Debian Installer RC1 Is Out

rekt writes "The Debian crew has just announced the release of debian-installer RC1. You can find versions of it for 11 different architectures at the d-i page. This is one of the most flexible, modular installer architectures out there. As we near the release of sarge (debian 3.1) next month, it's important that we find and work out any bugs in the installer. Grab a copy and give it a shot!"

Full RC1 torrents.

[eddy]

.. available at suprnova.org.

Debian 3.1 (Sarge) Release Candidate 1 - CD 1 of 12 [66.90.75.92] ...

Security Support for Sarge

[arturogatti]

Security support for sarge is scheduled to begin today [debian.org]. Woody users may want to consider upgrading to sarge now, testing the upgrade path, and help out with reporting/fixing any bugs they encounter.

Only the hash needs to be official

[Anonymous Coward]

Only the md5sum needs to be hosted somewhere official.

Debian documents are improved

[vivekg]

Yes, it looks like documents are new and improved. http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/ [debian.org]

Re:Full RC1 torrents.

[eddy]

The question of checking the signature after download not withstanding, if you check the torrent you'll see that the tracker is... cdimage.debian.org.

It's up to you to decide if that's "official enough".

Screenshots

[adun]

http://people.debian.org/~madduck/d-i/screenshots/ [debian.org]

Because I love all of you.

Re:Screenshots

[GammaTau]

It's not based on Progeny Anaconda. It has been written from scratch.

Some screenshots are available at http://people.debian.org/~madduck/d-i/screenshots/ [debian.org]

Re:screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

AIUI the installer is still text-based and looks pretty much like the old boot-floppies, but this time with good hardware detection, aptitude instead of dselect , and streamlined to minimize the number of questions.

However, the installer is very modular and it should be possible to write a graphical front-end. In fact, a prototype exists, but I'm pretty sure it won't be used for the release.

Re:Screenshots

[utopist]

No it is not based on anaconda.
Screenshots [debian.org]

Re:screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC the author of the GTK installer lost much of the interest in it, because the framework wouldn't allow him to make a true graphical interface over the Debian installer.

Instead, all he could do was mapping every widget to its GTK counterpart, which then would make not much difference from the text-based installer. This way it is not possible to include, for example, a GTK partitioner app really integrated to the framework.

I think many people was looking forward for the graphical installer...

pppoeconf

[sewagemaster]

I've used the nightly builds (>beta4) about 6 times for installations on seperate occations within the last 2 weeks. Everything works much better than previous versions. No problems when it tried to probe my DHCP internet account. I'm now back at school where my pppoe which isn't DHCP based and obviously it failed detection.

Thankfully the pppoeconf package is unpacked before the initial reboot and is available after the bootstrap. Ran pppoeconf and got my connection. Still, though, I had to do this via virtual console. For the first-time debian user, they may not know pppoeconf as the name to get around this and will be stuck unable to do any sort of net-install.

Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you want the non-i386 archs it's probably a couple more. Here's the rest of the i386 set:

Debian 3.1RC1 (Sarge), CD 2 of 12 [66.90.75.92].
Debian 3.1RC1 (Sarge), CD 3 of 12 [66.90.75.92].
Debian 3.1RC1 (Sarge), CD 4 of 12 [66.90.75.92].
Debian 3.1RC1 (Sarge), CD 5 of 12 [66.90.75.92].
Debian 3.1RC1 (Sarge), CD 6 of 12 [66.90.75.92].
Debian 3.1RC1 (Sarge), CD 7 of 12 [66.90.75.92].
Debian 3.1RC1 (Sarge), CD 8 of 12 [66.90.75.92].
Debian 3.1RC1 (Sarge), CD 9 of 12 [66.90.75.92].
Debian 3.1RC1 (Sarge), CD 10 of 12 [66.90.75.92].
Debian 3.1RC1 (Sarge), CD 11 of 12 [66.90.75.92].
Debian 3.1RC1 (Sarge), CD 12 of 12 [66.90.75.92].

Re:good stuff, cd sets?

[reynaert]

Debian maintains a list of cd-vendors [debian.org]. Probably far from complete, but better than nothing.

Re:Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

What?! That's it?!

Those screenshots may just as well have come from the installer with Woody that I've used umpteen billion times. I don't see any different in this "new installer" over the old one. When I hear "GUI" I think "point and click windows/mac style installation". This is just the same curses/ANSI/whatever installer it's always had.

