The Debian Installer consists of a number of special-purpose components to perform each installation task. Each component performs its task, asking the user questions as necessary to do its job. The questions themselves are given priorities, and the priority of questions to be asked is set when the installer is started. When a default installation is performed, only essential (high priority) questions will be asked. This results in a highly automated installation process with little user interaction. Components are automatically run in sequence; which components are run depends mainly on the installation method you use and on your hardware. The installer will use default values for questions that are not asked. If there is a problem, the user will see an error screen, and the installer menu may be shown in order to select some alternative action. If there are no problems, the user will never see the installer menu, but will simply answer questions for each component in turn. Serious error notifications are set to priority 'critical' so the user will always be notified. Some of the defaults that the installer uses can be influenced by passing boot arguments when &d-i; is started. If, for example, you wish to force static network configuration (DHCP is used by default if available), you could add the boot parameter netcfg/disable_dhcp=true. See for available options. Power users may be more comfortable with a menu-driven interface, where each step is controlled by the user rather than the installer performing each step automatically in sequence. To use the installer in a manual, menu-driven way, add the boot argument debconf/priority=medium. If your hardware requires you to pass options to kernel modules as they are installed, you will need to start the installer in expert mode. This can be done by either using the expert command to start the installer or by adding the boot argument debconf/priority=low. Expert mode gives you full control over &d-i;. The normal installer display is character-based (as opposed to the now more familiar graphical interface). The mouse is not operational in this environment. Here are the keys you can use to navigate within the various dialogs. The Tab or right arrow keys move `forward', and the Shift Tab or left arrow keys move `backward' between displayed buttons and selections. The up and down arrow select different items within a scrollable list, and also scroll the list itself. In addition, in long lists, you can type a letter to cause the list to scroll directly to the section with items starting with the letter you typed and use Pg-Up and Pg-Down to scroll the list in sections. The space bar selects an item such as a checkbox. Use &enterkey; to activate choices. S/390 does not support virtual consoles. You may open a second and third ssh session to view the logs described below. Error messages are redirected to the third console. You can access this console by pressing Left AltF3 (hold the left Alt key while pressing the F3 function key); get back to the main installer process with Left AltF1. These messages can also be found in /var/log/messages. After installation, this log is copied to /var/log/debian-installer/messages on your new system. Other installation messages may be found in /var/log/ during the installation, and /var/log/debian-installer/ after the computer has been booted into the installed system. Here is a list of installer components with a brief description of each component's purpose. Details you might need to know about using a particular component are in . main-menu Shows the list of components to the user during installer operation, and starts a component when it is selected. Main-menu's questions are set to priority medium, so if your priority is set to high or critical (high is the default), you will not see the menu. On the other hand, if there is an error which requires your intervention, the question priority may be downgraded temporarily to allow you to resolve the problem, and in that case the menu may appear. You can get to the main menu by selecting the "Back" button repeatedly to back all the way out of the currently running component. languagechooser Shows a list of languages and language variants. The installer will display messages in the chosen language, unless the translation for that language is not complete. When a translation is not complete, English messages are shown. countrychooser Shows a list of countries. The user may choose the country he lives in. kbd-chooser Shows a list of keyboards, from which the user chooses the model which matches his own. hw-detect Automatically detects most of the system's hardware, including network cards, disk drives, and PCMCIA. cdrom-detect Looks for and mounts a Debian installation CD. netcfg Configures the computer's network connections so it can communicate over the internet. iso-scan Looks for ISO file systems, which may be on a CD-ROM or on the hard drive. choose-mirror Presents a list of Debian archive mirrors. The user may choose the source of his installation packages. cdrom-checker Checks integrity of a CD-ROM. This way the user may assure him/herself that the installation CD-ROM was not corrupted. lowmem Lowmem tries to detect systems with low memory and then does various tricks to remove unnecessary parts of &d-i; from the memory (at the cost of some features). anna Anna's Not Nearly APT. Installs packages which have been retrieved from the chosen mirror or CD. partman Allows the user to partition disks attached to the system, create file systems on the selected partitions, and attach them to the mountpoints. Included are also interesting features like a fully automatic mode or LVM support. This is the preferred partitioning tool in Debian. autopartkit Automatically partitions an entire disk according to preset user preferences. partitioner Allows the user to partition disks attached to the system. A partitioning program appropriate to your computer's architecture is chosen. partconf Displays a list of partitions, and creates file systems on the selected partitions according to user instructions. lvmcfg Helps the user with the configuration of the LVM (Logical Volume Manager). mdcfg Allows the user to setup Software RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks). This Software RAID is usually superior to the cheap IDE (pseudo hardware) RAID controllers found on newer motherboards. base-installer Installs the most basic set of packages which would allow the computer to operate under Linux when rebooted. os-prober Detects currently installed operating systems on the computer and passes this information to the bootloader-installer, which may offer you an ability to add discovered operating systems to the bootloader's start menu. This way the user could easily choose at the boot time which operating system to start. bootloader-installer Installs a boot loader program on the hard disk, which is necessary for the computer to start up using Linux without using a floppy or CD-ROM. Many boot loaders allow the user to choose an alternate operating system each time the computer boots. base-config Provides dialogs for setting up the base system packages according to user preferences. This is normally done after rebooting the computer; it is the 'first run' of the new Debian system. shell Allows the user to execute a shell from the menu, or in the second console. bugreporter Provides a way for the user to record information on a floppy disk when trouble is encountered, in order to accurately report installer software problems to Debian developers later. &using-d-i-components.xml;