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 (IPv6 autoconfiguration and DHCP are used by default if available), you could add the boot parameter netcfg/disable_autoconfig=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 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 priority=low. Expert mode gives you full control over &d-i;. For this architecture the &d-i; supports two different user interfaces: a graphical one and a character-based one. The graphical interface is used by default unless you select an Install option in the boot menu. For more information about the graphical installer, please refer to . For this architecture the &d-i; supports two different user interfaces: a character-based one and a graphical one. The character-based interface is used by default unless you select the Graphical install option on purpose. For more information about the graphical installer, please refer to . For this architecture the installer uses a character-based user interface. A graphical user interface is currently not available. In the character-based environment the use of a mouse is not supported. 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. Some dialogs may offer additional help information. If help is available this will be indicated on the bottom line of the screen by displaying that help information can be accessed by pressing the F1 key. S/390 does not support virtual consoles. You may open a second and third ssh session to view the logs described below. Error messages and logs are redirected to the fourth console. You can access this console by pressing Left AltF4 (hold the left Alt key while pressing the F4 function key); get back to the main installer process with Left AltF1. These messages can also be found in /var/log/syslog. After installation, this log is copied to /var/log/installer/syslog on your new system. Other installation messages may be found in /var/log/ during the installation, and /var/log/installer/ after the computer has been booted into the installed system. The graphical installer basically works the same as the text-based installer and thus the rest of this manual can be used to guide you through the installation process. If you prefer using the keyboard over the mouse, there are two things you need to know. To expand a collapsed list (used for example for the selection of countries within continents), you can use the + and - keys. For questions where more than one item can be selected (e.g. task selection), you first need to tab to the &BTN-CONT; button after making your selections; hitting enter will toggle a selection, not activate &BTN-CONT;. If a dialog offers additional help information, a Help button will be displayed. The help information can be accessed either by activating the button or by pressing the F1 key. To switch to another console, you will also need to use the Ctrl key, just as with the X Window System. For example, to switch to VT2 (the first debug shell) you would use: Ctrl Left Alt F2 . The graphical installer itself runs on VT5, so you can use Left Alt F5 to switch back. 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 &BTN-GOBACK; button repeatedly to back all the way out of the currently running component. localechooser Allows the user to select localization options for the installation and the installed system: language, country and locales. The installer will display messages in the selected language, unless the translation for that language is not complete in which case some messages may be shown in English. console-setup 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 Searches for ISO images (.iso files) on hard drives. 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. user-setup Sets up the root password, and adds a non-root user. clock-setup Updates the system clock and determines whether the clock is set to UTC or not. tzsetup Selects the time zone, based on the location selected earlier. 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;. 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 set up 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 &debian-gnu; when rebooted. apt-setup Configures apt, mostly automatically, based on what media the installer is running from. pkgsel Uses tasksel to select and install additional software. 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 The various bootloader installers each install a boot loader program on the hard disk, which is necessary for the computer to start up using &arch-kernel; without using a floppy or CD-ROM. Many boot loaders allow the user to choose an alternate operating system each time the computer boots. shell Allows the user to execute a shell from the menu, or in the second console. save-logs Provides a way for the user to record information on a floppy disk, network, hard disk, or other media when trouble is encountered, in order to accurately report installer software problems to &debian; developers later. &using-d-i-components.xml; &loading-firmware.xml;