I love debian and I don't see what the big deal is with installing it as it always has been (it's by far the simplest linux distro to install and more straight forward, too) - but ever since I started hearing about this great new graphical debian installer, I've been envisioning something red-hat-ish or something.

*shrug*. *yawn*

The new Debian installer has automatic hardware detection, an improved partitioner (automatic "wipe the drive and do it for me", or manual with options like non-destructive resizing), and as of several months ago, gets you an installed Debian system in 11 keystrokes, 10 of which are Enter [kitenet.net]. It's also incredibly modular (based on installing miniature Debian packages), making it far easier to maintain and to extend.

Install is a breeze

[SST-206]

Anyone who still thinks that Debian is hard to install, please think again [thiesen.org]

A big up to Debian developers everywhere!

Re:Yes.

[reynaert]

For the people not familiar with Debian, in the official release, the CD's will be organised so that the most popular packages will be placed on the first CD's, so you don't have to download all of them.

If you're using Debian now and want to help decide what's popular, please install Popularity Contest [debian.org].

History of the Installer

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the summary of the debian-installer from one of the main developers...

Joey Hess blog entry: http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/d-i_retrospect ive-2004-08-07-19-46.html [kitenet.net]

//fatal

Re:Security Support for Sarge

[Mr.Ned]

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2004 /08/msg00003.html

It's now scheduled to start on the 12th.

Re:Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh please, modern my ass!

That installer can't even set up DSL that uses PPPoE.

PPPoE is only used by all the baby bells you know the largest DSL providers in America and it's also used by major providers in Canada and EU, but the Debian developers said ti was too niche to bother to support so now when you install you gotta spend an hour screwing around tyring to fix PPPoE which is a pain in the aass if you got no internet to read howtos and fine manuals.

I now debian prides itself on being a 90s throwback but you really need to be able to support DSL out of the box...

just go directly to cdimage.debian.org

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no need to use suprnova. You can get the .torrent files from the offical site [debian.org]

Re:Debian woes

[killjoe]

Exe? Just Exe? The proper regexp is more like.

(lnk|asd|hlp|ocx|reg|bat|c[ho]m|cmd|exe|dll|vxd| pi f|scr|hta|jse?|sh[mbs]|vb[esx]|ws[fh]|wmf)

Re:Screenshots

[Daniel]

I used an older build to install a system the other day, and I hardly even had to hit the Enter key. (ok, the system didn't work once it was set up, but that turned out to be my fault, not the installer's :) )

If you scan through some of those screens, you'll discover that the reason there are so many is that you can take branches in the installer: for instance, if you choose to set up RAID, you get a bunch of screens about the RAID configuration; if the network can't be set up via DHCP, you get screens about setting up the network. A fair number of the screenshots are also screenshots of progress bars, which are noninteractive. (and a huge improvement over the old installer, where you just watched a message like "Setting up the base system..." while the hard drive churned)

Daniel

Re:Screenshots

[Afrosheen]

Mandrake still embraces both styles, you can use a text-based installer with prompts like the old school Redhat installer if you want, it's a commandline switch at boot time. Best of both worlds, or a work around for wacky video hardware.

No gap here.

Re:Isn't it time...

[davegaramond]

Yes, yes, parent is a troll. But...

Debian (stable) is geared towards server, the whole Gentoo thing is geared towards desktop or experimental.

Debian has always had the philosophy of free distribution and legal safety, I've seen none of this in Gentoo. I love the Debian philosophy.

Debian is a mature distribution with a strict QA, I still don't believe Gentoo has a decent QA "department" at all.

None of the datacenters/dedicated servers facility that I know offer Gentoo, for each one you mention supporting Gentoo, I can name 25 supporting Debian.

Gentoo has bleeding edge stuffs, that's why I don't want it.

Debian has complete support forum (debianplanet), a portal (debianplanet), ten times the number of mailing lists than Gentoo, local user groups, not to mention SEVERAL newsletters with real content.

Debian has Knoppix, etc based on it.

Debian has at least twice the number of worldwide mirrors compared to Gentoo;

As for "versions", you can upgrade from between Debian versions pretty much seamlessly.

Re:Which discs?

[jrschulz]

Anyone know which discs are needed for what installation you might want?

For a normal installation you only need to get the first two or three discs. If you have a fairly fast internet connection, you can even go with the netinst image [debian.org]. This installs a base system, reboots, and then you can get every package you want from a local mirror.

j.

Re:Screenshots

[zerblat]

Um, in what way are they the same? They're both curses based, but in what way do pretty graphics make inte easier to install an OS?

