needed.
#
# auto lo
# iface lo inet loopback

# To use dhcp:
#
# auto eth0
# iface eth0 inet dhcp

# An example static IP setup: (network, broadcast and gateway are optional)
#
# auto eth0
# iface eth0 inet static
#     address 192.168.0.42
#     network 192.168.0.0
#     netmask 255.255.255.0
#     broadcast 192.168.0.255
#     gateway 192.168.0.1

Enter your nameserver(s) and search directives in /etc/resolv.conf:

# editor /etc/resolv.conf

A simple example /etc/resolv.conf:

search example.com
nameserver 10.1.1.36
nameserver 192.168.9.100

Enter your system's host name (2 to 63 characters):

# echo DebianHostName > /etc/hostname

And a basic /etc/hosts with IPv6 support:

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 DebianHostName

# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1     ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
ff02::3 ip6-allhosts

If you have multiple network cards, you should arrange the names of driver
modules in the /etc/modules file into the desired order. Then during boot, each
card will be associated with the interface name (eth0, eth1, etc.) that you
expect.

D.3.4.5. Configure Apt

Debootstrap will have created a very basic /etc/apt/sources.list that will
allow installing additional packages. However, you may want to add some
additional sources, for example for source packages and security updates:

deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian bookworm main

deb http://security.debian.org/ bookworm-security main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ bookworm-security main

Make sure to run apt update after you have made changes to the sources list.

D.3.4.6. Configure Locales and Keyboard

To configure your locale settings to use a language other than English, install
the locales support package and configure it. Currently the use of UTF-8
locales is recommended.

# apt install locales
# dpkg-reconfigure locales

To configure your keyboard (if needed):

# apt install console-setup
# dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration

Note that the keyboard cannot be set while in the chroot, but will be
configured for the next reboot.

D.3.5. Install a Kernel

If you intend to boot this system, you probably want a Linux kernel and a boot
loader. Identify available pre-packaged kernels with:

# apt search linux-image

Then install the kernel package of your choice using its package name.

# apt install linux-image-arch-etc

D.3.6. Set up the Boot Loader

To make your Debian GNU/Linux system bootable, set up your boot loader to load
the installed kernel with your new root partition. Note that debootstrap does
not install a boot loader, but you can use apt inside your Debian chroot to do
so.

Note that this assumes that a /dev/sda device file has been created. There are
alternative methods to install grub2, but those are outside the scope of this
appendix.

D.3.7. Remote access: Installing SSH and setting up access

In case you can login to the system via console, you can skip this section. If
the system should be accessible via the network later on, you need to install
SSH and set up access.

# apt install ssh

Root login with password is disabled by default, so setting up access can be
done by setting a password and re-enable root login with password:

# passwd
# editor /etc/ssh/sshd_config

This is the option to be enabled:

PermitRootLogin yes

Access can also be set up by adding an ssh key to the root account:

# mkdir /root/.ssh
# cat << EOF > /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
ssh-rsa ....
EOF

Lastly, access can be set up by adding a non-root user and setting a password:

# adduser joe
# passwd joe

D.3.8. Finishing touches

As mentioned earlier, the installed system will be very basic. If you would
like to make the system a bit more mature, there is an easy method to install
all packages with "standard" priority:

# tasksel install standard

Of course, you can also just use apt to install packages individually.

After the installation there will be a lot of downloaded packages in /var/cache
/apt/archives/. You can free up some diskspace by running:

# apt clean

D.4. Installing Debian GNU/Linux using PPP over Ethernet (PPPoE)

In some countries PPP over Ethernet (PPPoE) is a common protocol for broadband
(ADSL or cable) connections to an Internet Service Provider. Setting up a
network connection using PPPoE is not supported by default in the installer,
but can be made to work very simply. This section explains how.

The PPPoE connection set up during the installation will also be available
after the reboot into the installed system (see Chapter 7, Booting Into Your
New Debian System).

To have the option of setting up and using PPPoE during the installation, you
will need to install using one of the CD-ROM/DVD images that are available. It
is not supported for other installation methods (e.g. netboot).

Installing over PPPoE is mostly the same as any other installation. The
following steps explain the differences.

  • Boot the installer with the boot parameter modules=ppp-udeb. This will
    ensure the component responsible for the setup of PPPoE (ppp-udeb) will be
    loaded and run automatically.

  • Follow the regular initial steps of the installation (language, country and
    keyboard selection; the loading of additional installer components^[22]).

