Ubuntu Installation Guide

Copyright © 2004 - 2018 the Debian Installer team

Copyright © 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2015, 2018 Canonical Ltd.

This manual is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU General Public License. Please refer to the license in
Appendix F, GNU General Public License.

Abstract

This document contains installation instructions for the Ubuntu 18.04 system
(codename "‘Bionic Beaver’"), for the 32-bit PC ("i386") architecture. It also
contains pointers to more information and information on how to make the most
of your new Ubuntu system.

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Table of Contents

Installing Ubuntu 18.04 "Bionic Beaver" For i386
1. Welcome to Ubuntu

    1.1. What is Ubuntu?

        1.1.1. Sponsorship by Canonical

    1.2. What is Debian?

        1.2.1. Ubuntu and Debian

    1.3. What is GNU/Linux?
    1.4. Getting Ubuntu
    1.5. Getting the Newest Version of This Document
    1.6. Organization of This Document
    1.7. About Copyrights and Software Licenses

2. System Requirements

    2.1. Supported Hardware

        2.1.1. Supported Architectures
        2.1.2. CPU, Main Boards, and Video Support
        2.1.3. Laptops
        2.1.4. Multiple Processors
        2.1.5. Graphics Hardware Support
        2.1.6. Network Connectivity Hardware
        2.1.7. Braille Displays
        2.1.8. Hardware Speech Synthesis
        2.1.9. Peripherals and Other Hardware

    2.2. Devices Requiring Firmware
    2.3. Purchasing Hardware Specifically for GNU/Linux

        2.3.1. Avoid Proprietary or Closed Hardware

    2.4. Installation Media

        2.4.1. CD-ROM/DVD-ROM/BD-ROM
        2.4.2. USB Memory Stick
        2.4.3. Network
        2.4.4. Hard Disk
        2.4.5. Un*x or GNU system
        2.4.6. Supported Storage Systems

    2.5. Memory and Disk Space Requirements

3. Before Installing Ubuntu

    3.1. Overview of the Installation Process
    3.2. Back Up Your Existing Data!
    3.3. Information You Will Need

        3.3.1. Documentation
        3.3.2. Finding Sources of Hardware Information
        3.3.3. Hardware Compatibility
        3.3.4. Network Settings

    3.4. Meeting Minimum Hardware Requirements
    3.5. Pre-Partitioning for Multi-Boot Systems
    3.6. Pre-Installation Hardware and Operating System Setup

        3.6.1. Invoking the BIOS Set-Up Menu
        3.6.2. Boot Device Selection
        3.6.3. Systems with UEFI firmware
        3.6.4. Disabling the Windows 8 "fast boot" feature
        3.6.5. Hardware Issues to Watch Out For

4. Obtaining System Installation Media

    4.1. Official Ubuntu CD-ROMs
    4.2. Downloading Files from Ubuntu Mirrors

        4.2.1. Where to Find Installation Images

    4.3. Preparing Files for USB Memory Stick Booting

        4.3.1. Preparing a USB stick using a hybrid CD or DVD image
        4.3.2. Manually copying files to the USB stick
        4.3.3. Manually copying files to the USB stick -- the flexible way

    4.4. Preparing Files for Hard Disk Booting

        4.4.1. Hard disk installer booting from Linux using LILO or GRUB

    4.5. Preparing Files for TFTP Net Booting

        4.5.1. Setting up a DHCP server
        4.5.2. Setting up a BOOTP server
        4.5.3. Enabling the TFTP Server
        4.5.4. Move TFTP Images Into Place

    4.6. Automatic Installation

        4.6.1. Automatic Installation Using the Ubuntu Installer
        4.6.2. Automatic Installation Using Kickstart

5. Booting the Installation System

    5.1. Booting the Installer on 32-bit PC

        5.1.1. Booting from USB Memory Stick
        5.1.2. Booting from a CD-ROM
        5.1.3. Booting from Linux using LILO or GRUB
        5.1.4. Booting with TFTP
        5.1.5. The Boot Screen

    5.2. Accessibility

        5.2.1. Installer front-end
        5.2.2. USB Braille Displays
        5.2.3. Serial Braille Displays
        5.2.4. Software Speech Synthesis
        5.2.5. Hardware Speech Synthesis
        5.2.6. Board Devices
        5.2.7. High-Contrast Theme
        5.2.8. Zoom
        5.2.9. Preseeding
        5.2.10. Accessibility of the installed system

    5.3. Boot Parameters

        5.3.1. Boot console
        5.3.2. Ubuntu Installer Parameters
        5.3.3. Using boot parameters to answer questions
        5.3.4. Passing parameters to kernel modules
        5.3.5. Blacklisting kernel modules

    5.4. Troubleshooting the Installation Process

        5.4.1. CD-ROM Reliability
        5.4.2. Boot Configuration
        5.4.3. Software Speech Synthesis
        5.4.4. Common 32-bit PC Installation Problems
        5.4.5. Interpreting the Kernel Startup Messages
        5.4.6. Reporting Installation Problems
        5.4.7. Submitting Installation Reports

6. Using the Ubuntu Installer

    6.1. How the Installer Works
    6.2. Components Introduction
    6.3. Using Individual Components

        6.3.1. Setting up Ubuntu Installer and Hardware Configuration
        6.3.2. Setting Up Users And Passwords
        6.3.3. Partitioning and Mount Point Selection
        6.3.4. Installing the Base System
        6.3.5. Installing Additional Software
        6.3.6. Making Your System Bootable
        6.3.7. Finishing the Installation
        6.3.8. Troubleshooting
        6.3.9. Installation Over the Network

    6.4. Loading Missing Firmware

        6.4.1. Preparing a medium
        6.4.2. Firmware and the Installed System

7. Booting Into Your New Ubuntu System

    7.1. The Moment of Truth
    7.2. Mounting encrypted volumes

        7.2.1. Troubleshooting

    7.3. Log In

8. Next Steps and Where to Go From Here

    8.1. Shutting down the system
    8.2. If You Are New to Unix
    8.3. Orienting Yourself to Ubuntu

        8.3.1. Ubuntu Packaging System
        8.3.2. Additional Software Available for Ubuntu
        8.3.3. Application Version Management
        8.3.4. Cron Job Management

    8.4. Further Reading and Information
    8.5. Setting Up Your System To Use E-Mail

        8.5.1. Default E-Mail Configuration
        8.5.2. Sending E-Mails Outside The System
        8.5.3. Configuring the Exim4 Mail Transport Agent

    8.6. Compiling a New Kernel

        8.6.1. Kernel Image Management

    8.7. Recovering a Broken System

A. Installation Howto

    A.1. Booting the installer

        A.1.1. CDROM
        A.1.2. USB memory stick
        A.1.3. Booting from network

    A.2. Installation
    A.3. And finally...

B. Automating the installation using preseeding

    B.1. Introduction

        B.1.1. Preseeding methods
        B.1.2. Limitations
        B.1.3. Debconf basics

    B.2. Using preseeding

        B.2.1. Loading the preconfiguration file
        B.2.2. Using boot parameters to preseed questions
        B.2.3. Auto mode
        B.2.4. Aliases useful with preseeding
        B.2.5. Using a DHCP server to specify preconfiguration files

    B.3. Creating a preconfiguration file
    B.4. Contents of the preconfiguration file (for bionic)

        B.4.1. Localization
        B.4.2. Network configuration
        B.4.3. Network console
        B.4.4. Mirror settings
        B.4.5. Account setup
        B.4.6. Clock and time zone setup
        B.4.7. Partitioning
        B.4.8. Base system installation
        B.4.9. Apt setup
        B.4.10. Package selection
        B.4.11. Boot loader installation
        B.4.12. Finishing up the installation
        B.4.13. Preseeding other packages

    B.5. Advanced options

        B.5.1. Running custom commands during the installation
        B.5.2. Using preseeding to change default values
        B.5.3. Chainloading preconfiguration files

C. Partitioning for Ubuntu

    C.1. Deciding on Ubuntu Partitions and Sizes
    C.2. The Directory Tree
    C.3. Recommended Partitioning Scheme
    C.4. Device Names in Linux
    C.5. Ubuntu Partitioning Programs

        C.5.1. Partitioning for 32-bit PC

D. Random Bits

    D.1. Linux Devices

        D.1.1. Setting Up Your Mouse

    D.2. Disk Space Needed for Tasks
    D.3. Disk Space Needed
    D.4. Installing Ubuntu from a Unix/Linux System

        D.4.1. Getting Started
        D.4.2. Install debootstrap
        D.4.3. Run debootstrap
        D.4.4. Configure The Base System
        D.4.5. Install a Kernel
        D.4.6. Set up the Boot Loader
        D.4.7. Remote access: Installing SSH and setting up access
        D.4.8. Finishing touches
        D.4.9. Create a User
        D.4.10. Install the Ubuntu Desktop

    D.5. Installing Ubuntu over Parallel Line IP (PLIP)

        D.5.1. Requirements
        D.5.2. Setting up source
        D.5.3. Installing target

    D.6. Installing Ubuntu using PPP over Ethernet (PPPoE)

E. Administrivia

    E.1. About This Document
    E.2. Contributing to This Document
    E.3. Major Contributions
    E.4. Trademark Acknowledgement

F. GNU General Public License

List of Tables

3.1. Hardware Information Helpful for an Install
3.2. Recommended Minimum System Requirements

Installing Ubuntu 18.04 "Bionic Beaver" For i386

We are delighted that you have decided to try Ubuntu, and are sure that you
will find that Ubuntu's GNU/Linux distribution is unique. Ubuntu brings
together high-quality free software from around the world, integrating it into
a coherent whole. We believe that you will find that the result is truly more
than the sum of the parts.

We understand that many of you want to install Ubuntu without reading this
manual, and the Ubuntu installer is designed to make this possible. If you
don't have time to read the whole Installation Guide right now, we recommend
that you read the Installation Howto, which will walk you through the basic
installation process, and links to the manual for more advanced topics or for
when things go wrong. The Installation Howto can be found in Appendix A, 
Installation Howto.

With that said, we hope that you have the time to read most of this manual, and
doing so will lead to a more informed and likely more successful installation
experience.

Chapter 1. Welcome to Ubuntu

Table of Contents

1.1. What is Ubuntu?

    1.1.1. Sponsorship by Canonical

1.2. What is Debian?

    1.2.1. Ubuntu and Debian

1.3. What is GNU/Linux?
1.4. Getting Ubuntu
1.5. Getting the Newest Version of This Document
1.6. Organization of This Document
1.7. About Copyrights and Software Licenses

This chapter provides an overview of the Ubuntu Project, and the Debian Project
upon which it is based. If you already know about the Ubuntu Project's history
and the Ubuntu distribution, feel free to skip to the next chapter.

1.1. What is Ubuntu?

Ubuntu is a complete Linux operating system, freely available with both
community and professional support. The Ubuntu community is built on the ideas
enshrined in the Ubuntu Manifesto: that software should be available free of
charge, that software tools should be usable by people in their local language
and despite any disabilities, and that people should have the freedom to
customize and alter their software in whatever way they see fit.

