# Installation Howto

This document describes how to install &ubuntu; &release; &longreleasename; for the &arch-title; (&architecture;). 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.

## Preliminaries

The debian-installer is still in a beta state. If you encounter bugs during your install, please refer to submit-bug 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 (&email-debian-boot-list;) or ask on IRC (#debian-boot on the OFTC network).

## Booting the installer

For more information on where to get CDs, see official-cdrom.

Some installation methods require other images than CD images. The &d-i; home page has links to other images. where-files explains how to find images on &debian; mirrors.

The installation on &architecture; requires at least an installer kernel and initrd file. This is usually be taken from the Official &ubuntu; CD-ROM image (see the ./boot folder) or can be directly downloaded from the &debian; archive page - either the version from main or (if available) a version from the updates pocket.

The easiest way is probably to download the (CDROM) image, because the files most people need are there on the image.

The subsections below will give the details about which image(s) you should get for each possible means of installation.

### Booting from CDROM

The netinst CD image is a popular image which can be used to install &releasename; with the &d-i;. This image is intended to boot from CD 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 &releasename; system. If you'd rather, you can get a full size CD image which will not need the network to install. You only need the first CD of the set.

First of all download the image for your architecture and burn it to a CD/DVD.

In case you are going to do an installation on &architecture; from CD/DVD-ROM, put the CD/DVD into the HMC's CD/DVD drive and execute the HMC task Load from Removable Media or Server for the installation and select Hardware Management Console CD/DVD-ROM....

The installation from a USB drive on &architecture; is very similar (and not comparable to other architectures). In such a case just copy the image to a USB drive, plug it into the HMC, execute the HMC task Load from Removable Media or Server and select Hardware Management Console USB flash memory drive... - keep in mind that the USB drive needs to be already inserted before you execute the task, otherwise the USB drive option(s) are not listed.

To boot the CD, you may need to change your BIOS configuration, as explained in bios-setup. To boot a PowerMac from CD, press the c key while booting. See boot-cd for other ways to boot from CD.

### Floppy

If you can't boot from CD, you can download floppy images to install &debian;. You need the `floppy/boot.img`, the `floppy/root.img` and one or more of the driver disks.

The boot floppy is the one with `boot.img` on it. This floppy, when booted, will prompt you to insert a second floppy — use the one with `root.img` on it.

If you're planning to install over the network, you will usually need the `floppy/net-drivers-1.img`. For PCMCIA or USB networking, and some less common network cards, you will also need a second driver floppy, `floppy/net-drivers-2.img`.

If you have a CD, but cannot boot from it, then boot from floppies and use `floppy/cd-drivers.img` on a driver disk to complete the install using the CD.

Floppy disks are one of the least reliable media around, so be prepared for lots of bad disks (see unreliable-floppies). Each `.img` file you downloaded goes on a single floppy; you can use the `dd` command to write it to /dev/fd0 or some other means (see create-floppy for details). Since you'll have more than one floppy, it's a good idea to label them.

### USB memory stick

It's also possible to install from removable USB storage devices. For example a USB keychain can make a handy &debian; install medium that you can take with you anywhere.

The easiest way to prepare your USB memory stick is to download any &debian; CD or DVD image that will fit on it, and write the CD image directly to the memory stick. Of course this will destroy anything already on the memory stick. This works because &debian; CD images are "isohybrid" images that can boot both from CD and from USB drives.

The easiest way to prepare your USB memory stick is to download `netboot/boot.img.gz`, and use gunzip to extract the 8 MB image from that file. Write this image directly to your memory stick, which must be at least 8 MB in size. Of course this will destroy anything already on the memory stick.

There are other, more flexible ways to set up a memory stick to use the &ubuntu; installer. For details, see boot-usb-files.

Some BIOSes can boot USB storage directly, and some cannot. You may need to configure your BIOS to boot from a removable drive or even a USB-ZIP to get it to boot from the USB device. For helpful hints and details, see usb-boot.

Booting Macintosh systems from USB storage devices involves manual use of Open Firmware. For directions, see usb-boot.

### Booting from network

It's also possible to boot the &ubuntu; 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 the &ubuntu; installer.

