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Contents

  1. Note
  2. Q: Why does DebianInstaller always use DHCP? I want a static address!
  3. Q: But DHCP shouldn't run automatically, it breaks on my system/gets the wrong information/is not what I want.
  4. Q: Why are you doing this? Why not use Anaconda/PGI/whatever? Why reinvent the wheel?
  5. Q: Is the DebianInstaller going to be graphical in nature? / Is there any prebuilt/downloadable graphical DebianInstaller?
  6. Q: Does the DebianInstaller support creating and installing to software RAID devices?
  7. Q: How do I install using LVM? Is there any more information about using the LVM installer? LVM installation doesn't work!
  8. Q: DebianInstaller does not include a driver for my xyz network card, but I have (tarball) driver sources. What are the steps for building that driver?
  9. Q: How do I install using the hd-media?
  10. Q: How can I create boot iso with my own set of packages?
  11. Q: How can I build the DebianInstaller?
  12. Q: Why doesn't the installer automatically choose the appropriate kernel to install (for example an i686 kernel instead of the generic i386)?
  13. Q: What about SMP support?
  14. Q: Why isn't the installed system configured to use the language I chose during installation?
  15. Q: When I run the DebianInstaller, my keyboard doesn't work!
  16. Q: Why isn't my hardware supported by DebianInstaller, I know there is a Linux driver for it!
  17. Q: There seem to be errors reading the CD!
  18. Q: How can I install sid (unstable) with DebianInstaller?
  19. Q: How do I copy d-i logfiles to a remote host?
  20. Q: How do I install via PPPoE?
  21. Q: How do I use netinst over PPP?
  22. Q: What do I do if I can no longer boot Windows after installing Debian?
  23. Q: Can I use d-i as a rescue system? What pitfalls are there?
  24. Q: How to use preseeding? How to use network console with preseeding?
  25. Q: How to shrink an existing Windows installation?
  26. Q: What types of media are available? What versions are available? Where to download?
  27. Q: Your amd64 CD does not boot. I downloaded it from http://someplace/foo/ia64/bar
  28. Q: Why is ping not available in the debug shell
  29. Q: Running the installer from an iso file on a hdd ...

Note

Before attempting an installation or reporting a problem, remember to check the errata page (either the errata of Debian/Stable D-I or the errata of DI Development version) to see if your problem is already well known.

If you are experiencing problems with an older version of the installer, please try a more recent version from the Debian-Installer home page, as your problem might already be solved.

Please don't edit this page to ask new questions here! This page is only for frequently asked questions. Please do edit this page to add questions that you know are frequently asked, or to improve the answers.


Q: Why does DebianInstaller always use DHCP? I want a static address!

A: There are currently three different ways of configuring a static IP setup:

  1. Run the installer in normal mode (select "Install") and either wait until the DHCP detection fails or cancel the DHCP detection (available in recent versions of the installer). Then you are thrown to the manual configuration of name servers. If you need to configure everything manually, you need to go back twice(!). Then select "Configure network manually". (Visit Debian Bug 794662 to see when this not very user friendly behaviour is fixed.)

  2. Run the installer in expert mode (select "Advanced options > Expert"), and you will be able to configure a static address, and many other things besides.

  3. Supply installer boot argument: 'netcfg/disable_autoconfig=true'.

Besides you may set your dhcpd to serve a fixed address to your chosen network card (identified by its mac).

Q: But DHCP shouldn't run automatically, it breaks on my system/gets the wrong information/is not what I want.

A: DebianInstaller is targeting a larger base of users that have historically installed Debian, including users who don't know what DHCP or static IP addresses are. Thus default behavior is chosen to use DHCP.

You can force static network configuration by providing boot parameter netcfg/disable_dhcp=true at the boot prompt.

Q: Why are you doing this? Why not use Anaconda/PGI/whatever? Why reinvent the wheel?

A: We're doing this because it's time. Debian has been burdened with a sub-par installer for a full decade, and it's time to change all that. Debian's installer needs to work on more platforms and more types of install media than any other. We need to support installs to S/390 mainframes that have only a teletype console. We needed to support installs to m68k boxes that boot from floppies, as well as to netbooting Sun hardware.

And yes, we want to support flashy and easy installs on Intel clones booting from CD (and USB sticks). And many more. All the currently targeted installation methods are available for download.

Also installs for experienced users with higher control using the same installer are a must.

PGI can't do this. Anaconda can't do this. Only a system designed from the ground up to be completely modular and highly flexible can do so. DebianInstaller is that installer.

Q: Is the DebianInstaller going to be graphical in nature? / Is there any prebuilt/downloadable graphical DebianInstaller?

A: The DebianInstaller is not graphical by nature, but modularity is a key in its design and allows the use of different kinds of frontends, including a graphical one.

Since Etch, a graphical version of the installer is available for i386, amd64. For powerpc the graphical installer is only available as a separate, experimental image.

See the Installation Guide for further information.

Q: Does the DebianInstaller support creating and installing to software RAID devices?

