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 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 . Both SCSI and IDE/ATAPI CD-ROMs are supported. In addition, all non-standard CD interfaces supported by Linux are supported by the boot disks (such as Mitsumi and Matsushita drives). However, these models might require special boot parameters or other massaging to get them to work, and booting off these non-standard interfaces is unlikely. 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 RiscPCs, SCSI CD-ROMs are also supported. 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-DROM drives sold for 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. The Broadcom BCM91250A supports standard IDE devices, including CD-ROM drives, but CD images for this platform are currently not provided because the firmware doesn't recognize CD drives. On DECstations, 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-DROM drives sold for 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. CD 1 contains the installer for the r3k-kn02 subarchitecture (the R3000-based DECstations 5000/1xx and 5000/240 as well as the R3000-based Personal DECstation models), CD 2 the installer for the r4k-kn04 subarchitecture (the R4x00-based DECstations 5000/150 and 5000/260 as well as the Personal DECstation 5000/50). To boot from CD, issue the command boot #/rzid on the firmware prompt, where # is the number of the TurboChannel device from which to boot (3 on most DECstations) and id is the SCSI ID of the CD-ROM drive. If you need to pass additional parameters, they can optionally be appended with the following syntax: boot #/rzid param1=value1 param2=value2 ... 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. In fact, installation from your local disk is the preferred installation technique for most &architecture; machines. 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. You can also boot your system over the network. This is the preferred installation technique for Mips. Diskless installation, using network booting from a local area network and NFS-mounting of all local filesystems, is another option. After the operating system kernel is installed, you can install the rest of your system via any sort of network connection (including PPP after installation of the base system), via FTP or HTTP. 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 the 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 drives, IDE floppies, parallel port IDE devices, SCSI controllers and drives, USB, and FireWire. The file systems supported include FAT, Win-32 FAT extensions (VFAT), and NTFS, among others. The disk interfaces that emulate the AT hard disk interface which are often called MFM, RLL, IDE, or ATA are supported. Very old 8 bit hard disk controllers used in the IBM XT computer are supported only as a module. SCSI disk controllers from many different manufacturers are supported. See the Linux Hardware Compatibility HOWTO for more details. Pretty much all storage systems supported by the Linux kernel are supported by the Debian installation system. Note that the current Linux kernel does not support floppies on the Macintosh at all, and the Debian installation system doesn't support floppies for Amigas. Also supported on the Atari is the Macintosh HFS system, and AFFS as a module. Macs support the Atari (FAT) file system. Amigas support the FAT file system, and HFS as a module. 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).