The easiest thing to set up is probably PXE netbooting. Untar the file `netboot/pxeboot.tar.gz` into `/srv/tftp` or wherever is appropriate for your tftp server. Set up your DHCP server to pass filename `pxelinux.0` to clients, and with luck everything will just work. For detailed instructions, see install-tftp.

Booting the installer from network is on the &architecture; platform quite flexible and convinient, hence the recommended way. But some initial steps are required. The CD/DVD image needs to be extracted and made available via FTP. It's crucial that the FTP server itself is reachable by the HMC, the SE and the LPAR or z/VM guest to be installed. A dedicated network is usually setup just for this purpose. Once this infrastructure is in place the booting of the installer from FTP can be started with the execution of the HMC task Load from Removable Media or Server, selecting FTP Source and specifying Host Computer (usually specified by IP address), User ID, Password, Account (optional) and File location (optional). Anonymous FTP is possible, too.

### Booting from CMS disk (z/VM)

On z/VM the usual way to boot the installer is to use the (virtual) puncher. At least the files `initrd.&debian-lc;` and `kernel.&debian-lc;` are needed. These files need to be carefully transfered to a z/VM CMS disk using mode `binary` / `bin` and the FTP option `locsite fix 80`.

It's recommended to download `parmfile.&debian-lc;` and `&debian-lc;.exec` as well, but using `ascii` mode.

Properly transfered to CMS, the installation files can be booted by just executing the `&debian-lc;.exec` REXX script. Alternatively you can also execute the steps from the script manually.

    /* REXX EXEC TO IPL Ubuntu for        */
    /* z Systems FROM THE VM READER.      */
    /*                                    */
    'CP CLOSE RDR'
    'PURGE RDR ALL'
    'SPOOL PUNCH * RDR'
    'PUNCH KERNEL    UBUNTU   * (NOHEADER'
    'PUNCH PARMFILE  UBUNTU   * (NOHEADER'
    'PUNCH INITRD    UBUNTU   * (NOHEADER'
    'CHANGE RDR ALL KEEP NOHOLD'
    'CP IPL 000C CLEAR'

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 image to the top-level directory of the hard disk. Make sure that the CD image has a filename ending in `.iso`. Now it's just a matter of booting linux with the initrd. boot-initrd explains one way to do it.

## Installation

Once the installer starts, you will be greeted with an initial screen. Press &enterkey; to boot, or read the instructions for other boot methods and parameters (see boot-parms).

After a while you will be asked to select your language. Use the arrow keys to pick a language and press &enterkey; 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 the installer detects some of your hardware, and loads the rest of itself from CD, USB, floppy, network, etc.

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.

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.

Setting up your clock and time zone 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 choose No on the Allow login as root? question or 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.

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 partman-auto). This is recommended for new users or anyone in a hurry. If you do not want to autopartition, choose Manual from the menu.

If you have an existing DOS or Windows partition that you want to preserve, be very careful with automatic partitioning. If you choose manual partitioning, you can use the installer to resize existing FAT or NTFS partitions to create room for the &debian; install: simply select the partition and specify its new size.

If you want to customize the partition layout, choose Manually edit partition table from the menu, and the next screen will show you your partition table, how the partitions will be formatted, and where they will be mounted. Select a partition to modify or delete it. Remember that since 18.04 a swap file is the default, rather than a swap partition. But you are still able to assign a partition for swap space. Remember to mount one partition on `/` (root). For more detailed information on how to use the partitioner, please refer to di-partition; the appendix partitioning has more general information about partitioning.

Now the 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 pkgsel 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. By default GRUB will be installed to the master boot record of the first harddrive, which is generally a good choice. You'll be given the opportunity to override that choice and install it elsewhere.

The installer will now tell you that the first stage of installation has finished. Remove the CD (if needed) and hit &enterkey; to reboot your machine. It should boot up into the newly installed system and allow you to log in. This is explained in boot-new.

If you need more information on the install process, see d-i-intro.

## Send us an installation report

If you successfully managed an installation with &d-i;, please take time to provide us with a report. The simplest way to do so is to install the reportbug package (`aptitude install reportbug`), configure `reportbug` as explained in mail-outgoing, 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 problem-report.

## And finally…

We hope that your &debian; installation is pleasant and that you find &debian; useful. You might want to read post-install.