  • Ubuntu will always be free of charge, and there is no extra fee for the "
    enterprise edition", we make our very best work available to everyone on
    the same Free terms.

  • Ubuntu includes the very best in translations and accessibility
    infrastructure that the Free Software community has to offer, to make
    Ubuntu usable by as many people as possible.

  • Ubuntu is shipped in stable and regular release cycles; a new release will
    be shipped every six months. Every two even years an Ubuntu long term
    support (LTS) release will become available, that is supported for 5 years.
    The Ubuntu releases in between (known as development or non-LTS releases)
    are supported for 9 month each.

  • Ubuntu is entirely committed to the principles of open source software
    development; we encourage people to use open source software, improve it
    and pass it on.

Ubuntu is suitable for both desktop and server use. The current Ubuntu release
supports Intel x86 (IBM-compatible PC), AMD64 (x86-64), ARMv7, ARMv8 (ARM64),
IBM POWER8/POWER9 (ppc64el), IBM Z zEC12/zEC13/z14 and IBM LinuxONE Rockhopper
I+II/Emporer I+II (s390x).

Ubuntu includes thousands of pieces of software, starting with the Linux kernel
version 4.15 and GNOME 3.28, and covering every standard desktop application
from word processing and spreadsheet applications to internet access
applications, web server software, email software, programming languages and
tools and of course several games.

1.1.1. Sponsorship by Canonical

The Ubuntu Project is sponsored by Canonical Ltd. Canonical will not charge
licence fees for Ubuntu, now or at any stage in the future. Canonical's
business model is to provide technical support and professional services
related to Ubuntu. We encourage more companies also to offer support for
Ubuntu, and will list those that do on the Support pages of this web site.

1.2. What is Debian?

Debian is an all-volunteer organization dedicated to developing free software
and promoting the ideals of the Free Software community. The Debian Project
began in 1993, when Ian Murdock issued an open invitation to software
developers to contribute to a complete and coherent software distribution based
on the relatively new Linux kernel. That relatively small band of dedicated
enthusiasts, originally funded by the Free Software Foundation and influenced
by the GNU philosophy, has grown over the years into an organization of around
1026 Debian Developers.

Debian Developers are involved in a variety of activities, including Web and
FTP site administration, graphic design, legal analysis of software licenses,
writing documentation, and, of course, maintaining software packages.

In the interest of communicating our philosophy and attracting developers who
believe in the principles that Debian stands for, the Debian Project has
published a number of documents that outline our values and serve as guides to
what it means to be a Debian Developer:

  • The Debian Social Contract is a statement of Debian's commitments to the
    Free Software Community. Anyone who agrees to abide to the Social Contract
    may become a maintainer. Any maintainer can introduce new software into
    Debian -- provided that the software meets our criteria for being free, and
    the package follows our quality standards.

  • The Debian Free Software Guidelines are a clear and concise statement of
    Debian's criteria for free software. The DFSG is a very influential
    document in the Free Software Movement, and was the foundation of the The
    Open Source Definition.

  • The Debian Policy Manual is an extensive specification of the Debian
    Project's standards of quality.

Debian developers are also involved in a number of other projects; some
specific to Debian, others involving some or all of the Linux community. Some
examples include:

  • The Linux Standard Base (LSB) is a project aimed at standardizing the basic
    GNU/Linux system, which will enable third-party software and hardware
    developers to easily design programs and device drivers for
    Linux-in-general, rather than for a specific GNU/Linux distribution.

  • The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS) is an effort to standardize the
    layout of the Linux file system. The FHS will allow software developers to
    concentrate their efforts on designing programs, without having to worry
    about how the package will be installed in different GNU/Linux
    distributions.

  • Debian Jr. is an internal project, aimed at making sure Debian has
    something to offer to our youngest users.

For more general information about Debian, see the Debian FAQ.

1.2.1. Ubuntu and Debian

Ubuntu and Debian are distinct but parallel and closely linked systems. The
Ubuntu project seeks to complement the Debian project in the following areas:

1.2.1.1. Package selection

Ubuntu does not provide security updates and professional support for every
package available in the open source world, but selects a complete set of
packages making up a solid and comprehensive system and provides support for
that set of packages.

For users that want access to every known package, Ubuntu provides a "universe"
component (set of packages) where users of Ubuntu systems install the latest
version of any package that is not in the supported set. Most of the packages
in Ubuntu universe are also in Debian, although there are other sources for
universe too. See the Ubuntu Components page for more detail on the structure
of the Ubuntu web distribution.

1.2.1.2. Releases

Ubuntu makes a release every six months, and supports those releases for 18
months with daily security fixes and patches to critical bugs.

As Ubuntu prepares for release, we "freeze" a snapshot of Debian's development
archive ("sid"). We start from "sid" in order to give ourselves the freedom to
make our own decisions with regard to release management, independent of
Debian's release-in-preparation. This is necessary because our release criteria
are very different from Debian's.

As a simple example, a package might be excluded from Debian "testing" due to a
build failure on any of the 11 architectures supported by Debian "sarge", but
it is still suitable for Ubuntu if it builds and works on only three of them. A
package will also be prevented from entering Debian "testing" if it has
release-critical bugs according to Debian criteria, but a bug which is
release-critical for Debian may not be as important for Ubuntu.

As a community, we choose places to diverge from Debian in ways that minimize
the difference between Debian and Ubuntu. For example, we usually choose to
update to the very latest version of Gnome rather than the older version in
Debian, and we might do the same for key other pieces of infrastructure such as
X or GCC. Those decisions are listed as Feature Goals for that release, and we
work as a community to make sure that they are in place before the release
happens.

1.2.1.3. Development community

Many Ubuntu developers are also recognized members of the Debian community.
They continue to stay active in contributing to Debian both in the course of
their work on Ubuntu and directly in Debian.

When Ubuntu developers fix bugs that are also present in Debian packages -- and
since the projects are linked, this happens often -- they send their bugfixes
to the Debian developers responsible for that package in Debian and record the
patch URL in the Debian bug system. The long term goal of that work is to
ensure that patches made by the full-time Ubuntu team members are immediately
also included in Debian packages where the Debian maintainer likes the work.

In Ubuntu, team members can make a change to any package, even if it is one
maintained by someone else. Once you are an Ubuntu maintainer it's encouraged
that you fix problems you encounter, although we also encourage polite
discussions between people with an interest in a given package to improve
cooperation and reduce friction between maintainers.

1.2.1.4. Freedom and Philosophy

Debian and Ubuntu are grounded on the same free software philosophy. Both
groups are explicitly committed to building an operating system of free
software.

Differences between the groups lie in their treatment of non-computer
applications (like documentation, fonts and binary firmware) and non-free
software. Debian distributes a small amount of non-free software from their
Internet servers. Ubuntu will also distribute binary drivers in the
"restricted" component on its Internet servers but will not distribute any
other software applications that do not meet its own Ubuntu Licensing
Guidelines.

1.2.1.5. Ubuntu and other Debian derivatives

There are many other distributions that also share the same basic
infrastructure (package and archive format). Ubuntu is distinguished from them
in a number of ways.

First, Ubuntu contributes patches directly to Debian as bugs are fixed during
the Ubuntu release process, not just when the release is actually made. With
other Debian-style distributions, the source code and patches are made
available in a "big bang" at release time, which makes them difficult to
integrate into the upstream HEAD.

Second, Ubuntu includes a number of full-time contributors who are also Debian
developers. Many of the other distributions that use Debian-style packaging do
not include any active Debian contributors.

Third, Ubuntu makes much more frequent and fresher releases. Our release policy
of releasing every six months is (at the time of writing :-) unique in the
Linux distribution world. Ubuntu aims to provide you with a regular stable and
security-supported snapshot of the best of the open source world.

1.3. What is GNU/Linux?

Linux is an operating system: a series of programs that let you interact with
your computer and run other programs.

An operating system consists of various fundamental programs which are needed
by your computer so that it can communicate and receive instructions from
users; read and write data to hard disks, tapes, and printers; control the use
of memory; and run other software. The most important part of an operating
system is the kernel. In a GNU/Linux system, Linux is the kernel component. The
rest of the system consists of other programs, many of which were written by or
for the GNU Project. Because the Linux kernel alone does not form a working
operating system, we prefer to use the term "GNU/Linux" to refer to systems
that many people casually refer to as "Linux".

Linux is modelled on the Unix operating system. From the start, Linux was
designed to be a multi-tasking, multi-user system. These facts are enough to
make Linux different from other well-known operating systems. However, Linux is
even more different than you might imagine. In contrast to other operating
systems, nobody owns Linux. Much of its development is done by unpaid
volunteers.

Development of what later became GNU/Linux began in 1984, when the Free
Software Foundation began development of a free Unix-like operating system
called GNU.

The GNU Project has developed a comprehensive set of free software tools for
use with Unix (tm) and Unix-like operating systems such as Linux. These tools
enable users to perform tasks ranging from the mundane (such as copying or
removing files from the system) to the arcane (such as writing and compiling
programs or doing sophisticated editing in a variety of document formats).

While many groups and individuals have contributed to Linux, the largest single
contributor is still the Free Software Foundation, which created not only most
of the tools used in Linux, but also the philosophy and the community that made
Linux possible.

The Linux kernel first appeared in 1991, when a Finnish computing science
student named Linus Torvalds announced an early version of a replacement kernel
for Minix to the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.minix. See Linux International's
Linux History Page.

Linus Torvalds continues to coordinate the work of several hundred developers
with the help of a number of subsystem maintainers. There is an official
website for the Linux kernel. Information about the linux-kernel mailing list
can be found on the linux-kernel mailing list FAQ.

Linux users have immense freedom of choice in their software. For example,
Linux users can choose from a dozen different command line shells and several
graphical desktops. This selection is often bewildering to users of other
operating systems, who are not used to thinking of the command line or desktop
as something that they can change.

Linux is also less likely to crash, better able to run more than one program at
the same time, and more secure than many operating systems. With these
advantages, Linux is the fastest growing operating system in the server market.
More recently, Linux has begun to be popular among home and business users as
well.

1.4. Getting Ubuntu

For information on how to download Ubuntu from the Internet, see the download
web page. The list of Ubuntu mirrors contains a full set of official Ubuntu
mirrors, so you can easily find the nearest one.

Ubuntu can be upgraded after installation very easily. The installation
procedure will help set up the system so that you can make those upgrades once
installation is complete, if need be.

1.5. Getting the Newest Version of This Document

This document is constantly being revised. Updated versions of this
installation manual are available from the official Install Manual pages.

1.6. Organization of This Document

This document is meant to serve as a manual for first-time Ubuntu users. It
tries to make as few assumptions as possible about your level of expertise.
However, we do assume that you have a general understanding of how the hardware
in your computer works.

Expert users may also find interesting reference information in this document,
including minimum installation sizes, details about the hardware supported by
the Ubuntu installation system, and so on. We encourage expert users to jump
around in the document.

In general, this manual is arranged in a linear fashion, walking you through
the installation process from start to finish. Here are the steps in installing
Ubuntu, and the sections of this document which correlate with each step:

 1. Determine whether your hardware meets the requirements for using the
    installation system, in Chapter 2, System Requirements.

