Basics of a netinstall

OK so with a virtual machine setup and an iso image downloaded we are just about ready to run the basic install. The last point is only for people running a hardware installation that will require additional drivers. When I run the install on Vbox I don't need anything more, but when I run it on my R52 with Intel wireless I need a driver for my chip that isn't included. I'll go read the wiki

http://wiki.debian.org/ipw2200

Then I'll download the file and put it in the root of a USB thumb drive and attach it to the laptop prior to booting up the CDROM.

With Virtualbox up, Debian highlighted, and the iso mounted as a virtual CD-ROM we just press Start and wait for our installer to pop up.

* Once you click into a brand new vbox machine you will loose control of your keyboard and mounse on your main OS. Once we get everything up and running we can add "Virtualbox Guest Additions" and get seemless interaction. For now if you need to drop out to your host OS just hit the CTRL on the RIGHT side of your keyboard. You can redefine this key in Virtualbox via the Settings menu.
















Once greeted by the boot menu we just choose Install and input the appropriate settings we want when prompted. To save everyone from the screenshot hell that the Virtualbox post turned into, here is the short version:

Install
English
United States
US keymap
Choose network connection
Set the hostname
Set domain name
Choose timezone

This gets us up to partitioning, I usually setup a simple table manualy, here is what I'm going to do for this little install:

• First I'll delete anything that is existing. In Vbox it should be a new disk so we can skip this.
• Second I make the first primary partition on the disk equal to the amount of physical RAM and set it as a swap partition. For Vbox I'll just make this 256Mb.
• Third I take the next 4Gb and set an ext3 primary partition and set it to bootable with a mount point of "/".
• Finally I take all remaining space as "/home" as the final ext3 primary partition.
  

When I run my hardware install I'll keep 20Gb for / and about 140Gb for /home. OK, we can finish our table and write the changes to disk. There are lots of ins and outs of partitioning and formats, this would be a good spot to google around and do some research to see what would best fit your needs.

Set the root password and confirm it. DO NOT FORGET THIS PASSWORD!
Enter a full name for the user account you'll be logging in with
Press ENTER if you want to login with the same name you just set
Set and confirm a password for this user
Set your mirror country
Skip the proxy config unless you know you need it
Choose if you want to participate in the "popularity contest"
Now you can choose which components you want to install. I'm going to uncheck Desktop, and install Standard and Laptop only (my hardware install will be on a laptop)
I install GRUB in the MBR
Finally we "eject" media and reboot. We can unmount the iso off the virtualbox menu, hit ENTER.

We should be greeted with this menu after the machine resets:











You can either wait for timeout or press enter, then sit back and watch linux load in all it's glory, when it's done you've got this:











You can see I've put in my credentials and come out to a $ prompt. This is it, nothing but linux. This is the blank canvas where a user can build out EXACTLY the system they want to use, and that is what we'll start next time.

When it's time to shutdown you can either pause the machine from the Virtualbox console, or do the following:
1) Swtich user to root with the command "su" and enter the root password you defined during installation.
2) Enter the shutdown command "shutdown -h now" telling it to go all the way down immediately.

This should close up your Virtualbox, or power down your machine if you've done a hardware install.