A: The installer supports software RAID levels 0, 1, 4, 5, 6 and 10, and SATA RAID. Note that if you use RAID for /boot, you will be forced to use lilo since grub doesn't support RAID. (251905).

If you do not need to dual boot to MS Windows installed on such a RAID system, please use the DebianInstaller default (software) RAID manager (mdadm) as listed above: it is far better tested and seems equally fast.

Q: How do I install using LVM? Is there any more information about using the LVM installer? LVM installation doesn't work!

A: LVM is fairly straightforward to configure using the menu item in the partitioner titled "Configure the Logical Volume Manager". Please note that it will probably help a lot if you know some LVM terminology - it's recommended that you know the following three concepts: volume group (VG), physical volume (PV) and logical volume (LV) and how these relate to each other.

You can even build an LVM on top of a RAID device even for root. Nevertheless Grub has still some troubles (251905).

Recent versions of the installer can also set up LVM as part of the guided partitioning process.

Q: DebianInstaller does not include a driver for my xyz network card, but I have (tarball) driver sources. What are the steps for building that driver?

A: It's possible to do this, but we do not yet have good end-user docs explaining how to do so. We're waiting for an end user to accomplish it and write them from experience. We're glad to help you through the process when you mail us at debian-boot@lists.debian.org (do not forget to add lspci -v output).

See also DebianInstaller/NetInstWithThirdPartyNetworkDriver for a lengthy manual procedure of re-packaging netinst with a regular Debian kernel and the third party driver compiled against it. That procedure should give way to the install-time compilation of the driver against the installer's and the target kernels, a la module-assistant.

Q: How do I install using the hd-media?

A: A netinst or CD/DVD installation image can be booted directly from a hard disk (or a USB drive) using LILO or GRUB. For GRUB, /etc/grub.d/40_custom would be a convenient place to put a stanza; then run update-grub. An hd-media kernel (linux) and an initrd (initrd.gz) for the Debian 9 i-386 architecture are available here.

After selecting the entry in the boot menu to boot from, the ISO is searched for and, when found, mounted using the initrd's loop module. From there the Debian installer takes over and installation of the OS proceeds as normal.

Q: How can I create boot iso with my own set of packages?

A: see DebianInstaller/Modify

Q: How can I build the DebianInstaller?

A: see DebianInstaller/Build

Q: Why doesn't the installer automatically choose the appropriate kernel to install (for example an i686 kernel instead of the generic i386)?

A: The netinst CD image includes only the generic i386 kernel, so if you're using that you will always have install the proper kernel for your system manually after the installation if you want an optimized version. Including all the kernels on the netinst CD would use too much space.

If using any other installation method than the netinst CD you should get a kernel installed that is optimized for your hardware.

Update: recent netinst images also include the 686 flavor of the kernel.

Q: What about SMP support?

A: The installer itself does not need any SMP support and will not boot with an SMP enabled kernel since it merely needs to install the system to your machine.

When the system is being installed, the installer attempts to automatically detect SMP and chose and the appropriate kernel, so that SMP is enabled when you boot into your newly installed Debian system. If it fails to notice that it needs a SMP kernel on your machine, please file a detailed installation report.

On some architectures (including i386 and amd64), the standard Debian kernel image has been compiled with SMP-alternatives support. This means that the kernel will detect the number of processors (or processor cores) and will automatically deactivate SMP on uniprocessor systems.

Q: Why isn't the installed system configured to use the language I chose during installation?

A: This problem has been fixed, so if you see it using any current image, please file a detailed installation report.

Q: When I run the DebianInstaller, my keyboard doesn't work!

A: This seems to be especially common on laptops. Try booting with no APIC and no local APIC support ("boot: linux noapic nolapic").

Q: Why isn't my hardware supported by DebianInstaller, I know there is a Linux driver for it!

A: Some firmwares do not meet the requirements of DFSG (the Debian Free Software Guidelines) and are therefore distributed separately from Debian proper, in the non-free area of our archive: installer iso image file , firmware driver file. See section 2.2 (Devices Requiring Firmware) of the installation guide for detailed instructions.

Q: There seem to be errors reading the CD!

A: First of all, check that the MD5-sum of the ISO file you downloaded is correct; the md5sum for each of the ?ISOs is available in the same directory as the ISO download. After booting the installer you can also check the CD-ROM: use the <go back> button to back up to the main menu and select the option to check the CD-ROM's integrity.

If you are positive that the CD is correct, it could be that the CD-ROM is old and/or flaky when using DMA. You can try disabling DMA for the CD-ROM (by booting with "linux ide=nodma").

You can also disable DMA using the following procedure.

A tightly folded IDE cable can also cause read errors, try repositioning the cable.

Q: How can I install sid (unstable) with DebianInstaller?

A: A very common and reliable method to install sid is first to install stable using a netinst or DVD-1 image and then upgrade to unstable after altering /etc/apt/sources.list to have the single line

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian unstable main

If the sole purpose is to end up with an unstable installation, it is probably best to skip to installing the boot loader after the base files have been installed. This gives a minimal system to work with and saves time.

