3.1.8 Installation

Follow the official instructions found in https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/installmanual or https://www.debian.org/releases/testing/installmanual (work in progress, sometimes this may not exist).

If you are installing a system using boot-floppies in the testing distribution, you may need to open a console terminal during the install process by pressing Alt-F2 and manually edit /etc/apt/sources.list entries, changing "stable" to "testing" to adjust APT sources.

I tend to install lilo into places like /dev/hda3, while installing mbr into /dev/hda. This minimizes the risk of overwriting boot information.

Here is what I choose during the install process.

• MD5 passwords "yes"

• shadow passwords "yes"

• Install "advanced" (dselect **) and select

  • Exclude emacs (if selected), nvi, tex, telnet, talk(d);

  • Include mc, vim, either one of nano-tiny or elvis-tiny.

    See dselect, Section 6.2.4. Even if you are an Emacs fan, avoid it now and be content with nano during install. Also avoid installing other large packages such as TeX (Potato used to do this) at this stage. See Rescue editors, Section 11.2 for the reason for installing nano-tiny or elvis-tiny here.

• All configuration questions = "y" (replace current) during each package install dialog.

• exim: select 2 for machine since I send mail through my ISP's SMTP server.

For more information on dselect, see dselect, Section 6.2.4.