Lab 3x Extra Credit: Installation of a Debian GNU/Linux Distribution

Last modified: Sep 20, 2011

Specification

1. Use the machine that you already made for Red Hat 9 which has login1-191 as its name.
2. Edit the VM settings as follows:
   • Type: Debian GNU/Linux 5 (32-bit)  (Click the Options tab to do this.)
   • Storage: 8 GB diskdrive with thin provisioning.   (Expand from 4 GB.)
   • RAM: 378 MB   (Increase from 256)

1. You may do either a regular or graphic install.
2. You must specify the hostname to be debian and the domain to be localdomain.
3. Note: the search for a Network Time server will fail after 3 attempts.
4. Select Pacific Standard Time for the timezone setting.
5. Partition disks: choose Guided - use entire disk
   Follow the prompts and choose: "Separate /home, /usr, /var, and /tmp partitions.
   Once you see partitions #1, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9: choose "Finish partitioning and write changes to disk.
6. Specify funny Cabrillo as the root password.
7. New user: Guest Account - username: guest, password: funny Cabrillo
8. Package Management:
   • Choose one of the Debian mirrors e.g. ftp.us.debian.org
     No HTTP proxy is needed.
     Do not participate in the popularity usage survey.
     Software selection: Choose Desktop environment and Standard system only.
9. Install the GRUB bootloader to the master boot record.

Procedure

1. Log in to cislab.cabrillo.edu using your rdp client.
2. Power on your existing Red Hat 9 virtual machine, and at the GRUB screen, direct it to come up in single user mode.
3. At the shell prompt destroy the current system with the following command:
   dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1
4. Click the "CDROM" tool in the toolbar and use the submenus to connect the cdrom to the debian-505-i386-netinst.iso image in nfsstore1->ISO. Note the smaller size of this iso; it relies on the network to download most of the software packages.
5. Now click in the console window and type init 6 to reboot the virtual machine.
6. On reboot, the virtual machine should present a boot screen for Debian GNU/Linux. You may select Install or Graphcial install menu option.
7. Proceed through the installation using the default values except where noted above. The action of the mouse will be very slow and lazy like. It is best to leave the mouse pointer in the lower right corner where the Next button is, and use the tab and arrow keys to navigate the screen.
8. Once you have prepared the hard disk for installation, the base system will be installed from the iso image. This won't take long.
9. Assign the root password, create a guest account, and then pick a mirror from where the rest of the software packages will be installed.
10. Do not participate in the "popularity-contest", but on the following "select software" page select Desktop environment and Standard system
11. The network installation will take a while, about 800 package files will be downloaded and then installed.
12. Your final task to is install the GRUB boot loader to the master boot record.
13. When the installation is complete, reboot the system.
14. When you do reboot the virtual machine, you should come up to a screen that looks like the image below. It will pause here for 5 or 10 seconds before autobooting.
    
15. The system boots in quiet mode with only a few mesages coming to the screen. In short order, you will be presented with a graphical login screen.
    Note: Graphic disktops under VMware run slowly until a custom package called vmware-tools is installed. We will install that package later in the course when we study package installation. In the mean time, switch to a console screen with <ctrl><alt><space>F1.
16. When the system presents you with the debian login prompt, log in as guest.
    Question: does Debian come preconfigured for the sudo command?
17. As the guest user, assume root's identity and environment using the su command.
    Question: what option is required to the su command?
18. Your final task here is to collect information about your installation and turn that information in to Opus as a file named lab3x. You can collect the information by redirecting the output of the following commands, or you can run the script program. The commands and what they do are listed below:

    ifconfig		# Network connectivity and interface settings
    fdisk -l; mount		# Disk preparation
    tail -24 /boot/grub/menu.lst	# The GRUB installation
    dpkg -l		# List of packages installed
    df -h		# Amount of disk space used for each filesystem

19. You are now ready to turn in your work and shutdown your virtual machine; Feel free to continue exploring your Debian system - perhaps comparing it to the Red Hat system from lab1.

Turn in