It is not possible to install sid directly from a netinst or full DVD but it can be done using the mini.iso provided as part of the network boot installation method. Start the installation in expert mode. Mirror selection comes early in the process and you will be asked which distribution to install: stable, testing or unstable.

Q: How do I copy d-i logfiles to a remote host?

A: Use the included mini web server.

  1. Get to the main menu and choose the "Save debug logs" menu item.
  2. Tell it to start up the web server, and follow the prompts to download the logs from the web server to your other computer. You can also use "apt-get install installation-report reportbug; reportbug installation-report" and follow the prompts to let it download the log files for you and produce a nice installation report.

A: Use the mini ssh client to push log files to a different host. See DebianInstaller/AsSshClient.

Q: How do I install via PPPoE?

A: Debian Installer, starting with February 2007, supports installing a system via PPPoE and will configure the system accordingly. At the regular Debian Installer boot line just append modules=ppp-udeb.

e.g.: type "installgui modules=ppp-udeb" to start a graphical installation via PPPoE

Installing via PPPoE is not supported yet for installations done via netboot.

More information in the corresponding chapter in the Installation Guide.

Q: How do I use netinst over PPP?

A: With the netinst CD-ROM image, or a full CD or DVD, you can set up PPP after the system is installed.

PPP configuration is provided by pppconfig. Be aware that so called winmodems are not supported yet!

Q: What do I do if I can no longer boot Windows after installing Debian?

A: If all goes well, DebianInstaller should automatically add a working menu item for an existing Windows installation.

If no menu item was added, please file a detailed installation report. If you are using GRUB as your bootloader, add the following lines at the end of the file /boot/grub/menu.lst:

  title           Windows
  root            (hd0,0)
  savedefault
  makeactive
  chainloader     +1

You should change (hd0,0) to refer to the correct partition: (hd0,0) is Grub's notation for the first partition on the first harddisk (/dev/hda1 or /dev/sda1); (hd1,3) is the fourth partition on the second harddisk (/dev/hdb4). If you are using LILO as your bootloader, add the following lines at the end of the file /etc/lilo.conf:

  other=/dev/hda1
        label=Windows

Again, change /dev/hda1 to refer to your Windows partition. After updating this file, you will need to run 'lilo' as root.

If there is a menu entry, but you get errors when you try to boot Windows There could be different reasons for this. First you should check that the configuration of your bootloader is correct. See above for some pointers.

Q: Can I use d-i as a rescue system? What pitfalls are there?

A: Yes, you can use d-i to mount your hard disks and fix /etc/shadow if you forgot your password.

And you can also use d-i to boot your system to chroot into your installation and execute your boot-loader (grub, lilo, yaboot, ...) if you cannot boot from hard disk any more.

Just boot the installer with "rescue" and follow the prompts until it mounts your hard disk and gives you a shell chrooted into your system.

Alternatively, just boot the installation system as if you were starting a new installation, proceed to the point where you get to partitioning harddisks and stop there. Next, switch to VT2 (using alt-F2) or back out to the menu and start a shell from there. Create a directory /target, manually mount the partition(s) where you installed Debian on /target and execute chroot /target. You cannot use the d-i menu item "install boot-loader" because the menu systems uses dependencies which require a Debian install (on a clean partition...), which you don't want.

Q: How to use preseeding? How to use network console with preseeding?

A: see DebianInstaller/Preseed and DebianInstaller/NetworkConsole

Q: How to shrink an existing Windows installation?

A: Please see the Installation Guide, chapter 6.3.3.3 (Manual Partitioning). Basically, you need to select the item displaying the size of the partition to change the size. Please make sure that you check the partition for correctness before (best with chkdsk), and that you have a backup of your data, and also are able to re-install Windows (or forget about it totally) in case something breaks.

Q: What types of media are available? What versions are available? Where to download?

A: See http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

Q: Your amd64 CD does not boot. I downloaded it from http://someplace/foo/ia64/bar

A: The ia64 architecture is not the same as the amd64 architecture and you downloaded the wrong CD image.

Q: Why is ping not available in the debug shell

Note: as of Wheezy Debian Installer Beta 3, ping is now available.

A: Every utility that is included uses valuable memory, so the installer is as lean as possible and ping is just not essential.

To test connections to other hosts, you can use wget instead:

wget http://hostname

You can tell a lot from the answers wget returns; some examples:

Q: Running the installer from an iso file on a hdd ...

... requires a kernel, such as vmlinuz, and initrd RAM disk, such as initrd.gz. Can the vmlinuz and initrd.gz in the iso file be extracted and used as in many old examples?

A: No. The vmlinuz and initrd.gz in the iso file serve when booting from an optical drive. When an iso file is used directly from a HDD, "hd-media" vmlinuz and initrd.gz are required. For the Debian stable release the files are in the "hd-media" directory.


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