On Mon, 18 Jun 2001, Nicolas Parody wrote: > Hi, > > My co-located server at my provider runs, and only supports Red Hat but > I would like to switch to Debian. Is it possible to install Debian on > this system without physical access (The server is in Texas and I am in > Germany)? Has anyone already done this and what is your experience? Or > should I just stick with Red Hat to save me the hassle? > I am afraid that would be difficult, because of the first stage install. You could try to install Debian at home, configure everything as if it runs on the server. You do not need to select all the packages you want to install now, just the bare basics. Then zip the root tree, copy it to the server, move the old server root to /old (for example), unzip the archive you made at home and reboot.
If everything went well, you should be able to contact the server. Then you can run 'tasksel' or 'dselect' to install additional packages (or just run apt-get install ....). So, if everything is tuned well, you can do it, if not, you have to buy a ticket. You do not have to configure all the device drivers. Just make sure your networking is ok and ssh is installed. And also do not forget to run lilo before you reboot. Good luck, Sebastiaan
