This section explains how to install Debian GNU/Linux from an existingUnix or Linux system, without using the menu-driven installer asexplained in the rest of the manual. This “cross-install”HOWTO has been requested by users switching to Debian GNU/Linux fromRed Hat, Mandriva, and SUSE. In this section some familiarity withentering *nix commands and navigating the file system is assumed. Inthis section, $ symbolizes a command to be entered inthe user's current system, while # refers to acommand entered in the Debian chroot.
Once you've got the new Debian system configured to your preference,you can migrate your existing user data (if any) to it, and keep onrolling. This is therefore a “zero downtime” Debian GNU/Linuxinstall. It's also a clever way for dealing with hardware thatotherwise doesn't play friendly with various boot or installationmedia.
Note
As this is a mostly manual procedure, you should bear in mind that youwill need to do a lot of basic configuration of the system yourself,which will also require more knowledge of Debian and of Linux in generalthan performing a regular installation. You cannot expect this procedureto result in a system that is identical to a system from a regularinstallation. You should also keep in mind that this procedure onlygives the basic steps to set up a system. Additional installation and/orconfiguration steps may be needed.
With your current *nix partitioning tools, repartition the harddrive as needed, creating at least one filesystem plus swap. Youneed around 432MB of space available for a console only install,or about 1521MB if you plan to install X (more if you intend toinstall desktop environments like GNOME or KDE).
Next, create file systems on the partitions. For example, to create anext3 file system on partition /dev/hda6 (that'sour example root partition):
# mke2fs -j /dev/hda6To create an ext2 file system instead, omit -j.
Initialize and activate swap (substitute the partition number foryour intended Debian swap partition):
# mkswap /dev/hda5# sync# swapon /dev/hda5
Mount one partition as /mnt/debinst (theinstallation point, to be the root (/) filesystemon your new system). The mount point name is strictly arbitrary, it isreferenced later below.
# mkdir /mnt/debinst# mount /dev/hda6 /mnt/debinstNote
If you want to have parts of the filesystem (e.g. /usr) mounted onseparate partitions, you will need to create and mount these directoriesmanually before proceding with the next stage.
The utility used by the Debian installer, and recognized as theofficial way to install a Debian base system, isdebootstrap. It uses wget andar, but otherwise depends only on/bin/sh and basic Unix/Linux tools[22]. Install wget andar if they aren't already on your current system,then download and install debootstrap.
Or, you can use the following procedure to install itmanually. Make a work folder for extracting the .deb into:
# mkdir work# cd work
The debootstrap binary is located in the Debianarchive (be sure to select the proper file for yourarchitecture). Download the debootstrap .deb fromthe pool, copy the package to the work folder, and extract thefiles from it. You will need to have root privileges to installthe files.
# ar -x debootstrap_0.X.X_all.deb# cd /# zcat /full-path-to-work/work/data.tar.gz | tar xv
debootstrap can download the needed files directlyfrom the archive when you run it. You can substitute any Debianarchive mirror for http.us.debian.org/debian inthe command example below, preferably a mirror close to younetwork-wise. Mirrors are listed athttp://www.debian.org/mirror/list.
If you have a wheezy Debian GNU/Linux CD mounted at/cdrom, you could substitute a file URL insteadof the http URL: file:/cdrom/debian/
Substitute one of the following for ARCHin the debootstrap command:amd64,armel,armhf,i386,ia64,mips,mipsel,powerpc,s390,s390x, orsparc.
# /usr/sbin/debootstrap --arch ARCH wheezy \ /mnt/debinst http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian
Now you've got a real Debian system, though rather lean, on disk.chroot into it:
# LANG=C.UTF-8 chroot /mnt/debinst /bin/bash
After chrooting you may need to set the terminal definition to becompatible with the Debian base system, for example:
# export TERM=xterm-colorDepending on the value of TERM, you may have to install thencurses-term package to get support for it.
At this point /dev/ only contains very basic devicefiles. For the next steps of the installation additional device files maybe needed. There are different ways to go about this and which method youshould use depends on the host system you are using for the installation,on whether you intend to use a modular kernel or not, and on whether youintend to use dynamic (e.g. using udev) or staticdevice files for the new system.
