?TableOfContents

Introduction

The custom installer is needed so that the network will work during the install. This allows a full Debian system to be [:DebianEeePC/HowTo/Install:installed] over the network, not just a base system, as would otherwise be possible with the [:DebianEeePC/HowTo/Install:standard installer].

Overview

The exact process for mastering the image linked from ["DebianEeePC/HowTo/Install"] basically followed ["DebianInstaller/Modify/CustomKernel"] to build a Lenny installer. A few extra steps were required to include the atl2 module. The following instructions assume a sid build system. You may wish to prepare a sid chroot to do this.

Automated build

The process documented below under 'Manual build' is automated with the build-eeepc.bash script available at git://git.debian.org/git/debian-eeepc/installer.git [http://git.debian.org/?p=debian-eeepc/installer.git;a=log web], though to make it work in a sid chroot, a few things are missing:

do_symlinks = Yes
do_initrd = Yes

apt-get update ; apt-get install initramfs-tools bc xsltproc

cp build-eeepc-0.3.bash sid/
chroot sid/
mount -t proc proc /proc
mount -t sysfs sys /sys

./build-eeepc-0.3.bash

If all goes well, after a while test/debian-eeepc.img should be created.

Manual build

These instructions will assume a directory structure of: {{{| (base directory) \

}}}

Required packages:

Dealing with kernel-wedge:

Dealing with debian-installer:

Now, in the dest/ directory contains your new monolithic .iso. Two problems are:
 * It doesn't contain the atl2 installer script
 * It isn't a usb image, only a LiveCD

It is quite easy to convert a LiveCD to a USB image, but the atl2 installer script is not as easy to inject. If you have a better way than the way portrayed below, feel free to add it to this page.

Dealing with the atl2 script:

Turning the .iso into an .img

Conclusion

It is a good idea to test the initial boot stages with qemu just to see if it works correctly without any very noticible glitches, then testing it by dd'ing to a usb or sd card.