On Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 09:31:22AM -0600, Gary Hennigan wrote: > I've got a few new Dell systems that I'd like to install Debian > on. They're pretty generic systems, e.g, AIC-7892 SCSI, 2 SCSI disks, > IDE CD/RW, etc., but they are dual processor and so I want a 2.4.x > kernel installed and thought I'd jump right in with the "testing" > distribution. I've been running it at home and on my laptop without > any trouble. > > The problem is that the new workstations will be installed from > scratch and the other two systems I run "testing" on were > dist-upgraded via apt. I built the "testing" rescue, root and driver-x > floppies but I can't find a base system in the disks-i386 directory? > It's been a while since I did an install from scratch but don't I > still need a base*.tgz file for the base system. Is there not one > available for testing?
If there is, please help testing. > I suppose I can install a bare-bones potato and dist-upgrade to > testing but that's an additional step I would rather avoid if > possible. If there is no testing installer in usable form, do the following: 1. Install one basic stable system: Go through the installer normally. When it asks you to select packages, choose the dselect interface. In dselect, run update and select. Select no new packages, instead unselect stuff like tex, gcc, the full perl, emacs and other standard packages that are not requied or essential or otherwise needed immediately. There is no sense in installing these if you are going to have to upgrade them anyway, it just takes more time to donload and sit through the installation. Then go back to the menu and run install. 2. Install and setup squid: When dselect is finished installing the basic packages, go back to select and add squid to your selections. Run install again. Now leave dselect. Configure squid, all this takes is to open up the acl for localhost and your local lan in /etc/squid/squid.conf. Maybe you need to up the maximum cacheable object size a little, for tetex.deb and friends. Maybe there is already a squid in your network and you can use that. Your own squid is always better, and you can daisy-chain it off the other squid (you can do this in very fancy ways even). 3. Change sources.list: In /etc/apt/sources.list, change the deb lines from stable to testing. In /etc/apt/apt.conf, add a line: Acquire::http::Proxy "http://127.0.0.1:3128/";; 4. Prepare for upgrade: Go back to dselect, run update. If it doesn't work, either tune squid or the deb line from step 3. When the update has finished succesfully, choose select and observe and verify the package selections. Some packages may have changed names, which is a bit confusing. Carefully check that dselect is not unselecting the packages that depend on the old package, while leaving the new package unselected. In such cases, simply press 'R' and select the new package manually to satisfy the unresolved depends. Press '?' to get help at any time. 5. Upgrade the basic system: After affirming package selections, go back to the main menu and run install. 6. Add more packages: Go back to select and add a few packages that you would really like to have right now, eg. pet editors, extra documentation. 7a. Repeat for other systems: Repeat steps 1,3,4,5 and 6 for your other systems. The other systems will not need to run squid, instead change the apt.conf proxy setting to point to the ip address of the host running squid. 7b. Clone other systems: Alternatively, clone the harddisk, edit a few files in /mnt/etc and purge squid on the copied systems. Installing a few extra times is probably easier for less than 25 systems. 8. Complete installation. After you have all systems running a basic system, you can start adding components like development packages, languages, xfree86, desktops, webbrowsers, games. Install only one logical group at a time, starting with the most basic ones. This reduces the chance for complicated cross-dependencies to confuse you and makes it more efficient to execute this procedure for many systems in parallel. Cheers, Joost