A few of the available options are:
install the makedev package, and create a default set of static device filesusing (after chrooting)
# apt-get install makedev# mount none /proc -t proc# cd /dev# MAKEDEV generic
manually create only specific device files using MAKEDEV
bind mount /dev from your host system on top of /dev in the target system;note that the postinst scripts of some packages may try to create devicefiles, so this option should only be used with care
You need to create /etc/fstab.
# editor /etc/fstab
Here is a sample you can modify to suit:
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.## file system mount point type options dump pass/dev/XXX / ext3 defaults 0 1/dev/XXX /boot ext3 ro,nosuid,nodev 0 2/dev/XXX none swap sw 0 0proc /proc proc defaults 0 0/dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto noauto,rw,sync,user,exec 0 0/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom iso9660 noauto,ro,user,exec 0 0/dev/XXX /tmp ext3 rw,nosuid,nodev 0 2/dev/XXX /var ext3 rw,nosuid,nodev 0 2/dev/XXX /usr ext3 rw,nodev 0 2/dev/XXX /home ext3 rw,nosuid,nodev 0 2
Use mount -a to mount all the file systems youhave specified in your /etc/fstab, or, to mountfile systems individually, use:
# mount /path # e.g.: mount /usr
Current Debian systems have mountpoints for removable media under/media, but keep compatibility symlinks in/. Create these as as needed, for example:
# cd /media# mkdir cdrom0# ln -s cdrom0 cdrom# cd /# ln -s media/cdrom
You can mount the proc file system multiple times and to arbitrarylocations, though /proc is customary. If you didn't usemount -a, be sure to mount proc before continuing:
# mount -t proc proc /proc
The command ls /proc should now show a non-emptydirectory. Should this fail, you may be able to mount proc from outsidethe chroot:
# mount -t proc proc /mnt/debinst/proc
Setting the third line of the file /etc/adjtime to “UTC” or “LOCAL” determineswhether the system will interpret the hardware clock as being set to UTCrespective local time. The following command allows you to set that.
# editor /etc/adjtime
Here is a sample:
0.0 0 0.00UTC
The following command allows you to choose your timezone.
# dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
To configure networking, edit/etc/network/interfaces,/etc/resolv.conf,/etc/hostname and/etc/hosts.
# editor /etc/network/interfaces
Here are some simple examples from/usr/share/doc/ifupdown/examples:
####################################################################### /etc/network/interfaces -- configuration file for ifup(8), ifdown(8)# See the interfaces(5) manpage for information on what options are# available.####################################################################### We always want the loopback interface.#auto loiface lo inet loopback# To use dhcp:## auto eth0# iface eth0 inet dhcp# An example static IP setup: (broadcast and gateway are optional)## auto eth0# iface eth0 inet static# address 192.168.0.42# network 192.168.0.0# netmask 255.255.255.0# broadcast 192.168.0.255# gateway 192.168.0.1
Enter your nameserver(s) and search directives in/etc/resolv.conf:
# editor /etc/resolv.conf
A simple example /etc/resolv.conf:
search hqdom.localnameserver 10.1.1.36nameserver 192.168.9.100
Enter your system's host name (2 to 63 characters):
# echo DebianHostName > /etc/hostname
And a basic /etc/hosts with IPv6 support:
127.0.0.1 localhost127.0.1.1 DebianHostName# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts::1 ip6-localhost ip6-loopbackfe00::0 ip6-localnetff00::0 ip6-mcastprefixff02::1 ip6-allnodesff02::2 ip6-allroutersff02::3 ip6-allhosts
If you have multiple network cards, you should arrange the names ofdriver modules in the /etc/modules file into thedesired order. Then during boot, each card will be associated with theinterface name (eth0, eth1, etc.) that you expect.
Debootstrap will have created a very basic/etc/apt/sources.list that will allow installingadditional packages. However, you may want to add some additional sources,for example for source packages and security updates:
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian wheezy maindeb http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates maindeb-src http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main
Make sure to run aptitude update after you havemade changes to the sources list.
To configure your locale settings to use a language other thanEnglish, install the locales support packageand configure it. Currently the use of UTF-8 locales is recommended.
# aptitude install locales# dpkg-reconfigure locales
To configure your keyboard (if needed):
# aptitude install console-setup# dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration
Note that the keyboard cannot be set while in the chroot, but will beconfigured for the next reboot.
