german translation: http://wiki.skolelinux.de/TestCdHowTo
How to test Debian Edu CDs
There are three steps required to test the debian edu installation.
- Fetch the CD image
- Prepare a test machine
- Do the CD 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 CD versions instead of the entire CD. 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 CD image
There are a few slightly different 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 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.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 CD image, enabling PCI, network and 128 MiB of RAM, and next boot from the virtual hard drive.
qemu-img create virtual-hda 6G qemu -user-net -pci -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 -user-net -pci -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.