?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 using cdebootstrap or debootstrap so that your build system will not be 'tainted' by the installation of the kernel for the custom installer.

Automated build

The process documented below under 'Manual build' is automated with the build-eeepc.sh 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

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

Temporary note

At the moment we have to do some inbuild hacking on netcfg, so we need a source line in our chroots source.list. Also, at this stage, (untill modules become available) you need to build madwifi-eeepc-source for the 486 kernel as its needed during kernel-wedge build.

* and build:

./build-eeepc.sh

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

Manual build

Note: The installer is still in a state of flux, the manual build instructions are currently incorrect, but will be updated soon

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.