This section will help you determine which different media types you can use to install Debian. For example, if you have a floppy disk drive on your machine, it can be used to install Debian. There is a whole chapter devoted to media, , which lists the advantages and disadvantages of each media type. You may want to refer back to this page once you reach that section. In some cases, you'll have to do your first boot from floppy disks. Generally, all you will need is a high-density (1440 kilobytes) 3.5 inch floppy drive. For CHRP, floppy support is currently broken. Whenever you see CD-ROM in this manual, it applies to both CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs, because both technologies are really the same from the operating system's point of view, except for some very old nonstandard CD-ROM drives which are neither SCSI nor IDE/ATAPI. CD-ROM based installation is supported for some architectures. On machines which support bootable CD-ROMs, you should be able to do a completely floppy-less tape-less installation. Even if your system doesn't support booting from a CD-ROM, you can use the CD-ROM in conjunction with the other techniques to install your system, once you've booted up by other means; see . SCSI, SATA and IDE/ATAPI CD-ROMs are supported. The Linux CD-ROM HOWTO contains in-depth information on using CD-ROMs with Linux. USB CD-ROM drives are also supported, as are FireWire devices that are supported by the ohci1394 and sbp2 drivers. Both SCSI and IDE/ATAPI CD-ROMs are supported on &arch-title;, as long as the controller is supported by the SRM console. This rules out many add-on controller cards, but most integrated IDE and SCSI chips and controller cards that were provided by the manufacturer can be expected to work. To find out whether your device is supported from the SRM console, see the SRM HOWTO. IDE/ATAPI CD-ROMs are supported on all ARM machines. On SGI machines, booting from CD-ROM requires a SCSI CD-ROM drive capable of working with a logical blocksize of 512 bytes. Many of the SCSI CD-ROM drives sold on the PC market do not have this capability. If your CD-ROM drive has a jumper labeled Unix/PC or 512/2048, place it in the Unix or 512 position. To start the install, simply choose the System installation entry in the firmware. Booting the installation system directly from a hard disk is another option for many architectures. This will require some other operating system to load the installer onto the hard disk. Although the &arch-title; does not allow booting from SunOS (Solaris), you can install from a SunOS partition (UFS slices). Many Debian boxes need their floppy and/or CD-ROM drives only for setting up the system and for rescue purposes. If you operate some servers, you will probably already have thought about omitting those drives and using an USB memory stick for installing and (when necessary) for recovering the system. This is also useful for small systems which have no room for unnecessary drives. The network can be used during the installation to retrieve files needed for the installation. Whether the network is used or not depends on the installation method you choose and your answers to certain questions that will be asked during the installation. The installation system supports most types of network connections (including PPPoE, but not ISDN or PPP), via either HTTP or FTP. After the installation is completed, you can also configure your system to use ISDN and PPP. You can also boot the installation system over the network. This is the preferred installation technique for &arch-title;. Diskless installation, using network booting from a local area network and NFS-mounting of all local filesystems, is another option. If you are running another Unix-like system, you could use it to install &debian; without using the &d-i; described in the rest of this manual. This kind of install may be useful for users with otherwise unsupported hardware or on hosts which can't afford downtime. If you are interested in this technique, skip to the . The Debian boot disks contain a kernel which is built to maximize the number of systems it runs on. Unfortunately, this makes for a larger kernel, which includes many drivers that won't be used for your machine (see to learn how to build your own kernel). Support for the widest possible range of devices is desirable in general, to ensure that Debian can be installed on the widest array of hardware. Generally, the Debian installation system includes support for floppies, IDE (also known as PATA) drives, IDE floppies, parallel port IDE devices, SATA and SCSI controllers and drives, USB, and FireWire. The supported file systems include FAT, Win-32 FAT extensions (VFAT) and NTFS. Disk interfaces that emulate the AT hard disk interface — often called MFM, RLL, IDE, or PATA — are supported. SATA and SCSI disk controllers from many different manufacturers are supported. See the Linux Hardware Compatibility HOWTO for more details. Any storage system supported by the Linux kernel is also supported by the boot system. The following SCSI drivers are supported in the default kernel: Sparc ESP PTI Qlogic,ISP Adaptec AIC7xxx NCR and Symbios 53C8XX IDE systems (such as the UltraSPARC 5) are also supported. See Linux for SPARC Processors FAQ for more information on SPARC hardware supported by the Linux kernel. Any storage system supported by the Linux kernel is also supported by the boot system. This includes both SCSI and IDE disks. Note, however, that on many systems, the SRM console is unable to boot from IDE drives, and the Jensen is unable to boot from floppies. (see for more information on booting the Jensen) Any storage system supported by the Linux kernel is also supported by the boot system. Note that the current Linux kernel does not support floppies on CHRP systems at all. Any storage system supported by the Linux kernel is also supported by the boot system. Note that the current Linux kernel does not support the floppy drive. Any storage system supported by the Linux kernel is also supported by the boot system. Any storage system supported by the Linux kernel is also supported by the boot system. This means that FBA and ECKD DASDs are supported with the old Linux disk layout (ldl) and the new common S/390 disk layout (cdl).