Booting from a CD-ROM
&boot-installer-intro-cd.xml;
Booting from Windows
To start the installer from Windows, you must first obtain CD-ROM/DVD-ROM
or USB memory stick installation media as described in
and .
If you use an installation CD or DVD, a pre-installation program should be
launched automatically when you insert the disc.
In case Windows does not start it automatically, or if you are using a USB
memory stick, you can run it manually by accessing the device and executing
setup.exe.
After the program has been started, a few preliminary questions will be
asked and the system will be prepared to start the &debian; installer.
Booting from Linux Using LILO or
GRUB
To boot the installer from hard disk, you must first download
and place the needed files as described in .
If you intend to use the hard drive only for booting and then
download everything over the network, you should download the
netboot/debian-installer/&architecture;/initrd.gz file and its
corresponding kernel
netboot/debian-installer/&architecture;/linux. This will allow you
to repartition the hard disk from which you boot the installer, although you
should do so with care.
Alternatively, if you intend to keep an existing partition on the hard
drive unchanged during the install, you can download the
hd-media/initrd.gz file and its kernel, as well as
copy a CD (or DVD) iso to the drive (make sure the file is named ending in
.iso). The installer can then boot from the drive
and install from the CD image, without needing the network.
For LILO, you will need to configure two
essential things in /etc/lilo.conf:
to load the initrd.gz installer at boot time;
have the vmlinuz kernel use a RAM disk as
its root partition.
Here is a /etc/lilo.conf example:
image=/boot/newinstall/vmlinuz
label=newinstall
initrd=/boot/newinstall/initrd.gz
For more details, refer to the
initrd
4 and
lilo.conf
5 man pages. Now run
lilo and reboot.
The procedure for GRUB is quite similar. Locate your
menu.lst in the /boot/grub/
directory (sometimes in the /boot/boot/grub/),
add the following lines:
title New Install
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/newinstall/vmlinuz
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/newinstall/initrd.gz
and reboot.
From here on, there should be no difference between GRUB
or LILO.
Booting from USB Memory Stick
Let's assume you have prepared everything from and . Now
just plug your USB stick into some free USB connector and reboot the
computer. The system should boot up, and you should be presented with
the boot: prompt. Here you can enter optional boot
arguments, or just hit &enterkey;.
Booting from Floppies
You will have already downloaded the floppy images you needed and
created floppies from the images in .
To boot from the installer boot floppy, place it in the primary floppy
drive, shut down the system as you normally would, then turn it back
on.
For installing from an LS-120 drive (ATAPI version) with a set of
floppies, you need to specify the virtual location for the floppy
device. This is done with the root= boot
argument, giving the device that the ide-floppy driver maps the device
to. For example, if your LS-120 drive is connected as the first IDE
device (master) on the second cable, you enter
install root=/dev/hdc at the boot prompt.
Note that on some machines, Control
Alt Delete does not
properly reset the machine, so a hard
reboot is recommended. If
you are installing from an existing operating system (e.g., from a DOS
box) you don't have a choice. Otherwise, please do a hard reboot when
booting.
The floppy disk will be accessed, and you should then see a screen
that introduces the boot floppy and ends with the boot:
prompt.
Once you press &enterkey;, you should see the message
Loading..., followed by
Uncompressing Linux..., and
then a screenfull or so of information about the hardware in your
system. More information on this phase of the boot process can be
found below in .
After booting from the boot floppy, the root floppy is
requested. Insert the root floppy and press &enterkey;, and the
contents are loaded into memory. The installer program
debian-installer is automatically launched.
Booting with TFTP
&boot-installer-intro-net.xml;
There are various ways to do a TFTP boot on i386.
NIC or Motherboard that support PXE
It could be that your Network Interface Card or Motherboard provides
PXE boot functionality.
This is a Intel re-implementation
of TFTP boot. If so, you may be able to configure your BIOS to boot from the
network.
NIC with Network BootROM
It could be that your Network Interface Card provides
TFTP boot functionality.
Let us (&email-debian-boot-list;) know how did you manage it.
Please refer to this document.
Etherboot
The etherboot project
provides bootdiskettes and even bootroms that do a TFTPboot.
The Boot Screen
When the installer boots, you should be presented with a friendly graphical
screen showing the Debian logo and a menu:
Installer boot menu
Install
Graphical install
Advanced options >
Help
Press ENTER to boot or TAB to edit a menu entry
Depending on the installation method you are using, the Graphical
install
option may not be available.
For a normal installation, select either the Install
or
the Graphical install
entry — using either the
arrow keys on your keyboard or by typing the first (highlighted) letter
— and press &enterkey; to boot the installer.
The Advanced options
entry gives access to a second menu
that allows to boot the installer in expert mode, in rescue mode and for
automated installs.
If you wish or need to add any boot parameters for either the installer
or the kernel, press &tabkey;. This will display the default boot command
for the selected menu entry and allow to add additional options. The help
screens (see below) list some common possible options. Press &enterkey; to
boot the installer with your options; pressing &escapekey; will return you
to the boot menu and undo any changes you made.
Choosing the Help
entry will result in the first help screen
being displayed which gives an overview of all available help screens.
Note that it is not possible to return to the boot menu after the help
screens have been displayed. However, the F3 and F4 help screens list
commands that are equivalent to the boot methods listed in the menu. All
help screens have a boot prompt at which the boot command can be typed:
Press F1 for the help index, or ENTER to boot:
At this boot prompt you can either just press &enterkey; to boot the
installer with default options or enter a specific boot command and,
optionally, boot parameters. A number of boot parameters which might be
useful can be found on the various help screens. If you do add any
parameters to the boot command line, be sure to first type the boot method
(the default is install) and a space before the
first parameter (e.g., install fb=false).
The keyboard is assumed to have a default American English layout at this
point. This means that if your keyboard has a different (language-specific)
layout, the characters that appear on the screen may be different from what
you'd expect when you type parameters. Wikipedia has a
schema of the US keyboard layout which
can be used as a reference to find the correct keys to use.
If you are using a system that has the BIOS configured to use serial console,
you may not be able to see the initial graphical splash screen upon booting
the installer; you may even not see the boot menu. The same can happen if
you are installing the system via a remote management device that provides a
text interface to the VGA console. Examples of these devices include the text
console of Compaq's integrated Lights Out
(iLO) and HP's
Integrated Remote Assistant
(IRA).
To bypass the graphical boot screen you can either blindly press &escapekey;
to get a text boot prompt, or (equally blindly) press H
followed by &enterkey; to select the Help
option described
above. After that your keystrokes should be echoed at the prompt.
To prevent the installer from using the framebuffer for the rest of the
installation, you will also want to add fb=false to
the boot prompt, as described in the help text.