[NTLUG:Discuss] debian quickstart guide?

[Rick Cook]

On Friday 24 December 2004 16:47, Rick Cook wrote:
> On Friday 24 December 2004 15:49, Kevin Brannen wrote:
> > OK, I've got VMware, some extra disk space; I think I want to expand
> > my experience with Debian.  But I can't seem to find a quickstart
> > guide anywhere.  Does anyone have a link to such?
> >
> > I downloaded the "mini-install" CD for "woody" think I could boot
> > with that to get a minimal install.  No go, it won't
>
> The testing (sarge) branch of Debian is getting close to release. It's
> installer is much easier to use than the one included with woody. I
> suggest you grab the rc2 netinstall image from=>
>
> boot.http://cdimage.debian.org/pub/cdimage-testing/sarge_d-i/i386/rc2/s
>arge-i386-netinst.iso

Obviously, leave the "boot." off of the above.

Another thing you can do to "experience Debian" if you don't care about 
the whole installer experience is to set up a Debian system in a chroot 
environment. You will need to grab the "debootstrap" tool from a Debian 
site and make it from source. Download the tar.gz from a Debian mirror 
and do the normal 

./configure --prefix=<whatever_you_want> ; make; make install

process. When you have debootstrap available, =>

debootstrap enables user to set up a clean system into a directory inside 
your running system. Then chroot can be used to change completely into 
the root of this system (making the subdirectory containing the newly set 
up system the current root-directory).

as root:

mkdir <some_path>

debootstrap sarge <some_path>

chroot <some_path>
base-config

install necessary/desired packages through tasksel ("apt-get install 
tasksel" will install it if it is not already available).


One caveat, I have done this several times from a Debian system to set up 
a "clean environment" for building packages for a specific Debian 
version. I have never done it from a non-Debian installation. I also 
don't know how well X will work in this environment (I have never tried).


Good Luck,

Rick