 2. Backup your system, perform any necessary planning and hardware
    configuration prior to installing Ubuntu, in Chapter 3, Before Installing
    Ubuntu. If you are preparing a multi-boot system, you may need to create
    partitionable space on your hard disk for Ubuntu to use.

 3. In Chapter 4, Obtaining System Installation Media, you will obtain the
    necessary installation files for your method of installation.

 4. Chapter 5, Booting the Installation System describes booting into the
    installation system. This chapter also discusses troubleshooting procedures
    in case you have problems with this step.

 5. Perform the actual installation according to Chapter 6, Using the Ubuntu
    Installer. This involves choosing your language, configuring peripheral
    driver modules, configuring your network connection, so that remaining
    installation files can be obtained directly from an Ubuntu server (if you
    are not installing from a CD), partitioning your hard drives and
    installation of a base system, then selection and installation of tasks.
    (Some background about setting up the partitions for your Ubuntu system is
    explained in Appendix C, Partitioning for Ubuntu.)

 6. Boot into your newly installed base system, from Chapter 7, Booting Into
    Your New Ubuntu System.

Once you've got your system installed, you can read Chapter 8, Next Steps and
Where to Go From Here. That chapter explains where to look to find more
information about Unix and Ubuntu, and how to replace your kernel.

Finally, information about this document and how to contribute to it may be
found in Appendix E, Administrivia.

1.7. About Copyrights and Software Licenses

We're sure that you've read some of the licenses that come with most commercial
software -- they usually say that you can only use one copy of the software on
a single computer. This system's license isn't like that at all. We encourage
you to put a copy of Ubuntu on every computer in your school or place of
business. Lend your installation media to your friends and help them install it
on their computers! You can even make thousands of copies and sell them --
albeit with a few restrictions. Your freedom to install and use the system
comes directly from Ubuntu being based on free software.

Calling software free doesn't mean that the software isn't copyrighted, and it
doesn't mean that CDs/DVDs containing that software must be distributed at no
charge. Free software, in part, means that the licenses of individual programs
do not require you to pay for the privilege of distributing or using those
programs. Free software also means that not only may anyone extend, adapt, and
modify the software, but that they may distribute the results of their work as
well.

Note

The Ubuntu project, as a pragmatic concession to its users, does make some
packages available that do not meet our criteria for being free. These packages
are not part of the official distribution, however, and are only available from
the multiverse area of Ubuntu mirrors; see the Ubuntu web site for more
information about the layout and contents of the archives.

Many of the programs in the system are licensed under the GNU General Public
License, often simply referred to as "the GPL". The GPL requires you to make
the source code of the programs available whenever you distribute a binary copy
of the program; that provision of the license ensures that any user will be
able to modify the software. Because of this provision, the source code^[1] for
all such programs is available in the Ubuntu system.

There are several other forms of copyright statements and software licenses
used on the programs in Ubuntu. You can find the copyrights and licenses for
every package installed on your system by looking in the file /usr/share/doc/
package-name/copyright once you've installed a package on your system.

For more information about licenses and how Ubuntu determines whether software
is free enough to be included in the main distribution, see the Ubuntu License
Policy.

The most important legal notice is that this software comes with no warranties.
The programmers who have created this software have done so for the benefit of
the community. No guarantee is made as to the suitability of the software for
any given purpose. However, since the software is free, you are empowered to
modify that software to suit your needs -- and to enjoy the benefits of the
changes made by others who have extended the software in this way.


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^[1] For information on how to locate, unpack, and build binaries from Ubuntu
source packages, see the Debian FAQ, under "Basics of the Debian Package
Management System".

Chapter 2. System Requirements

Table of Contents

2.1. Supported Hardware

    2.1.1. Supported Architectures
    2.1.2. CPU, Main Boards, and Video Support
    2.1.3. Laptops
    2.1.4. Multiple Processors
    2.1.5. Graphics Hardware Support
    2.1.6. Network Connectivity Hardware
    2.1.7. Braille Displays
    2.1.8. Hardware Speech Synthesis
    2.1.9. Peripherals and Other Hardware

2.2. Devices Requiring Firmware
2.3. Purchasing Hardware Specifically for GNU/Linux

    2.3.1. Avoid Proprietary or Closed Hardware

2.4. Installation Media

    2.4.1. CD-ROM/DVD-ROM/BD-ROM
    2.4.2. USB Memory Stick
    2.4.3. Network
    2.4.4. Hard Disk
    2.4.5. Un*x or GNU system
    2.4.6. Supported Storage Systems

2.5. Memory and Disk Space Requirements

This section contains information about what hardware you need to get started
with Ubuntu. You will also find links to further information about hardware
supported by GNU and Linux.

2.1. Supported Hardware

Ubuntu does not impose hardware requirements beyond the requirements of the
Linux kernel and the GNU tool-sets. Therefore, any architecture or platform to
which the Linux kernel, libc, gcc, etc. have been ported, and for which an
Ubuntu port exists, can run Ubuntu.

Rather than attempting to describe all the different hardware configurations
which are supported for 32-bit PC, this section contains general information
and pointers to where additional information can be found.

2.1.1. Supported Architectures

Ubuntu 18.04 supports six major architectures and several variations of each
architecture known as "flavors". One other architecture (IBM/Motorola PowerPC)
has an unofficial port.

┌─────────────┬────────────┬──────────────────────────────────┬───────────────┐
│Architecture │   Ubuntu   │         Subarchitecture          │    Flavor     │
│             │Designation │                                  │               │
├─────────────┼────────────┼──────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┤
│Intel        │i386        │                                  │               │
│x86-based    │            │                                  │               │
├─────────────┼────────────┼──────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┤
│AMD64 & Intel│amd64       │                                  │               │
│64           │            │                                  │               │
├─────────────┼────────────┼──────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┤
│             │            │multiplatform                     │generic        │
│ARM with     │armhf       ├──────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┤
│hardware FPU │            │multiplatform for LPAE-capable    │generic-lpae   │
│             │            │systems                           │               │
├─────────────┼────────────┼──────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┤
│64bit ARM    │arm64       │                                  │               │
├─────────────┼────────────┼──────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┤
│IBM POWER    │ppc64el     │IBM POWER8 and newer machines     │               │
│Systems      │            │                                  │               │
├─────────────┼────────────┼──────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┤
│IBM z/       │s390x       │IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE, no s390   │zEC12 and newer│
│Architecture │            │(31-bit mode) support             │machines       │
└─────────────┴────────────┴──────────────────────────────────┴───────────────┘

2.1.2. CPU, Main Boards, and Video Support

Complete information concerning supported peripherals can be found at Linux
Hardware Compatibility HOWTO. This section merely outlines the basics.

2.1.2.1. CPU

Nearly all x86-based (IA-32) processors still in use in personal computers are
supported. This also includes 32-bit AMD and VIA (former Cyrix) processors, and
processors like the Athlon XP and Intel P4 Xeon.

However, Ubuntu bionic will not run on 586 (Pentium) or earlier processors.
Support for i586 and lower processors, as well as for i686 processors without
the cmov instruction, was dropped in Ubuntu 10.10. Most i686 and later
processors are still supported. The Intel Quark is not supported, due to
hardware errata.

Note

If your system has a 64-bit processor from the AMD64 or Intel 64 families, you
will probably want to use the installer for the amd64 architecture instead of
the installer for the (32-bit) i386 architecture.

2.1.2.2. I/O Bus

The system bus is the part of the motherboard which allows the CPU to
communicate with peripherals such as storage devices. Your computer must use
the PCI, PCIe, or PCI-X bus. Essentially all personal computers sold in recent
years use one of these.

2.1.3. Laptops

From a technical point of view, laptops are normal PCs, so all information
regarding PC systems applies to laptops as well. Installations on laptops
nowadays usually work out of the box, including things like automatically
suspending the system on closing the lid and laptop specfic hardware buttons
like those for disabling the wifi interfaces ("airplane mode"). Nonetheless
sometimes the hardware vendors use specialized or proprietary hardware for some
laptop-specific functions which might not be supported. To see if your
particular laptop works well with GNU/Linux, see for example the Linux Laptop
pages.

2.1.4. Multiple Processors

Multiprocessor support -- also called "symmetric multiprocessing" or SMP -- is
available for this architecture. The standard Ubuntu 18.04 kernel image has
been compiled with SMP-alternatives support. This means that the kernel will
detect the number of processors (or processor cores) and will automatically
deactivate SMP on uniprocessor systems.

Having multiple processors in a computer was originally only an issue for
high-end server systems but has become common in recent years nearly everywhere
with the introduction of so called "multi-core" processors. These contain two
or more processor units, called "cores", in one physical chip.

2.1.5. Graphics Hardware Support

Ubuntu's support for graphical interfaces is determined by the underlying
support found in X.Org's X11 system, and the kernel. Basic framebuffer graphics
is provided by the kernel, whilst desktop environments use X11. Whether
advanced graphics card features such as 3D-hardware acceleration or
hardware-accelerated video are available, depends on the actual graphics
hardware used in the system and in some cases on the installation of additional
"firmware" images (see Section 2.2, "Devices Requiring Firmware").

On modern PCs, having a graphical display usually works out of the box. In very
few cases there have been reports about hardware on which installation of
additional graphics card firmware was required even for basic graphics support,
but these have been rare exceptions. For quite a lot of hardware, 3D
acceleration also works well out of the box, but there is still some hardware
that needs binary blobs to work well.

Details on supported graphics hardware and pointing devices can be found at
http://xorg.freedesktop.org/. Ubuntu 18.04 ships with X.Org version 7.7.

2.1.6. Network Connectivity Hardware

Almost any network interface card (NIC) supported by the Linux kernel should
also be supported by the installation system; drivers should normally be loaded
automatically. This includes most PCI/PCI-Express cards as well as PCMCIA/
Express Cards on laptops. Many older ISA cards are supported as well.

ISDN is supported, but not during the installation.

2.1.6.1. Wireless Network Cards

Wireless networking is in general supported as well and a growing number of
wireless adapters are supported by the official Linux kernel, although many of
them do require firmware to be loaded.

If firmware is needed, the installer will prompt you to load firmware. See
Section 6.4, "Loading Missing Firmware" for detailed information on how to load
firmware during the installation.

Wireless NICs that are not supported by the official Linux kernel can generally
be made to work under Ubuntu, but are not supported during the installation.

If there is a problem with wireless and there is no other NIC you can use
during the installation, it is still possible to install Ubuntu using a full
CD-ROM or DVD image. Select the option to not configure a network and install
using only the packages available from the CD/DVD. You can then install the
driver and firmware you need after the installation is completed (after the
reboot) and configure your network manually.

In some cases the driver you need may not be available as an Ubuntu package.
You will then have to look if there is source code available in the internet
and compile the driver yourself. How to do this is outside the scope of this
manual. If no Linux driver is available, your last resort is to use the
ndiswrapper package, which allows you to use a Windows driver.