There are many alternative ways [linuxmafia.com] to install Debian, if the default one doesn't suit your needs. Debian needs an installer that is flexible, powerful and portable in order to be usable by all the diverse users of Debian, not to mention the dozen or so different architectures Debian runs on.

Of course, the Debian developers could have delayed the next release a year or so in order to get a pretty graphical installer working on some platforms. I guess their priorities are different.

debian-installer retrospective.

[Anonymous Coward]

Joey Hess has written up a
retrospective [kitenet.net] on the new installer. It's a good read.

Re:At least!

[thinkninja]

people.debian.org/~taggart/multiarch [debian.org]

They have a plan, at least.

Anthony Towns was the RM, not Joey Hess [nt]

[Anonymous Coward]

[nt]

GUI Installer

[nurb432]

Nope, its still console based ( i asked this last time this came up around here.. )

But, if you are running a i386, you can goto progeny.com and get a sarge+anaconda installer set..

That said, the 'new' debian installer isnt bad for someone that knows what they are doing, the main target for stock Debian anyway...

Re:From my experience as a alpha/beta tester...

[joey]

In fact I am reading this and you seem to be seriously confused. I've not quit anything.

Re:Interesting.. :)

[rvega]

How about a version of dd for Windows? There appears to be a standalone version here [swin.edu.au] (including some usage examples), or you can install Cygwin [cygwin.com].

Re:Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

What ignorance! The Debian Installer was built from the ground up, designed to be modular so that people could add a GUI later. No-one from Debian has suggested that the new DI would actually have a GUI this time around. Instead they have worked on hardware detection and a decent installation. The idea was because Debian is installed on 11 architectures that a GUI installer might not work on all arches. A GUI one can be made for i386 later.

BTW, Windows XP still has a crappy text-based partitioner and installer. So why do people give Debian a hard time?

Re:Screenshots

[pnot]

When are they getting with the times and making a decent graphical installer?

From http://wiki.debian.net/?DebianInstallerFAQ [debian.net]:

Question 5: Is the DebianInstaller [debian.net] going to be graphical in nature? / Is there any prebuilt/downloadable graphical DebianInstaller [debian.net]?

Answer: The DebianInstaller [debian.net] will not be graphical by nature, but modularity is a key in its design. It would allow the use of different kinds of frontends, including those of a graphical nature.

There is a project underway to create a GTK frontend to the installer. For more information on the current status of this frontend see here [debian.org]. Unfortunately the project hasn't seen much activity lately.

My results...

[CptnHarlock]

I succeded in transfering the filesystem to the USB drive from windows but my comp seems to be unwilling to boot from the USB device. Try what I did and maybe your comp will react better.

This is what I did...

1 Get the dd [swin.edu.au] utility from here. Unzip it and put it into your c:\winnt directory (unless you want to mess with env. variables [PATH]).

2. Get the boot.img.gz [ucsc.edu] image from here. For some unexplainable reason Windows unpacked it for me to its real size (ca 123 Mb). Maybe because I have winrar installed? Maybe not. Winrar should be able to unpack it anyway.

3. Get the bootbf2_4-xfs_iso.zip [debian.org] and read this [debian.org] to be able to unpack it. I like this ISO because it the kernel has XFS support. Choose any other you prefer.

4. Start a cmd.exe and use "dd --list" to see your devices so that dd can use them. (dd is used to copy raw data). My usb device was I: and in the listin I could read:

\\.\Volume{45e7b0b0-e981-11d8-be69-00a0c9ca4794}\
Mounted on i:\

5. After finding your USB device in the list dd the boot.img to the device:

dd boot.img.gz \\.\Volume{45e7b0b0-e981-11d8-be69-00a0c9ca4794}\

6. If that worked copy the unpacked bootbf2.4-xfs.iso file to your USBs root directory.

7. Reboot the comp and enter the BIOS setup. Set it to boot from your USB (or USB-ZIP) device.

The filesystem on my friends USB drive is fine and I can mount it from windows and Linux. The filesystem si 128Mb big and the device is 256 so it seemd to have worked fine (since the iso was supposed to have a 128Mb fs). I have one comp that is supposed to be bootable from USB but the USB device (mp3-player) itself seems to not react untill the OS is up. maybe that's why it won't boot? I hope. Hope you have better luck!.. :)

Cheers...

Re:Yes.

[MarsDefenseMinister]

All you need is the first one. Install the most minimal system that you can, connect to the net, and install the rest of the packages from there. The minimal system is just a couple dozen megabytes at the most.