If you intend to boot this system, you probably want a Linux kerneland a boot loader. Identify available pre-packaged kernels with:
# apt-cache search linux-image
Then install the kernel package of your choice using its package name.
# aptitude install linux-image-arch-etcTo make your Debian GNU/Linux system bootable, set up your boot loader to loadthe installed kernel with your new root partition. Note thatdebootstrap does not install a boot loader, though youcan use aptitude inside your Debian chroot to do so.
Note that this assumes that a /dev/hda device file hasbeen created. There are alternative methods to install grub2,but those are outside the scope of this appendix.
In case you can login to the system via console, you can skip this section. Ifthe system should be accessible via the network later on, you need to installSSH and set a password for root:
# aptitude install ssh# passwd
As mentioned earlier, the installed system will be very basic. If youwould like to make the system a bit more mature, there is an easy methodto install all packages with “standard” priority:
# tasksel install standard
Of course, you can also just use aptitude to installpackages individually.
After the installation there will be a lot of downloaded packages in/var/cache/apt/archives/. You can free up somediskspace by running:
# aptitude clean
[22] These include the GNU core utilities and commands like sed, grep, tar and gzip.
FAQs
How to install GNU make on Debian? ›
How to Download / Install GNU Make. If you're on Linux, the make program is probably already installed. If not, you can install it with the following commands: Debian/Ubuntu – apt install make.
Is Debian GNU Linux good? ›Bug-Free: Debian's standard version is highly reliable since it rigorously tests software and libraries. Because of its dependability, Debian Stable is an ideal server operating system. This is one of the grounds why many developers utilize Debian as the foundation for their derivative distributions, like Ubuntu.
How to install Debian file in Linux terminal? ›- Install gdebi tool and then open and install the . deb file using it.
- Use dpkg and apt-get command line tools as follows: sudo dpkg -i /absolute/path/to/deb/file sudo apt-get install -f.
You can install a downloaded Debian package using dpkg in a terminal: dpkg -i *. deb (where *. deb is the path and name of the package you downloaded).
How to make a bootable USB for Debian? ›- Step 1: Download Debian Linux ISO File. ...
- Step 2: Download Rufus Flashing tool. ...
- Step 3: Flash Debian Linux ISO to USB Flash Drive. ...
- Step 4: Set and Boot from bootable Flash Drive. ...
- Step 5: Install Debian Linux.
Debian is one of the oldest and most popular Linux distributions, but it has a reputation as being for more technical people. In reality, Debian is easy to install as long as you go through the installation program carefully.
How to install GnuPG on Debian 11? ›The most common way would be to use apt-get . First, you have to update the apt database using the update command. After you have updated the database on your system, you can install gnupg via the install command.
Can you try Debian without installing? ›You can try Debian by booting a live system from a CD, DVD or USB key without installing any files to the computer. When you are ready, you can run the included installer (starting from Debian 10 Buster, this is the end-user-friendly Calamares Installer).
What is Debian GNU Linux used for? ›Debian offers over 59,000 packages that support a wide range of capabilities. For example, Debian provides packages for editing documents, developing software, administering systems, connecting to networks, debugging packages, mixing sound, routing email and playing games.
Why do people use Debian? ›Most users appreciate the stability, and the smooth upgrade processes of both packages and the entire distribution. Debian is also widely used by software and hardware developers because it runs on numerous architectures and devices, offers a public bug tracker and other tools for developers.
Is Debian and GNU Linux the same thing? ›
Debian (/ˈdɛbiən/), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993.
How to install makefile on Linux? ›- Read the README file and other applicable docs.
- Run xmkmf -a, or the INSTALL or configure script.
- Check the Makefile .
- If necessary, run make clean, make Makefiles, make includes, and make depend.
- Run make.
- Check file permissions.
- If necessary, run make install.
To install composer globally, use the following command to download and install Composer as a system-wide command named composer under /usr/local/bin : sudo php composer-setup. php --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer.
How to install Google fonts on Debian? ›- mkdir ~/.fonts. Unzip the contents of the downloaded file (approx. ...
- cd ~/.fonts; unzip ~/Downloads/master.zip. Regenerate the font cache command:
- sudo fc-cache -fv.