2.1.7. Braille Displays

Support for braille displays is determined by the underlying support found in
brltty. Most displays work under brltty, connected via either a serial port,
USB or bluetooth. Details on supported braille devices can be found on the
brltty website. Ubuntu 18.04 ships with brltty version 5.3.1.

2.1.8. Hardware Speech Synthesis

Support for hardware speech synthesis devices is determined by the underlying
support found in speakup. speakup only supports integrated boards and external
devices connected to a serial port (no USB, serial-to-USB or PCI adapters are
supported). Details on supported hardware speech synthesis devices can be found
on the speakup website. Ubuntu 18.04 ships with speakup version 3.1.6.

2.1.9. Peripherals and Other Hardware

Linux supports a large variety of hardware devices such as mice, printers,
scanners, PCMCIA/CardBus/ExpressCard and USB devices. However, most of these
devices are not required while installing the system.

USB hardware generally works fine. On some very old PC systems some USB
keyboards may require additional configuration (see Section 3.6.5, "Hardware
Issues to Watch Out For"). On modern PCs, USB keyboards and mice work without
requiring any specific configuration.

2.2. Devices Requiring Firmware

Besides the availability of a device driver, some hardware also requires
so-called firmware or microcode to be loaded into the device before it can
become operational. This is most common for network interface cards (especially
wireless NICs), but for example some USB devices and even some hard disk
controllers also require firmware. With many graphics cards, basic
functionality is available without additional firmware, but the use of advanced
features requires an appropriate firmware file to be installed in the system.

On many older devices which require firmware to work, the firmware file was
permanently placed in an EEPROM/Flash chip on the device itself by the
manufacturer. Nowadays most new devices do not have the firmware embedded this
way anymore, so the firmware file must be uploaded into the device by the host
operating system every time the system boots.

In most cases firmware is non-free according to the criteria used by the Ubuntu
project and thus cannot be included in the main distribution or in the
installation system. If the device driver itself is included in the
distribution and if Ubuntu legally can distribute the firmware, it will often
be available as a separate package from the non-free section of the archive.

However, this does not mean that such hardware cannot be used during an
installation. The debian-installer supports loading firmware files or packages
containing firmware from a removable medium, such as a USB stick. See
Section 6.4, "Loading Missing Firmware" for detailed information on how to load
firmware files or packages during the installation.

If the debian-installer prompts for a firmware file and you do not have this
firmware file available or do not want to install a non-free firmware file on
your system, you can try to proceed without loading the firmware. There are
several cases where a driver prompts for additional firmware because it may be
needed under certain circumstances, but the device does work without it on most
systems (this e.g. happens with certain network cards using the tg3 driver).

2.3. Purchasing Hardware Specifically for GNU/Linux

There are several vendors, who ship systems with Ubuntu or other distributions
of GNU/Linux pre-installed. You might pay more for the privilege, but it does
buy a level of peace of mind, since you can be sure that the hardware is
well-supported by GNU/Linux.

If you do have to buy a machine with Windows bundled, carefully read the
software license that comes with Windows; you may be able to reject the license
and obtain a rebate from your vendor. Searching the Internet for "Microsoft
Windows Rebate" will provide information on how to go about getting a rebate.

Whether or not you are purchasing a system with Linux bundled, or even a used
system, it is still important to check that your hardware is supported by the
Linux kernel. Check if your hardware is listed in the references found above.
Let your salesperson (if any) know that you're shopping for a Linux system.
Support Linux-friendly hardware vendors.

2.3.1. Avoid Proprietary or Closed Hardware

Some hardware manufacturers simply won't tell us how to write drivers for their
hardware. Others won't allow us access to the documentation without a
non-disclosure agreement that would prevent us from releasing the driver's
source code, which is one of the central elements of free software. Since we
haven't been granted access to usable documentation on these devices, they
simply won't work under Linux.

In many cases there are standards (or at least some de-facto standards)
describing how an operating system and its device drivers communicate with a
certain class of devices. All devices which comply to such a (de-facto-)
standard can be used with a single generic device driver and no device-specific
drivers are required. With some kinds of hardware (e.g. USB "Human Interface
Devices", i.e. keyboards, mice, etc., and USB mass storage devices like USB
flash disks and memory card readers) this works very well and practically every
device sold in the market is standards-compliant.

In other fields, among them e.g. printers, this is unfortunately not the case.
While there are many printers which can be addressed via a small set of
(de-facto-)standard control languages and therefore can be made to work without
problems in any operating system, there are quite a few models which only
understand proprietary control commands for which no usable documentation is
available and therefore either cannot be used at all on free operating systems
or can only be used with a vendor-supplied closed-source driver.

Even if there is a vendor-provided closed-source driver for such hardware when
purchasing the device, the practical lifespan of the device is limited by
driver availability. Nowadays product cycles have become short and it is not
uncommon that a short time after a consumer device has ceased production, no
driver updates get made available any more by the manufacturer. If the old
closed-source driver does not work anymore after a system update, an otherwise
perfectly working device becomes unusable due to lacking driver support and
there is nothing that can be done in this case. You should therefore avoid
buying closed hardware in the first place, regardless of the operating system
you want to use it with.

You can help improve this situation by encouraging manufacturers of closed
hardware to release the documentation and other resources necessary for us to
provide free drivers for their hardware.

2.4. Installation Media

This section will help you determine which different media types you can use to
install Ubuntu. There is a whole chapter devoted to media, Chapter 4, Obtaining
System Installation 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.

2.4.1. CD-ROM/DVD-ROM/BD-ROM

Note

Whenever you see "CD-ROM" in this manual, it applies to all of CD-ROMs,
DVD-ROMs and BD-ROMs, because all these technologies are really the same from
the operating system's point of view.

CD-ROM based installation is supported for most architectures.

On PCs SATA, IDE/ATAPI, USB and SCSI CD-ROMs are supported, as are FireWire
devices that are supported by the ohci1394 and sbp2 drivers.

2.4.2. USB Memory Stick

USB flash disks a.k.a. USB memory sticks have become a commonly used and cheap
storage device. Most modern computer systems also allow booting the
debian-installer from such a stick. Many modern computer systems, in particular
netbooks and thin laptops, do not have a CD/DVD-ROM drive anymore at all and
booting from USB media is the standard way of installing a new operating system
on them.

2.4.3. Network

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 without needing any
local media like CDs/DVDs or USB sticks. If you already have a
netboot-infrastructure available (i.e. you are already running DHCP and TFTP
services in your network), this allows an easy and fast deployment of a large
number of machines. Setting up the necessary infrastructure requires a certain
level of technical experience, so this is not recommended for novice users.

Diskless installation, using network booting from a local area network and
NFS-mounting of all local filesystems, is another option.

2.4.4. Hard Disk

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. This method is only recommended for special cases
when no other installation method is available.

2.4.5. Un*x or GNU system

If you are running another Unix-like system, you could use it to install Ubuntu
without using the debian-installer 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 Section D.4, "Installing Ubuntu from a Unix/Linux System". This
installation method is only recommended for advanced users when no other
installation method is available.

2.4.6. Supported Storage Systems

The Ubuntu installer contains a kernel which is built to maximize the number of
systems it runs on.

Generally, the Ubuntu installation system includes support for IDE (also known
as PATA) drives, SATA and SCSI controllers and drives, USB, and FireWire. The
supported file systems include FAT, Win-32 FAT extensions (VFAT) and NTFS.

2.5. Memory and Disk Space Requirements

You must have at least 80MB of memory and 680MB of hard disk space to perform a
normal installation. Note that these are fairly minimal numbers. For more
realistic figures, see Section 3.4, "Meeting Minimum Hardware Requirements".

Installation on systems with less memory or disk space available may be
possible but is only advised for experienced users.

Chapter 3. Before Installing Ubuntu

Table of Contents

3.1. Overview of the Installation Process
3.2. Back Up Your Existing Data!
3.3. Information You Will Need

    3.3.1. Documentation
    3.3.2. Finding Sources of Hardware Information
    3.3.3. Hardware Compatibility
    3.3.4. Network Settings

3.4. Meeting Minimum Hardware Requirements
3.5. Pre-Partitioning for Multi-Boot Systems
3.6. Pre-Installation Hardware and Operating System Setup

    3.6.1. Invoking the BIOS Set-Up Menu
    3.6.2. Boot Device Selection
    3.6.3. Systems with UEFI firmware
    3.6.4. Disabling the Windows 8 "fast boot" feature
    3.6.5. Hardware Issues to Watch Out For

This chapter deals with the preparation for installing Ubuntu before you even
boot the installer. This includes backing up your data, gathering information
about your hardware, and locating any necessary information.

3.1. Overview of the Installation Process

First, just a note about re-installations. With Ubuntu, a circumstance that
will require a complete re-installation of your system is very rare; perhaps
mechanical failure of the hard disk would be the most common case.

Many common operating systems may require a complete installation to be
performed when critical failures take place or for upgrades to new OS versions.
Even if a completely new installation isn't required, often the programs you
use must be re-installed to operate properly in the new OS.

Under Ubuntu, it is much more likely that your OS can be repaired rather than
replaced if things go wrong. Upgrades never require a wholesale installation;
you can always upgrade in-place. And the programs are almost always compatible
with successive OS releases. If a new program version requires newer supporting
software, the Ubuntu packaging system ensures that all the necessary software
is automatically identified and installed. The point is, much effort has been
put into avoiding the need for re-installation, so think of it as your very
last option. The installer is not designed to re-install over an existing
system.

Here's a road map for the steps you will take during the installation process.

 1. Back up any existing data or documents on the hard disk where you plan to
    install.

 2. Gather information about your computer and any needed documentation, before
    starting the installation.

 3. Locate and/or download the installer software and any specialized driver or
    firmware files your machine requires.

 4. Set up boot media such as CDs/DVDs/USB sticks or provide a network boot
    infrastructure from which the installer can be booted.

 5. Boot the installation system.

 6. Select the installation language.

 7. Activate the ethernet network connection, if available.

 8. If necessary, resize existing partitions on your target harddisk to make
    space for the installation.

 9. Create and mount the partitions on which Ubuntu will be installed.

10. Watch the automatic download/install/setup of the base system.

11. Install a boot loader which can start up Ubuntu and/or your existing
    system.

12. Load the newly installed system for the first time.

If you have problems during the installation, it helps to know which packages
are involved in which steps. Introducing the leading software actors in this
installation drama:

The installer software, debian-installer, is the primary concern of this
manual. It detects hardware and loads appropriate drivers, uses dhcp-client to
set up the network connection, runs debootstrap to install the base system
packages, and runs tasksel to allow you to install certain additional software.
Many more actors play smaller parts in this process, but debian-installer has
completed its task when you load the new system for the first time.

To tune the system to your needs, tasksel allows you to choose to install
various predefined bundles of software like a Web server or a Desktop
environment.

Just be aware that the X Window System is completely separate from
debian-installer, and in fact is much more complicated. Troubleshooting of the
X Window System is not within the scope of this manual.

