Installation

Where to find additional information

We recommend to read or at least take a look at the release notes for Debian Lenny before you start installing a system for production use. If you just want to give Debian Edu/Skolelinux a try, you don't have to though, it should just work :-)

Even more information about the Debian Lenny release is available in its installation manual.

Download an installation media for Debian Edu 5.0.3+edu0 Codename "Lenny"

DVDs for i386, amd64 and powerpc

The multiarch dvd ISO image is 4.4 GiB large. To download it, use either of these methods:

or for the netinstall cd you can download

The powerpc port has not been tested as much as the other architectures, though it should work just fine and has been reported to work. Still, we consider the port an experimental release of Debian Edu, which we might not be able to support as the other archs.

FIXME: The source code for this release is not available now. The fix is to build a source DVD.

Request a CD/DVD by mail

For those without a fast internet connection, we offer to send you a CD or DVD for the cost of the CD or DVD and shipping. Just send an email to cd@skolelinux.no and we will discuss the payment details (for shipping and media) :) Remember to include the address you want the CD or DVD to be sent to in the email.

Installation options explained

When you do an Debian Edu installation you have a few options to choose. But don't be afraid, there aren't many. We have done a good job hiding the complexity of Debian during the installation and beyond. However, Debian Edu is Debian, and if you want there are more than 15000 packages to choose from and a billion configuration options. But for the majority of our users, our defaults should be fine.

A note on manual partitioning

If you decide to do manual partitioning for the main-server, you need to make sure that the directory /skole/tjener/home0 exists, probably by mounting a partition there. If you don't create that directory you will only be able to login as root. The reason is that the user creation system require this directory to exist to be able to create users home directories, and without a users home directory the user can not log in.

A note on notebooks

In principal it makes sense to either install notebooks with the workstation or with the standalone profile. But keep in mind, that the workstation profile uses LDAP for the user accounts and NFS for the home directories, so those workstations will only work while in the network where they can access the server. If you plan to use your laptop at home or on the road, choose the standalone profile.

It is possible to reconfigure workstations to cache authentication information and sync the home directories to local disk (and resync to the server when in the network) with unison, but there is currently no howto available for this.

A note on DVD installs

If you install from a DVD /etc/apt/sources.list will only contain sources from the DVD. If you have an internet connection we strongly suggest to add the following lines to it, so that available (security) updates can be installed:

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ lenny main 
deb http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main 
deb http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux lenny local

A note on CD installs

The netinst installation (which is the type of installation our CD provides) will fetch some packages from the CD and the rest from the net. The amount of packages fetched from the net varies from profile to profile:

Custom CD/DVDs

Creating custom CDs or DVDs is quite easily possible, since we use the debian installer, which has a modular design and other nice features. Preseeding allows to define answers to the questions normally asked.

So all you need to do is to create a preseeding file with your answers (this is described in the appendix of the debian installer manual) and remaster the CD/DVD.

Installation over the network (PXE)

FIXME: describe PXE installation here, if its only two sentences, then they should be here.

PXE installation requieres tjener, the main server, to be installed and set up.

The PXE installation is using a debian-installer preseed file, and this file can be modified to ask for more packages to install.

The line like the following needs to be added to tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/debian-edu-install.dat 

  d-i    pkgsel/include string my-extra-package(s)

Screenshot tour

Here is a screenshot tour through a main-server + thin-client-server installation:

debian-edu-lenny-01-bootoption.png

debian-edu-lenny-02-language.png

debian-edu-lenny-03-location.png

debian-edu-lenny-04-keymap.png

debian-edu-lenny-05-timezone.png

debian-edu-lenny-06-profile.png

debian-edu-lenny-07-partitioning.png

debian-edu-lenny-08-popcon.png

debian-edu-lenny-09-rootpw.png

debian-edu-lenny-10-basesystem.png

debian-edu-lenny-11-software.png

debian-edu-lenny-12-finish.png

debian-edu-lenny-13-grub.png

debian-edu-lenny-14-splash.png

debian-edu-lenny-15-kdm.png

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