  • The next step is the detection of network hardware, in order to identify
    any Ethernet cards present in the system.

  • After this the actual setup of PPPoE is started. The installer will probe
    all the detected Ethernet interfaces in an attempt to find a PPPoE
    concentrator (a type of server which handles PPPoE connections).

    It is possible that the concentrator will not to be found at the first
    attempt. This can happen occasionally on slow or loaded networks or with
    faulty servers. In most cases a second attempt to detect the concentrator
    will be successful; to retry, select Configure and start a PPPoE connection
    from the main menu of the installer.

  • After a concentrator is found, the user will be prompted to type the login
    information (the PPPoE username and password).

  • At this point the installer will use the provided information to establish
    the PPPoE connection. If the correct information was provided, the PPPoE
    connection should be configured and the installer should be able to use it
    to connect to the Internet and retrieve packages over it (if needed). If
    the login information is not correct or some error appears, the installer
    will stop, but the configuration can be attempted again by selecting the
    menu entry Configure and start a PPPoE connection.


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

^[20] Serial mice usually have a 9-hole D-shaped connector; bus mice have an
8-pin round connector, not to be confused with the 6-pin round connector of a
PS/2 mouse or the 4-pin round connector of an ADB mouse.

^[21] These include the GNU core utilities and commands like sed, grep, tar and
gzip.

^[22] The ppp-udeb component is loaded as one of the additional components in
this step. If you want to install at medium or low priority (expert mode), you
can also manually select the ppp-udeb instead of entering the "modules"
parameter at the boot prompt.

Appendix E. Administrivia

Table of Contents

E.1. About This Document
E.2. Contributing to This Document
E.3. Major Contributions
E.4. Trademark Acknowledgement

E.1. About This Document

This manual was created for Sarge's debian-installer, based on the Woody
installation manual for boot-floppies, which was based on earlier Debian
installation manuals, and on the Progeny distribution manual which was released
under GPL in 2003.

This document is written in DocBook XML. Output formats are generated by
various programs using information from the docbook-xml and docbook-xsl
packages.

In order to increase the maintainability of this document, we use a number of
XML features, such as entities and profiling attributes. These play a role akin
to variables and conditionals in programming languages. The XML source to this
document contains information for each different architecture -- profiling
attributes are used to isolate certain bits of text as architecture-specific.

E.2. Contributing to This Document

If you have problems or suggestions regarding this document, you should
probably submit them as a bug report against the package installation-guide.
See the reportbug package or read the online documentation of the Debian Bug
Tracking System. It would be nice if you could check the open bugs against
installation-guide to see whether your problem has already been reported. If
so, you can supply additional corroboration or helpful information to <XXXX
@bugs.debian.org>, where XXXX is the number for the already-reported bug.

Better yet, get a copy of the DocBook source for this document, and produce
patches against it. The DocBook source can be found at the installation-guide
project on salsa. If you're not familiar with DocBook, don't worry: there is a
simple cheatsheet in the manuals directory that will get you started. It's like
html, but oriented towards the meaning of the text rather than the
presentation. Patches submitted to the debian-boot mailing list (see below) are
welcomed. For instructions on how to check out the sources via git, see README
from the source root directory.

Please do not contact the authors of this document directly. There is also a
discussion list for debian-installer, which includes discussions of this
manual. The mailing list is <debian-boot@lists.debian.org>. Instructions for
subscribing to this list can be found at the Debian Mailing List Subscription
page; or you can browse the Debian Mailing List Archives online.

E.3. Major Contributions

This document was originally written by Bruce Perens, Sven Rudolph, Igor
Grobman, James Treacy, and Adam Di Carlo. Sebastian Ley wrote the Installation
Howto.

Miroslav Kuře has documented a lot of the new functionality in Sarge's
debian-installer. Frans Pop was the main editor and release manager during the
Etch, Lenny and Squeeze releases.

Many, many Debian users and developers contributed to this document. Particular
note must be made of Michael Schmitz (m68k support), Frank Neumann (original
author of the Amiga install manual), Arto Astala, Eric Delaunay/Ben Collins
(SPARC information), Tapio Lehtonen, and Stéphane Bortzmeyer for numerous edits
and text. We have to thank Pascal Le Bail for useful information about booting
from USB memory sticks.

Extremely helpful text and information was found in Jim Mintha's HOWTO for
network booting (no URL available), the Debian FAQ, the Linux/m68k FAQ, the
Linux for SPARC Processors FAQ, the Linux/Alpha FAQ, amongst others. The
maintainers of these freely available and rich sources of information must be
recognized.