3.2. Back Up Your Existing Data!

Before you start, make sure to back up every file that is now on your system.
If this is the first time a non-native operating system is going to be
installed on your computer, it is quite likely you will need to re-partition
your disk to make room for Ubuntu. Anytime you partition your disk, you run a
risk of losing everything on the disk, no matter what program you use to do it.
The programs used in the installation are quite reliable and most have seen
years of use; but they are also quite powerful and a false move can cost you.
Even after backing up, be careful and think about your answers and actions. Two
minutes of thinking can save hours of unnecessary work.

If you are creating a multi-boot system, make sure that you have the
distribution media of any other present operating systems on hand. Even though
this is normally not necessary, there might be situations in which you could be
required to reinstall your operating system's boot loader to make the system
boot or in a worst case even have to reinstall the complete operating system
and restore your previously made backup.

3.3. Information You Will Need

3.3.1. Documentation

3.3.1.1. Installation Manual

This document you are now reading, in plain ASCII, HTML or PDF format.

  • install.en.txt

  • install.en.html

  • install.en.pdf

3.3.1.2. Hardware documentation

Often contains useful information on configuring or using your hardware.

  • The Debian Wiki hardware page

3.3.2. Finding Sources of Hardware Information

In many cases, the installer will be able to automatically detect your
hardware. But to be prepared, we do recommend familiarizing yourself with your
hardware before the install.

Hardware information can be gathered from:

  • The manuals that come with each piece of hardware.

  • The BIOS setup screens of your computer. You can view these screens when
    you start your computer by pressing a combination of keys. Check your
    manual for the combination. Often, it is the Delete or the F2 key, but some
    manufacturers use other keys or key combinations. Usually upon starting the
    computer there will be a message stating which key to press to enter the
    setup screen.

  • The cases and boxes for each piece of hardware.

  • The System window in the Windows Control Panel.

  • System commands or tools in another operating system, including file
    manager displays. This source is especially useful for information about
    RAM and hard drive memory.

  • Your system administrator or Internet Service Provider. These sources can
    tell you the settings you need to set up your networking and e-mail.

Table 3.1. Hardware Information Helpful for an Install

┌──────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│     Hardware     │              Information You Might Need               │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                  │How many you have.                                     │
│                  ├───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                  │Their order on the system.                             │
│                  ├───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                  │Whether IDE (also known as PATA), SATA or SCSI.        │
│Hard Drives       ├───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                  │Available free space.                                  │
│                  ├───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                  │Partitions.                                            │
│                  ├───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                  │Partitions where other operating systems are installed.│
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│Network interfaces│Type/model of available network interfaces.            │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│Printer           │Model and manufacturer.                                │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│Video Card        │Type/model and manufacturer.                           │
└──────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘


3.3.3. Hardware Compatibility

Many products work without trouble on Linux. Moreover, hardware support in
Linux is improving daily. However, Linux still does not run as many different
types of hardware as some operating systems.

Drivers in Linux in most cases are not written for a certain "product" or "
brand" from a specific manufacturer, but for a certain hardware/chipset. Many
seemingly different products/brands are based on the same hardware design; it
is not uncommon that chip manufacturers provide so-called "reference designs"
for products based on their chips which are then used by several different
device manufacturers and sold under lots of different product or brand names.

This has advantages and disadvantages. An advantage is that a driver for one
chipset works with lots of different products from different manufacturers, as
long as their product is based on the same chipset. The disadvantage is that it
is not always easy to see which actual chipset is used in a certain product/
brand. Unfortunately sometimes device manufacturers change the hardware base of
their product without changing the product name or at least the product version
number, so that when having two items of the same brand/product name bought at
different times, they can sometimes be based on two different chipsets and
therefore use two different drivers or there might be no driver at all for one
of them.

For USB and PCI/PCI-Express/ExpressCard devices, a good way to find out on
which chipset they are based is to look at their device IDs. All USB/PCI/
PCI-Express/ExpressCard devices have so called "vendor" and "product" IDs, and
the combination of these two is usually the same for any product based on the
same chipset.

On Linux systems, these IDs can be read with the lsusb command for USB devices
and with the lspci -nn command for PCI/PCI-Express/ExpressCard devices. The
vendor and product IDs are usually given in the form of two hexadecimal
numbers, seperated by a colon, such as "1d6b:0001".

An example for the output of lsusb: "Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux
Foundation 2.0 root hub", whereby 1d6b is the vendor ID and 0002 is the product
ID.

An example for the output of lspci -nn for an Ethernet card: "03:00.0 Ethernet
controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express
Gigabit Ethernet controller [10ec:8168] (rev 06)". The IDs are given inside the
rightmost square brackets, i.e. here 10ec is the vendor- and 8168 is the
product ID.

As another example, a graphics card could give the following output: "04:00.0
VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RV710
[Radeon HD 4350] [1002:954f]".

On Windows systems, the IDs for a device can be found in the Windows device
manager on the tab "details", where the vendor ID is prefixed with VEN_ and the
product ID is prefixed with DEV_. On Windows 7 systems, you have to select the
property "Hardware IDs" in the device manager's details tab to actually see the
IDs, as they are not displayed by default.

Searching on the internet with the vendor/product ID, "Linux" and "driver" as
the search terms often results in information regarding the driver support
status for a certain chipset. If a search for the vendor/product ID does not
yield usable results, a search for the chip code names, which are also often
provided by lsusb and lspci ("RTL8111"/"RTL8168B" in the network card example
and "RV710" in the graphics card example), can help.

3.3.3.1. Testing hardware compatibility with a Live-System

Ubuntu is also available as a so-called "live system" for certain
architectures. A live system is a preconfigured ready-to-use system in a
compressed format that can be booted and used from a read-only medium like a CD
or DVD. Using it by default does not create any permanent changes on your
computer. You can change user settings and install additional programs from
within the live system, but all this only happens in the computer's RAM, i.e.
if you turn off the computer and boot the live system again, everything is
reset to its defaults. If you want to see whether your hardware is supported by
Ubuntu, the easiest way is to run a Ubuntu live system on it and try it out.

There are a few limitations in using a live system. The first is that as all
changes you do within the live system must be held in your computer's RAM, this
only works on systems with enough RAM to do that, so installing additional
large software packages may fail due to memory constraints. Another limitation
with regards to hardware compatibility testing is that the official Ubuntu live
system contains only free components, i.e. there are no non-free firmware files
included in it. Such non-free packages can of course be installed manually
within the system, but there is no automatic detection of required firmware
files like in the debian-installer, so installation of non-free components must
be done manually if needed.

Information about the available variants of the Ubuntu live images can be found
at the download web page.

3.3.4. Network Settings

If your computer is connected to a fixed network (i.e. an Ethernet or
equivalent connection -- not a dialup/PPP connection) which is administered by
somebody else, you should ask your network's system administrator for this
information:

  • Your host name (you may be able to decide this on your own).

  • Your domain name.

  • Your computer's IP address.

  • The netmask to use with your network.

  • The IP address of the default gateway system you should route to, if your
    network has a gateway.

  • The system on your network that you should use as a DNS (Domain Name
    Service) server.

If the network you are connected to uses DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration
Protocol) for configuring network settings, you don't need this information
because the DHCP server will provide it directly to your computer during the
installation process.

If you have internet access via DSL or cable modem (i.e. over a cable tv
network) and have a router (often provided preconfigured by your phone or catv
provider) which handles your network connectivity, DHCP is usually available by
default.

As a rule of thumb: if you run a Windows system in your home network and did
not have to manually perform any network settings there to achieve Internet
access, network connectivity in Ubuntu will also be configured automatically.

If you use a WLAN/WiFi network, you should find out:

  • The ESSID ("network name") of your wireless network.

  • The WEP or WPA/WPA2 security key to access the network (if applicable).

3.4. Meeting Minimum Hardware Requirements

Once you have gathered information about your computer's hardware, check that
your hardware will let you do the type of installation that you want to do.

Depending on your needs, you might manage with less than some of the
recommended hardware listed in the table below. However, most users risk being
frustrated if they ignore these suggestions.

A Pentium 4, 1GHz system is the minimum recommended for a desktop system.

Table 3.2. Recommended Minimum System Requirements

┌────────────┬─────────────┬─────────────────┬────────────┐
│Install Type│RAM (minimum)│RAM (recommended)│ Hard Drive │
├────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────┤
│No desktop  │128 megabytes│512 megabytes    │2 gigabytes │
├────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────┤
│With Desktop│256 megabytes│1 gigabyte       │10 gigabytes│
└────────────┴─────────────┴─────────────────┴────────────┘


The actual minimum memory requirements are a lot less than the numbers listed
in this table. Depending on the architecture, it is possible to install Ubuntu
with as little as 60MB (for amd64). The same goes for the disk space
requirements, especially if you pick and choose which applications to install;
see Section D.3, "Disk Space Needed" for additional information on disk space
requirements.

It is possible to run a graphical desktop environment on older or low-end
systems, but in that case it is recommended to install a window manager that is
less resource-hungry than those of the GNOME or KDE desktop environments;
alternatives include xfce4, icewm and wmaker, but there are others to choose
from.

It is practically impossible to give general memory or disk space requirements
for server installations as those very much depend on what the server is to be
used for.

Remember that these sizes don't include all the other materials which are
usually to be found, such as user files, mail, and data. It is always best to
be generous when considering the space for your own files and data.

Disk space required for the smooth operation of the Ubuntu system itself is
taken into account in these recommended system requirements. Notably, the /var
partition contains a lot of state information specific to Ubuntu in addition to
its regular contents, like logfiles. The dpkg files (with information on all
installed packages) can easily consume 40MB. Also, apt-get puts downloaded
packages here before they are installed. You should usually allocate at least
200MB for /var, and a lot more if you install a graphical desktop environment.

3.5. Pre-Partitioning for Multi-Boot Systems

Partitioning your disk simply refers to the act of breaking up your disk into
sections. Each section is then independent of the others. It's roughly
equivalent to putting up walls inside a house; if you add furniture to one room
it doesn't affect any other room.

If you already have an operating system on your system (Windows 9x, Windows NT/
2000/XP/2003/Vista/7, OS/2, MacOS, Solaris, FreeBSD, ...) which uses the whole
disk and you want to stick Ubuntu on the same disk, you will need to
repartition it. Ubuntu requires its own hard disk partitions. It cannot be
installed on Windows or Mac OS X partitions. It may be able to share some
partitions with other Unix systems, but that's not covered here. At the very
least you will need a dedicated partition for the Ubuntu root filesystem.

You can find information about your current partition setup by using a
partitioning tool for your current operating system, such as the integrated
Disk Manager in Windows or fdisk in DOS. Partitioning tools always provide a
way to show existing partitions without making changes.

In general, changing a partition with a file system already on it will destroy
any information there. Thus you should always make backups before doing any
repartitioning. Using the analogy of the house, you would probably want to move
all the furniture out of the way before moving a wall or you risk destroying
it.

Several modern operating systems offer the ability to move and resize certain
existing partitions without destroying their contents. This allows making space
for additional partitions without losing existing data. Even though this works
quite well in most cases, making changes to the partitioning of a disk is an
inherently dangerous action and should only be done after having made a full
backup of all data. For FAT/FAT32 and NTFS partitions as used by DOS and
Windows systems, the ability to move and resize them losslessly is provided
both by debian-installer as well as by the integrated Disk Manager of Windows
7.

