6.2. First Stage
The installation of Skolelinux/Debian-edu is divided into two stages, referred to as firststage and secondstage. The first stage starts when the machine boots from the Skolelinux/Debian-edu CD, and ends with the first reboot. The second stage starts when the machine boots from GRUB, and ends when the installation is finished and the machine reboots for all services to properly restart. It's during the second stage that you type the root password.
firststage usually takes about 10 minutes on a relatively fast machine, while secondstage takes a bit more, about 15-45 minutes.
The Different Steps in the First Stage of Installation
Power up your machine, making sure it is able to boot from the CD-ROM. See Section 5.1.
If your machine is able to boot from the CD-ROM, then you will be met by this picture:
There's not that much to do here, at least not under normal circumstances, other than pressing ENTER
Although you might want to investigate the possible different boot-options you can use.
6.2.1. Different bootoptions
Under certain circumstances, it might be useful to know about some of the different bootoptions you can use when installing Skolelinux/Debian-edu.
6.2.1.1. Reduce the amount of visible ram to the installer
The automatic partitioning that is used in Skolelinux/Debian-edu creates a swap-partition equal to 2 times the visible amount of ram, if you have 900MB or more of ram, then that swap-files becomes 1800MB in size. If this in your opinion is a waste of harddrive, then you can use the boot option mem=
Press F1 for help, or Enter to boot: linux mem=256m
6.2.1.2. Use a 2.6-kernel, for better hardware support, especially for SATA-disks
If you have a machine with some very new hardware, you might want to use a 2.6-kernel, which contains more and better hardware support.
Press F1 for help, or Enter to boot: linux26
If you want to combine a 2.6-kernel and reduce the amount of ram, you use
Press F1 for help, or Enter to boot: linux26 mem=256m
If you have SATA-disks in your machine, and boot without a 2.6-kernel, you most likely will end up with the installer not seeing your harddisks, like this:
The solution is to use a 2.6-kernel, and then some, have a look at Section 6.2.4
You might also end up with the dreaded "No disks found" if you have a raidcontroller or scsi-controller that doesn't support Linux in you machine. In such a case, you should search Google for possible answers, in many such cases you solve the problem by manually loading the necessary modules during installation, have a look at Section 6.2.3.
6.2.1.3. Less automatic installation: expert mode
It's possible to choose a less automatic installation, by booting with the option
Press F1 for help, or Enter to boot:expert
If you want to boot in expert mode with a 2.6-kernel, you use
Press F1 for help, or Enter to boot:expert26
 | Note that the keyboard layout at this stage is set to US, which means that the keys might be placed differently than what you are used to. The equal sign (=) key is 1 key to the left of the BACKSPACE, and the plus sign (+) key is SHIFT plus the equal key. The minus key (-) is placed 2 keys to the left of BACKSPACE. The underscore key (_) is SHIFT plus the minus-key. |
6.2.2. Choosing language
Here you must choose the language you want to use during installation. This language will be the pre-selected language for the all users. This doesn't exclude the use of any of the other available and supported languages in Skolelinux/Debian-edu. If you later want to change the default pre-selected language, have a look at the files /etc/environment, /etc/kde3/system.kdeglobals, /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/lts.conf and /etc/X11/XF86Config-4, and the command update-locale-config. The command man update-locale-config will give you more information about this command, and supported languages. The command dpkg-reconfigure locales might also be helpful.[2]
Notice to the right in this screenshot the #-sign. This indicates that there is more text available, but that it's not possible to display all of it in one screen. Use the Arrow UP/DOWN or PageDown and PageUp keys to scroll through the whole text.
At this point in the installation, it's possible to jump to a Virtual Terminal(VT) with the key combination ALT+Arrow LEFT/RIGHT or ALT+F1,F2,F3,F4. On F2 you have a VT where you can edit files during installation.
6.2.3. Virtual terminal VT
Sometimes it's necessary to manually load driver modules during installation in order to get certain hardware working, such as for certain Compaq/HP RAID controllers, cciss and some 3ware controllers, 3w-xxxx. You reach this VT by pressing ALT-F2 And to return to the original screen you use ALT-F1
6.2.5. Information about profiles
As you can see from the slider to the right, there is more text than fits one screen, use the UP/DOWN arrows to scroll down and read the rest.
6.2.6. Manually adjusting the partition size for automatic partitioning
If you know that the partitions that the automatic partitioning tool ,autopartkit,will make are either too small or too big, or you need more or fewer partitions, and you don't want to fiddle with resizing them afterwards, like in Section 8.5.2, then you have to choice of altering the tables that autopartkit uses. This is achieved in a virtual terminal, VT#2 using preferably the editor nano . The files are located in the directory /etc/autopartkit during installation. If you want to change any of these, than you must do so before you choose what profile to install, switch over to VT when you see the screen that describes the different profiles.
The different *.table-files corresponds to different profiles, like this:
Main-Server.table corresponds to the profile Mainserver, see Section 2.2
Workstation+Thin-Client-Server.table corresponds to the profile Thinclient server, see Section 2.3
Workstation.table corresponds to the profile Workstation, see Section 2.5
Main-Server+Workstation.table corresponds to a combination of Mainserver and Workstation, see Section 2.7
Main-Server+Thin-Client-Server.table corresponds to a combination of Mainserver and Thinclient server, see Section 2.7
If you wanted to increase the size of /usr when installing the profile Mainserver, you would in VT2 write nano /etc/autopartkit/Main-Server.table there you will see the line
/usr lvm:vg_system:lv_usr:default 448 4096meaning that the partition /usr will be minimum 448MB big, and maximum 4096MB big (if the overall harddisk size allows this). If you want /usr to be 8000MB big, then you would edit the line to look like this
/usr lvm:vg_system:lv_usr:default 448 8000
If you would like to have a backup-partition on a machine installed with the profile Workstation, maybe when you have setup a simple backup-machine, like described in Section 9.4, then you would in VT2 write nano /etc/autopartkit/Workstation.table and add this line
/backup lvm:vg_system:lv_backup:default 10000 20000that would create a backup-partition withe min/max-size of 10000MB/20000MB
 | You can of course add/delete, and change this later as you wish have a look at Section 8.5 |
6.2.7. The Various Profiles in Skolelinux/Debian-edu
Have a look at Section 5.2 for a short description of the various profiles.
Have a look at the sidebar Keyboard Layout for a brief explanation of the different keyboard keys used during installation.
You choose the profiles you want to install by placing a mark in front of the desired profile by using the SPACEBAR to place the mark. To navigate between the different fields, you use TAB, and when you are done, move to OK and install by pressing ENTER.
If your hard drive is not recognised, then you may need to manually load the driver module for your hard drive, SCSI-controller or your RAID-controller; do this in VT#2, see Section 6.2.3
As mentioned in Section 2.7 it is fully possible to combine different profiles, in this case the machine will be installed with Main-server and Thinclientserver.
After you have chosen which profile to install, the necessary packages are installed. Hopefully, you have only chosen hardware that works out-of-the-box with Skolelinux/Debian-edu.
 | Everything you have on your hard drives will be deleted when installing Skolelinux/Debian-edu- don't try to avoid it. Skolelinux/Debian-edu will not easily co-exist together with any other operative system.[3] |
To continue with the installation, you must choose Yes.
6.2.8. Installation complete
Make sure that the CD is not in the CD-ROM when you restart the machine. If you forget to remove it, the installation will start all over again.