The section on chrooted installations in this manual (Section D.3, "Installing
Debian GNU/Linux from a Unix/Linux System") was derived in part from documents
copyright Karsten M. Self.

E.4. Trademark Acknowledgement

All trademarks are property of their respective trademark owners.

Appendix F. GNU General Public License

Version 2, June 1991

Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

Preamble

The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share
and change it. By contrast, the gnu General Public License is intended to
guarantee your freedom to share and change free software -- to make sure the
software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most
of the Free Software Foundation's software and to any other program whose
authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is
covered by the gnu Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to
your programs, too.

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our
General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to
distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish),
that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change
the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you
can do these things.

To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny
you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions
translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the
software, or if you modify it.

For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for
a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make
sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them
these terms so they know their rights.

We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2)
offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and
/or modify the software.

Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain that
everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the
software is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to
know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced
by others will not reflect on the original authors' reputations.

Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish
to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually
obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent
this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's
free use or not licensed at all.

The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification
follow.

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE

TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice
placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of
this General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program
or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any
derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the
Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or
translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without
limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "you".

Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by
this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not
restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents
constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by
running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.

1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as
you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and
appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and
disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License
and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the
Program a copy of this License along with the Program.

You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may
at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus
forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications
or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of
these conditions:

 a. You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that
    you changed the files and the date of any change.

 b. You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in
    part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be
    licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of
    this License.

 c. If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you
    must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most
    ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate
    copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying
    that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program
    under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this
    License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not
    normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not
    required to print an announcement.)

These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable
sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably
considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and
its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate
works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a
work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms
of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire
whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your
rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the
right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on
the Program.

In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the
Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or
distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this
License.

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under
Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and
2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

 a. Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code,
    which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a
    medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

 b. Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give
    any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically
    performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the
    corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1
    and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

 c. Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to
    distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for
    noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object
    code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b
    above.)

The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making
modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the
source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface
definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation
of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed
need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or
binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the
operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself
accompanies the executable.

If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy
from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source
code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though
third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code.

4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as
expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify,
sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate
your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or
rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so
long as such parties remain in full compliance.

5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it.
However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program
or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not
accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or
any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to
do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying
the Program or works based on it.

6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program),
the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to
copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions.
You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the
rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by
third parties to this License.

7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent
infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions
are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that
contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the
conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy
simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent
obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all.
For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution
of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through
you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to
refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any
particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and
the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances.

It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or
other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims; this
section has the sole purpose of protecting the integrity of the free software
distribution system, which is implemented by public license practices. Many
people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software
distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that
system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to
distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that
choice.

This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a
consequence of the rest of this License.

8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain
countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original
copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit
geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that
distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such
case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of
this License.

9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the
General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in
spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems
or concerns. Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the
Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any
later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions
either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software
Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License,
you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.

10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs
whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author to ask for
permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation,
write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes make exceptions for this.
Our decision will be guided by the two goals of preserving the free status of
all derivatives of our free software and of promoting the sharing and reuse of
software generally.

NO WARRANTY

11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR
THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE
STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE
PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND
PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU
ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

12. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL
AND COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE
PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY
GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR
INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA
BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A
FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER
OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS

How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs

If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest possible
use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it free software
which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms.

To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest to attach
them to the start of each source file to most effectively convey the exclusion
of warranty; and each file should have at least the "copyright" line and a
pointer to where the full notice is found.

one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.
Copyright (C) year  name of author

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301, USA.

Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.

If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this when it
starts in an interactive mode:

Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) year name of author
Gnomovision comes with absolutely no warranty; for details
type show w. This is free software, and you are welcome
to redistribute it under certain conditions; type show c
for details.

The hypothetical commands "show w" and "show c" should show the appropriate
parts of the General Public License. Of course, the commands you use may be
called something other than "show w" and "show c"; they could even be
mouse-clicks or menu items -- whatever suits your program.

You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your school,
if any, to sign a "copyright disclaimer" for the program, if necessary. Here is
a sample; alter the names:

Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the
program Gnomovision (which makes passes at compilers) written
by James Hacker.

signature of Ty Coon, 1 April 1989
Ty Coon, President of Vice

This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into
proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider
it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If
this is what you want to do, use the GNU Lesser General Public License instead
of this License.