To losslessly resize an existing FAT or NTFS partition from within
debian-installer, go to the partitioning step, select the option for manual
partitioning, select the partition to resize, and simply specify its new size.

Creating and deleting partitions can be done from within debian-installer as
well as from an existing operating system. As a rule of thumb, partitions
should be created by the system for which they are to be used, i.e. partitions
to be used by Ubuntu should be created from within debian-installer and
partitions to be used from another operating system should be created from
there. debian-installer is capable of creating non-Linux partitions, and
partitions created this way usually work without problems when used in other
operating systems, but there are a few rare corner cases in which this could
cause problems, so if you want to be sure, use the native partitioning tools to
create partitions for use by other operating systems.

If you are going to install more than one operating system on the same machine,
you should install all other system(s) before proceeding with the Ubuntu
installation. Windows and other OS installations may destroy your ability to
start Ubuntu, or encourage you to reformat non-native partitions.

You can recover from these actions or avoid them, but installing the native
system first saves you trouble.

3.6. Pre-Installation Hardware and Operating System Setup

This section will walk you through pre-installation hardware setup, if any,
that you will need to do prior to installing Ubuntu. Generally, this involves
checking and possibly changing BIOS/system firmware settings for your system.
The "BIOS" or "system firmware" is the core software used by the hardware; it
is most critically invoked during the bootstrap process (after power-up).

3.6.1. Invoking the BIOS Set-Up Menu

The BIOS provides the basic functions needed to boot your machine and to allow
your operating system to access your hardware. Your system provides a BIOS
setup menu, which is used to configure the BIOS. To enter the BIOS setup menu
you have to press a key or key combination after turning on the computer. Often
it is the Delete or the F2 key, but some manufacturers use other keys. Usually
upon starting the computer there will be a message stating which key to press
to enter the setup screen.

3.6.2. Boot Device Selection

Within the BIOS setup menu, you can select which devices shall be checked in
which sequence for a bootable operating system. Possible choices usually
include the internal harddisks, the CD/DVD-ROM drive and USB mass storage
devices such as USB sticks or external USB harddisks. On modern systems there
is also often a possibility to enable network booting via PXE.

Depending on the installation media (CD/DVD ROM, USB stick, network boot) you
have chosen you should enable the appropriate boot devices if they are not
already enabled.

Most BIOS versions allow you to call up a boot menu on system startup in which
you select from which device the computer should start for the current session.
If this option is available, the BIOS usually displays a short message like "
press F12 for boot menu" on system startup. The actual key used to select this
menu varies from system to system; commonly used keys are F12, F11 and F8.
Choosing a device from this menu does not change the default boot order of the
BIOS, i.e. you can start once from a USB stick while having configured the
internal harddisk as the normal primary boot device.

If your BIOS does not provide you with a boot menu to do ad-hoc choices of the
current boot device, you will have to change your BIOS setup to make the device
from which the debian-installer shall be booted the primary boot device.

Unfortunately some computers contain buggy BIOS versions. Booting
debian-installer from a USB stick might not work even if there is an
appropriate option in the BIOS setup menu and the stick is selected as the
primary boot device. On some of these systems using a USB stick as boot medium
is impossible; others can be tricked into booting from the stick by changing
the device type in the BIOS setup from the default "USB harddisk" or "USB stick
" to "USB ZIP" or "USB CDROM". In particular if you use an isohybrid CD/DVD
image on a USB stick (see Section 4.3.1, "Preparing a USB stick using a hybrid
CD or DVD image"), changing the device type to "USB CDROM" helps on some BIOSes
which will not boot from a USB stick in USB harddisk mode.

If you cannot manipulate the BIOS to boot directly from a USB stick you still
have the option of using an ISO copied to the stick. Boot debian-installer
using Section 4.4, "Preparing Files for Hard Disk Booting" and, after scanning
the hard drives for an installer ISO image, select the USB device and choose an
installation image.

3.6.3. Systems with UEFI firmware

UEFI ("Unified Extensible Firmware Interface") is a new kind of system firmware
that is used on many modern systems and is - among other uses - intended to
replace the classic PC BIOS.

Currently most PC systems that use UEFI also have a so-called "Compatibility
Support Module" (CSM) in the firmware, which provides excatly the same
interfaces to an operating system as a classic PC BIOS, so that software
written for the classic PC BIOS can be used unchanged. Nonetheless UEFI is
intended to one day completely replace the old PC BIOS without being fully
backwards-compatible and there are already a lot of systems with UEFI but
without CSM.

On systems with UEFI there are a few things to take into consideration when
installing an operating system. The way the firmware loads an operating system
is fundamentally different between the classic BIOS (or UEFI in CSM mode) and
native UEFI. One major difference is the way the harddisk partitions are
recorded on the harddisk. While the classic BIOS and UEFI in CSM mode use a DOS
partition table, native UEFI uses a different partitioning scheme called "GUID
Partition Table" (GPT). On a single disk, for all practical purposes only one
of the two can be used and in case of a multi-boot setup with different
operating systems on one disk, all of them must therefore use the same type of
partition table. Booting from a disk with GPT is only possible in native UEFI
mode, but using GPT becomes more and more common as hard disk sizes grow,
because the classic DOS partition table cannot address disks larger than about
2 Terabytes while GPT allows for far larger disks. The other major difference
between BIOS (or UEFI in CSM mode) and native UEFI is the location where boot
code is stored and in which format it has to be. This means that different
bootloaders are needed for each system.

The latter becomes important when booting debian-installer on a UEFI system
with CSM because debian-installer checks whether it was started on a BIOS- or
on a native UEFI system and installs the corresponding bootloader. Normally
this simply works but there can be a problem in multi-boot environments. On
some UEFI systems with CSM the default boot mode for removable devices can be
different from what is actually used when booting from hard disk, so when
booting the installer from a USB stick in a different mode from what is used
when booting another already installed operating system from the hard disk, the
wrong bootloader might be installed and the system might be unbootable after
finishing the installation. When choosing the boot device from a firmware boot
menu, some systems offer two seperate choices for each device, so that the user
can select whether booting shall happen in CSM or in native UEFI mode.

3.6.4. Disabling the Windows 8 "fast boot" feature

Windows 8 offers a feature called "fast boot" to cut down system startup time.
Technically, when this feature is enabled, Windows 8 does not do a real
shutdown and a real cold boot afterwards when ordered to shut down, but instead
does something resembling a partial suspend to disk to reduce the "boot" time.
As long as Windows 8 is the only operating system on the machine, this is
unproblematic, but it can result in problems and data loss when you have a dual
boot setup in which another operating system accesses the same filesystems as
Windows 8 does. In that case the real state of the filesystem can be different
from what Windows 8 believes it to be after the "boot" and this could cause
filesystem corruption upon further write accesses to the filesystem. Therefore
in a dual boot setup, to avoid filesystem corruption the "fast boot" feature
has to be disabled within Windows.

It may also be necessary to disable "fast boot" to even allow access to UEFI
setup to choose to boot another operating system or debian-installer. On some
UEFI systems, the firmware will reduce "boot" time by not initialising the
keyboard controller or USB hardware; in these cases, it is necessary to boot
into Windows and disable this feature to allow for a change of boot order.

3.6.5. Hardware Issues to Watch Out For

USB BIOS support and keyboards.  If you have no PS/2-style keyboard, but only a
USB model, on some very old PCs you may need to enable legacy keyboard
emulation in your BIOS setup to be able to use your keyboard in the bootloader
menu, but this is not an issue for modern systems. If your keyboard does not
work in the bootloader menu, consult your mainboard manual and look in the BIOS
for "Legacy keyboard emulation" or "USB keyboard support" options.

Chapter 4. Obtaining System Installation Media

Table of Contents

4.1. Official Ubuntu CD-ROMs
4.2. Downloading Files from Ubuntu Mirrors

    4.2.1. Where to Find Installation Images

4.3. Preparing Files for USB Memory Stick Booting

    4.3.1. Preparing a USB stick using a hybrid CD or DVD image
    4.3.2. Manually copying files to the USB stick
    4.3.3. Manually copying files to the USB stick -- the flexible way

4.4. Preparing Files for Hard Disk Booting

    4.4.1. Hard disk installer booting from Linux using LILO or GRUB

4.5. Preparing Files for TFTP Net Booting

    4.5.1. Setting up a DHCP server
    4.5.2. Setting up a BOOTP server
    4.5.3. Enabling the TFTP Server
    4.5.4. Move TFTP Images Into Place

4.6. Automatic Installation

    4.6.1. Automatic Installation Using the Ubuntu Installer
    4.6.2. Automatic Installation Using Kickstart

4.1. Official Ubuntu CD-ROMs

By far the easiest way to install Ubuntu is from an Official Ubuntu CD-ROM. You
may download the CD-ROM image from an Ubuntu mirror and make your own CD, if
you have a fast network connection and a CD burner. If you have an Ubuntu CD
and CDs are bootable on your machine, which is the case on all modern PCs, you
can skip right to Chapter 5, Booting the Installation System; much effort has
been expended to ensure the files most people need are there on the CD.

If your machine doesn't support CD booting (only relevant on very old PC
systems), but you do have a CD, you can use an alternative strategy such as 
hard disk, usb stick, net boot, or manually loading the kernel from the CD to
initially boot the system installer. The files you need for booting by another
means are also on the CD; the Ubuntu network archive and CD folder organization
are identical. So when archive file paths are given below for particular files
you need for booting, look for those files in the same directories and
subdirectories on your CD.

Once the installer is booted, it will be able to obtain all the other files it
needs from the CD.

If you don't have a CD, then you will need to download the installer system
files and place them on the hard disk or usb stick or a connected computer so
they can be used to boot the installer.

4.2. Downloading Files from Ubuntu Mirrors

To find the nearest (and thus probably the fastest) mirror, see the list of
Ubuntu mirrors.

When downloading files from an Ubuntu mirror using FTP, be sure to download the
files in binary mode, not text or automatic mode.

4.2.1. Where to Find Installation Images

The installation images are located on each Ubuntu mirror in the directory
ubuntu/dists/bionic/main/installer-i386/current/images/ -- the MANIFEST lists
each image and its purpose.

4.3. Preparing Files for USB Memory Stick Booting

To prepare the USB stick, you will need a system where GNU/Linux is already
running and where USB is supported. With current GNU/Linux systems the USB
stick should be automatically recognized when you insert it. If it is not you
should check that the usb-storage kernel module is loaded. When the USB stick
is inserted, it will be mapped to a device named /dev/sdX, where the "X" is a
letter in the range a-z. You should be able to see to which device the USB
stick was mapped by running the command dmesg after inserting it. To write to
your stick, you may have to turn off its write protection switch.

Warning

The procedures described in this section will destroy anything already on the
device! Make very sure that you use the correct device name for your USB stick.
If you use the wrong device the result could be that all information on for
example a hard disk could be lost.

