16.8. Network Installation of a Debian System

Debian Linux is the largest Linux distribution that exists, supporting more applications and hardware platforms than any other Linux distribution. Currently, a complete download requires 21 CDs or 3 DVDs. Of course, you don't need all those disks to do a basic installation, but it's still a big old beast. You prefer to boot with a small installation image, and then perform the rest of the installation over the network, rather than trying to download gigabytes of ISOs. How do you this?

Solution

Debian has long supported network installations. You can get boot images for CD-ROM and USB flash drive. It also supports PXE netbooting, which we'll get to in the next recipe. Visit Debian.org (http://www.us.debian.org/distrib/netinst) to download network installation images for CD-ROM.

You need dial-up, wired Ethernet, or a wireless interface with native Linux support. Don't even bother with a wireless interface that requires ndiswrapper to run on Linux; it won't work for the installer.

The netinst image contains the base Debian installation and weighs in at about 160 MB.

The businesscard image is about 32 MB, and has just the bare necessities for starting the installation.

The official file integrity checksums are posted on the download page. Always confirm the checksum before using the downloads:

	$ sha1sum  debian-40r0-i386-businesscard.iso
	641e67f6968ca08217f52f6fbe7dda1a8e6072ec  debian-40r0-i386-businesscard.iso

Use your favorite CD-writing software, such as K3b, to write your installation images to CD.

To create a bootable USB flash drive, you need at least a 256 MB drive. Then, download the hd-media/boot.img.gz file from your favorite Debian mirror. Make sure the drive is unmounted, and copy it to the drive with this command:

	# zcat boot.img.gz > /dev/sda

How do you know the /dev name of your USB device? Try using the ls command:

	$ ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/

The lsscsi command should also tell the tale:

	$ lsscsi
	[2:0:0:0]    disk    LEXAR     JUMPDRIVE    1.10  /dev/sdb

To start the installation, boot your chosen media. You'll do the usual keyboard, language, and network settings, and then you'll have a drop-down list of Debian mirrors to choose from. After that, it's business as usual—select your packages, then go do something else while the operating system installs itself.

Discussion

This is a good way to perform a single installation, but not so good when you have several machines to install. For that, you should set up a local installation server, which we'll get to in the next recipe.

See Also