german translation: http://wiki.skolelinux.de/TestCdHowTo

How to test Debian Edu CD/DVDs

There are three steps required to test the debian edu installation.

The first step can be done using HTTP, FTP or rsync. For repeated testing it is best to use rsync, as it will only transfer the changes between DVD versions instead of the entire DVD. The second step can either be done using a real machine, or in a virtual machine like qemu or vmware, and the last step is fairly straight forward.

Fetching the DVD image

There are a few slightly different DVD/CD images being generated, the sarge and etch images are the ones indented for new releases, and the sarge-test and etch-test images are the ones with new packages to be tested before they are move into the DVD/CDs indended for a new release.

In these examples I use etch-test as the sample image. Replace that string with sarge, sarge-test or etch if you want to use another image like ["?DebianEdu/SkoleLiveCd"].

Using rsync

rsync -vt ftp.skolelinux.no::skolelinux-etch-test-dvd/debian-edu-i386-DVD-1.iso debian-edu-i386-DVD-1.iso

Using HTTP and FTP

wget http://ftp.skolelinux.org/cd-etch-test-dvd/debian-edu-i386-DVD-1.iso
ncftp ftp ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/cd-etch-test-dvd/debian-edu-i386-DVD-1.iso

Prepare a test machine

Preparing and booting a qemu machine

First, install a few extra packages, then create a 6 GiB virtual disk used to install into. This part need to run as root. The kqemu part is to speed up the qemu execution.

aptitude install qemu
aptitude install kqemu-source kqemu-common
module-assistant prepare
module-assistant build kqemu-source
module-assistant install kqemu-source

modprobe kqemu && echo kqemu >> /etc/modules
qemu-img create virtual-hda 6G

Finally start the qemu instance first booting from the DVD image, enabling PCI, network and 128 MiB of RAM, and next boot from the virtual hard drive.

qemu-img create virtual-hda 6G
qemu -m 128 -boot d -cdrom debian-edu-i386-DVD-1.iso -hda virtual-hda

Doing the installation

This should be fairly straight forward. Note that a full disk on the machine hosting qemu will appear as failing hardware (broken disk) in qemu.

To enable manual partitioning and the barebone profile option, boot using "linux debian-edu-expert" on the first prompt. To get full manual control over the installation, boot using "expert" on the first prompt.

Running the Machine

After you compleate the installation, the machine reboots. But to do this in qemu you basicaly run qemu again using a different boot device.

qemu -m 128 -boot c -cdrom debian-edu-i386-DVD-1.iso -hda virtual-hda

Don't forget to write [:DebianEdu/HowTo/BugReports: bugs] about new issues you discover.