4.3.1. Preparing a USB stick using a hybrid CD or DVD image

Ubuntu CD and DVD images can now be written directly to a USB stick, which is a
very easy way to make a bootable USB stick. Simply choose a CD or DVD image
that will fit on your USB stick. See Section 4.1, "Official Ubuntu CD-ROMs" to
get a CD or DVD image.

Alternatively, for very small USB sticks, only a few megabytes in size, you can
download the mini.iso image from the netboot directory (at the location
mentioned in Section 4.2.1, "Where to Find Installation Images").

The CD or DVD image you choose should be written directly to the USB stick,
overwriting its current contents. For example, when using an existing GNU/Linux
system, the CD or DVD image file can be written to a USB stick as follows,
after having made sure that the stick is unmounted:

# cp debian.iso /dev/sdX
# sync

The win32diskimager utility can be used under other operating systems to copy
the image.

Important

The image must be written to the whole-disk device and not a partition, e.g. /
dev/sdb and not /dev/sdb1. Do not use tools like unetbootin which alter the
image.

Important

Simply writing the CD or DVD image to USB like this should work fine for most
users. The other options below are more complex, mainly for people with
specialised needs.

The hybrid image on the stick does not occupy all the storage space, so it may
be worth considering using the free space to hold firmware files or packages or
any other files of your choice. This could be useful if you have only one stick
or just want to keep everything you need on one device.

Create a second, FAT partition on the stick, mount the partition and copy or
unpack the firmware onto it. For example:

# mount /dev/sdX2 /mnt
# cd /mnt
# tar zxvf /path/to/firmware.tar.gz
# cd /
# umount /mnt

You might have written the mini.iso to the USB stick. In this case the second
partition doesn't have to be created as, very nicely, it will already be
present. Unplugging and replugging the USB stick should make the two partitions
visible.

4.3.2. Manually copying files to the USB stick

An alternative way to set up your USB stick is to manually copy the installer
files, and also a CD image to it. Note that the USB stick should be at least 1
GB in size (smaller setups are possible if you follow Section 4.3.3, "Manually
copying files to the USB stick -- the flexible way").

There is an all-in-one file netboot/boot.img.gz which contains all the
installer files (including the kernel) as well as syslinux and its
configuration file .

To use this image simply extract it directly to a partition on your USB stick:

# zcat boot.img.gz > /dev/sdX1

4.3.3. Manually copying files to the USB stick -- the flexible way

If you like more flexibility or just want to know what's going on, you should
use the following method to put the files on your stick. One advantage of using
this method is that -- if the capacity of your USB stick is large enough -- you
have the option of copying any ISO image, even a DVD image, to it.

4.3.3.1. Partitioning the USB stick

We will show how to set up the memory stick to use the first partition, instead
of the entire device.

Note

Since most USB sticks come pre-configured with a single FAT16 partition, you
probably won't have to repartition or reformat the stick. If you have to do
that anyway, use cfdisk or any other partitioning tool to create a FAT16
partition^[2], install an MBR using:

# install-mbr /dev/sdX

The install-mbr command is contained in the mbr Ubuntu package. Then create the
filesystem using:

# mkdosfs /dev/sdX1

Take care that you use the correct device name for your USB stick. The mkdosfs
command is contained in the dosfstools Ubuntu package.

In order to start the kernel after booting from the USB stick, we will put a
boot loader on the stick. Although any boot loader (e.g. lilo) should work,
it's convenient to use syslinux, since it uses a FAT16 partition and can be
reconfigured by just editing a text file. Any operating system which supports
the FAT file system can be used to make changes to the configuration of the
boot loader.

To put syslinux on the FAT16 partition on your USB stick, install the syslinux
and mtools packages on your system, and do:

# syslinux /dev/sdX1

Again, take care that you use the correct device name. The partition must not
be mounted when starting syslinux. This procedure writes a boot sector to the
partition and creates the file ldlinux.sys which contains the boot loader code.

4.3.3.2. Adding the installer image

Mount the partition (mount /dev/sdX1 /mnt) and copy the following installer
image files to the stick:

  • vmlinuz or linux (kernel binary)

  • initrd.gz (initial ramdisk image)

You can choose between either the text-based or the graphical version of the
installer. The latter can be found in the gtk subdirectory. If you want to
rename the files, please note that syslinux can only process DOS (8.3) file
names.

Next you should create a syslinux.cfg configuration file, which at a bare
minimum should contain the following line (change the name of the kernel binary
to "linux" if you used a netboot image):

default vmlinuz initrd=initrd.gz

For the graphical installer you should add vga=788 to the line. Other
parameters can be appended as desired.

To enable the boot prompt to permit further parameter appending, add a prompt 1
line.

If you used an hd-media image, you should now copy the ISO file of an Ubuntu
ISO image^[3] onto the stick. When you are done, unmount the USB memory stick (
umount /mnt).

4.4. Preparing Files for Hard Disk Booting

The installer may be booted using boot files placed on an existing hard drive
partition, either launched from another operating system or by invoking a boot
loader directly from the BIOS.

A full, "pure network" installation can be achieved using this technique. This
avoids all hassles of removable media, like finding and burning CD images or
struggling with too numerous and unreliable floppy disks.

4.4.1. Hard disk installer booting from Linux using LILO or GRUB

This section explains how to add to or even replace an existing linux
installation using either LILO or GRUB.

At boot time, both bootloaders support loading in memory not only the kernel,
but also a disk image. This RAM disk can be used as the root file-system by the
kernel.

Copy the following files from the Ubuntu archives to a convenient location on
your hard drive (note that LILO can not boot from files on an NTFS file
system), for instance to /boot/newinstall/.

  • vmlinuz (kernel binary)

  • initrd.gz (ramdisk image)

Finally, to configure the bootloader proceed to Section 5.1.3, "Booting from
Linux using LILO or GRUB".

4.5. Preparing Files for TFTP Net Booting

If your machine is connected to a local area network, you may be able to boot
it over the network from another machine, using TFTP. If you intend to boot the
installation system from another machine, the boot files will need to be placed
in specific locations on that machine, and the machine configured to support
booting of your specific machine.

You need to set up a TFTP server, and for many machines a DHCP server, or BOOTP
server.

BOOTP is an IP protocol that informs a computer of its IP address and where on
the network to obtain a boot image. The DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration
Protocol) is a more flexible, backwards-compatible extension of BOOTP. Some
systems can only be configured via DHCP.

The Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) is used to serve the boot image to
the client. Theoretically, any server, on any platform, which implements these
protocols, may be used. In the examples in this section, we shall provide
commands for SunOS 4.x, SunOS 5.x (a.k.a. Solaris), and GNU/Linux.

Note

For an Ubuntu or Debian server we recommend tftpd-hpa. It's written by the same
author as the syslinux bootloader and is therefore least likely to cause
issues. A good alternative is atftpd.

4.5.1. Setting up a DHCP server

One free software DHCP server is ISC dhcpd. For Ubuntu, the isc-dhcp-server
package is recommended. Here is a sample configuration file for it (see /etc/
dhcp/dhcpd.conf):

option domain-name "example.com";
option domain-name-servers ns1.example.com;
option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
default-lease-time 600;
max-lease-time 7200;
server-name "servername";

subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
  range 192.168.1.200 192.168.1.253;
  option routers 192.168.1.1;
}

host clientname {
  filename "/tftpboot.img";
  server-name "servername";
  next-server servername;
  hardware ethernet 01:23:45:67:89:AB;
  fixed-address 192.168.1.90;
}

In this example, there is one server servername which performs all of the work
of DHCP server, TFTP server, and network gateway. You will almost certainly
need to change the domain-name options, as well as the server name and client
hardware address. The filename option should be the name of the file which will
be retrieved via TFTP.

After you have edited the dhcpd configuration file, restart it with /etc/init.d
/isc-dhcp-server restart.

4.5.1.1. Enabling PXE Booting in the DHCP configuration

Here is another example for a dhcp.conf using the Pre-boot Execution
Environment (PXE) method of TFTP.

option domain-name "example.com";

default-lease-time 600;
max-lease-time 7200;

allow booting;
allow bootp;

# The next paragraph needs to be modified to fit your case
subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
  range 192.168.1.200 192.168.1.253;
  option broadcast-address 192.168.1.255;
# the gateway address which can be different
# (access to the internet for instance)
  option routers 192.168.1.1;
# indicate the dns you want to use
  option domain-name-servers 192.168.1.3;
}

group {
  next-server 192.168.1.3;
  host tftpclient {
# tftp client hardware address
  hardware ethernet  00:10:DC:27:6C:15;
  filename "pxelinux.0";
 }
}

Note that for PXE booting, the client filename pxelinux.0 is a boot loader, not
a kernel image (see Section 4.5.4, "Move TFTP Images Into Place" below).

4.5.2. Setting up a BOOTP server

There are two BOOTP servers available for GNU/Linux. The first is CMU bootpd.
The other is actually a DHCP server: ISC dhcpd. In Ubuntu these are contained
in the bootp and isc-dhcp-server packages respectively.

To use CMU bootpd, you must first uncomment (or add) the relevant line in /etc/
inetd.conf. On Debian or Ubuntu, you can run update-inetd --enable bootps, then
/etc/init.d/inetd reload to do so. Just in case your BOOTP server does not run
Debian or Ubuntu, the line in question should look like:

bootps  dgram  udp  wait  root  /usr/sbin/bootpd  bootpd -i -t 120

Now, you must create an /etc/bootptab file. This has the same sort of familiar
and cryptic format as the good old BSD printcap, termcap, and disktab files.
See the bootptab manual page for more information. For CMU bootpd, you will
need to know the hardware (MAC) address of the client. Here is an example /etc/
bootptab:

client:\
  hd=/tftpboot:\
  bf=tftpboot.img:\
  ip=192.168.1.90:\
  sm=255.255.255.0:\
  sa=192.168.1.1:\
  ha=0123456789AB:

You will need to change at least the "ha" option, which specifies the hardware
address of the client. The "bf" option specifies the file a client should
retrieve via TFTP; see Section 4.5.4, "Move TFTP Images Into Place" for more
details.

By contrast, setting up BOOTP with ISC dhcpd is really easy, because it treats
BOOTP clients as a moderately special case of DHCP clients. Some architectures
require a complex configuration for booting clients via BOOTP. If yours is one
of those, read the section Section 4.5.1, "Setting up a DHCP server". Otherwise
you will probably be able to get away with simply adding the allow bootp
directive to the configuration block for the subnet containing the client in /
etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf, and restart dhcpd with /etc/init.d/isc-dhcp-server restart
.

4.5.3. Enabling the TFTP Server

To get the TFTP server ready to go, you should first make sure that tftpd is
enabled.

In the case of tftpd-hpa there are two ways the service can be run. It can be
started on demand by the system's inetd daemon, or it can be set up to run as
an independent daemon. Which of these methods is used is selected when the
package is installed and can be changed by reconfiguring the package.

Note

Historically, TFTP servers used /tftpboot as directory to serve images from.
However, Ubuntu packages may use other directories to comply with the
Filesystem Hierarchy Standard. For example, tftpd-hpa by default uses /srv/
tftp. You may have to adjust the configuration examples in this section
accordingly.

All in.tftpd alternatives available in Ubuntu should log TFTP requests to the
system logs by default. Some of them support a -v argument to increase
verbosity. It is recommended to check these log messages in case of boot
problems as they are a good starting point for diagnosing the cause of errors.

4.5.4. Move TFTP Images Into Place

Next, place the TFTP boot image you need, as found in Section 4.2.1, "Where to
Find Installation Images", in the tftpd boot image directory. You may have to
make a link from that file to the file which tftpd will use for booting a
particular client. Unfortunately, the file name is determined by the TFTP
client, and there are no strong standards.

For PXE booting, everything you should need is set up in the netboot/
netboot.tar.gz tarball. Simply extract this tarball into the tftpd boot image
directory. Make sure your dhcp server is configured to pass pxelinux.0 to tftpd
as the filename to boot.

4.6. Automatic Installation

For installing on multiple computers it's possible to do fully automatic
installations using the Ubuntu Installer itself.

4.6.1. Automatic Installation Using the Ubuntu Installer

The Ubuntu Installer supports automating installs via preconfiguration files. A
preconfiguration file can be loaded from the network or from removable media,
and used to fill in answers to questions asked during the installation process.

Full documentation on preseeding including a working example that you can edit
is in Appendix B, Automating the installation using preseeding.

4.6.2. Automatic Installation Using Kickstart

The Ubuntu installer supports automating installs using Kickstart files, as
designed by Red Hat for use in their Anaconda installer. This method is not as
flexible as the preconfiguration file method above, but it requires less
knowledge of how the installer works.

This section documents only the basics, and differences between Anaconda and
the Ubuntu installer. Refer to the Red Hat documentation for detailed
instructions.

To generate a Kickstart file, install the system-config-kickstart package and
run system-config-kickstart. This offers you a graphical user interface to the
various options available.

Once you have a Kickstart file, you can edit it if necessary, and place it on a
web, FTP, or NFS server, or copy it onto the installer's boot media. Wherever
you place the file, you need to pass a parameter to the installer at boot time
to tell it to use the file.

To make the installer use a Kickstart file downloaded from a web or FTP server,
add ks=http://url/to/ks.cfg or ks=ftp://url/to/ks.cfg respectively to the
kernel boot parameters. This requires the installer to be able to set up the
network via DHCP on the first connected interface without asking any questions;
you may also need to add ksdevice=eth1 or similar if the installer fails to
determine the correct interface automatically.

Similarly, to make the installer use a Kickstart file on an NFS server, add ks=
nfs:server:/path/to/ks.cfg to the kernel boot parameters. The method supported
by Anaconda of adding a plain "ks" boot parameter to work out the location of
the Kickstart file from a DHCP response is not yet supported by the Ubuntu
installer.

To place a Kickstart file on a CD, you would need to remaster the ISO image to
include your Kickstart file, and add ks=cdrom:/path/to/ks.cfg to the kernel
boot parameters. See the manual page for mkisofs for details. Alternatively,
put the Kickstart file on a floppy, and add ks=floppy:/path/to/ks.cfg to the
kernel boot parameters.

4.6.2.1. Additions

The Ubuntu installer supports a few extensions to Kickstart that were needed to
support automatic installations of Ubuntu:

  • The rootpw command now takes the --disabled option to disable the root
    password. If this is used, the initial user will be given root privileges
    via sudo.

  • A new user command has been added to control the creation of the initial
    user:

    user joe --fullname "Joe User" --password iamjoe

    The --disabled option prevents any non-root users from being created. The
    --fullname option specifies the user's full name, as opposed to the Unix
    username. The --password option supplies the user's password, by default in
    the clear (in which case make sure your Kickstart file is kept
    confidential!); the --iscrypted option may be used to state that the
    password is already MD5-hashed.

  • A new preseed command has been added to provide a convenient way to preseed
    additional items in the debconf database that are not directly accessible
    using the ordinary Kickstart syntax:

    preseed --owner gdm shared/default-x-display-manager select gdm

    Note that if the value contains any special characters, then the value must
    be quoted, as follows:

    preseed preseed/late_command string "sed -i 's/foo/bar/g' /target/etc/hosts"

    The --owner option sets the name of the package that owns the question; if
    omitted, it defaults to d-i, which is generally appropriate for items
    affecting the first stage of the installer. The three mandatory arguments
    are the question name, question type, and answer, in that order, just as
    would be supplied as input to the debconf-set-selections command.

  • As of Ubuntu 6.10, the keyboard option takes X layout names. To use an X
    keyboard variant, set this option to layout_variant, with appropriate
    values of layout and variant. For example, in_guj selects the Gujarati
    variant of the Indian layout.

  • You may use the apt-install command to install packages in %post --nochroot
    scripts (although you might also choose to generate a %packages section in
    a %pre script and include it using %include). Note that this does not work
    if the post-installation script is run in the chroot environment.

4.6.2.2. Missing features

As yet, the Ubuntu installer only supports a subset of Kickstart's features.
The following is a brief summary of features that are known to be missing:

  • LDAP, Kerberos 5, Hesiod, and Samba authentication.

  • The auth --enablecache command to enable nscd.

  • The bootloader --linear, --nolinear, and --lba32 options for detailed LILO
    configuration.

  • Upgrades. To upgrade from one Ubuntu release to another, use the facilities
    provided by apt and its frontends.

  • Partitioning of multiple drives. Due to current limitations in the
    partition manager, it is only possible to partition a single drive.

  • Using the device command to install extra kernel modules.

  • Driver disks.

  • Firewall configuration.

  • Installation from an archive on a local hard disk or from an NFS archive.

  • The lilocheck command to check for an existing LILO installation.

  • The logvol --percent, --bytes-per-inode, and --fsoptions options for
    certain kinds of detailed Logical Volume Management (LVM) configuration.
    (LVM configuration in general is experimentally supported as of Ubuntu
    9.04; please let us know about your experiences with it.)

  • Restrictions of a partition to a particular disk or device, and
    specifications of the starting or ending cylinder for a partition.

  • Checking a partition for bad sectors.

  • RAID configuration.

  • The xconfig --monitor option to use a specified monitor name.

  • Most package groups. As special cases, the "Ubuntu Desktop" and "Kubuntu
    Desktop" groups install the standard Ubuntu or Kubuntu desktop systems
    respectively, and any group name not containing a space (for example,
    "ubuntu-desktop") causes packages with the corresponding Task: header in
    the Packages file to be installed.

  • Exclusions in %packages sections are no longer supported as of Ubuntu 6.10,
    as a casualty of other improvements. You may need to use a %post script
    instead to remove unnecessary packages.

  • Pre-installation scripts and non-chrooted post-installation scripts may
    only be shell scripts; other interpreters are not available at this point
    in the installation.

4.6.2.3. Example

Here is an example Kickstart file that can be used as a starting point:

#
#Generic Kickstart template for Ubuntu
#Platform: x86 and x86-64
#

#System language
lang en_US

#Language modules to install
langsupport en_US

#System keyboard
keyboard us

#System mouse
mouse

#System timezone
timezone America/New_York

#Root password
rootpw --disabled

#Initial user (user with sudo capabilities)
user ubuntu --fullname "Ubuntu User" --password root4me2

#Reboot after installation
reboot

#Use text mode install
text

#Install OS instead of upgrade
install

#Installation media
cdrom
#nfs --server=server.com --dir=/path/to/ubuntu/

#System bootloader configuration
bootloader --location=mbr

#Clear the Master Boot Record
zerombr yes

#Partition clearing information
clearpart --all --initlabel

#Basic disk partition
part / --fstype ext4 --size 1 --grow --asprimary
part swap --size 1024
part /boot --fstype ext4 --size 256 --asprimary

#Advanced partition
#part /boot --fstype=ext4 --size=500 --asprimary
#part pv.aQcByA-UM0N-siuB-Y96L-rmd3-n6vz-NMo8Vr --grow --size=1
#volgroup vg_mygroup --pesize=4096 pv.aQcByA-UM0N-siuB-Y96L-rmd3-n6vz-NMo8Vr
#logvol / --fstype=ext4 --name=lv_root --vgname=vg_mygroup --grow --size=10240 --maxsize=20480
#logvol swap --name=lv_swap --vgname=vg_mygroup --grow --size=1024 --maxsize=8192

#System authorization infomation
auth  --useshadow  --enablemd5

#Network information
network --bootproto=dhcp --device=eth0

#Firewall configuration
firewall --disabled --trust=eth0 --ssh

#Do not configure the X Window System
skipx


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

^[2] Don't forget to set the "bootable" bootable flag.

^[3] You can use either a netinst or a full CD image (see Section 4.1,
"Official Ubuntu CD-ROMs"). Be sure to select one that fits. Note that the "
netboot mini.iso" image is not usable for this purpose.

Chapter 5. Booting the Installation System

Table of Contents

5.1. Booting the Installer on 32-bit PC

    5.1.1. Booting from USB Memory Stick
    5.1.2. Booting from a CD-ROM
    5.1.3. Booting from Linux using LILO or GRUB
    5.1.4. Booting with TFTP
    5.1.5. The Boot Screen

5.2. Accessibility

    5.2.1. Installer front-end
    5.2.2. USB Braille Displays
    5.2.3. Serial Braille Displays
    5.2.4. Software Speech Synthesis
    5.2.5. Hardware Speech Synthesis
    5.2.6. Board Devices
    5.2.7. High-Contrast Theme
    5.2.8. Zoom
    5.2.9. Preseeding
    5.2.10. Accessibility of the installed system

5.3. Boot Parameters

    5.3.1. Boot console
    5.3.2. Ubuntu Installer Parameters
    5.3.3. Using boot parameters to answer questions
    5.3.4. Passing parameters to kernel modules
    5.3.5. Blacklisting kernel modules

5.4. Troubleshooting the Installation Process

    5.4.1. CD-ROM Reliability
    5.4.2. Boot Configuration
    5.4.3. Software Speech Synthesis
    5.4.4. Common 32-bit PC Installation Problems
    5.4.5. Interpreting the Kernel Startup Messages
    5.4.6. Reporting Installation Problems
    5.4.7. Submitting Installation Reports

5.1. Booting the Installer on 32-bit PC

Warning

If you have any other operating systems on your system that you wish to keep
(dual boot setup), you should make sure that they have been properly shut down 
before you boot the installer. Installing an operating system while another
operating system is in hibernation (has been suspended to disk) could result in
loss of, or damage to the state of the suspended operating system which could
cause problems when it is rebooted.

5.1.1. Booting from USB Memory Stick

If your computer will boot from USB, this will probably be the easiest route
for installation. Assuming you have prepared everything from Section 3.6.2,
"Boot Device Selection" and Section 4.3, "Preparing Files for USB Memory Stick
Booting", just plug your USB stick into some free USB connector and reboot the
computer. The system should boot up, and unless you have used the flexible way
to build the stick and not enabled it, you should be presented with a graphical
boot menu (on hardware that supports it). Here you can select various installer
options, or just hit Enter.

5.1.2. Booting from a CD-ROM

The easiest route for most people will be to use an Ubuntu CD. If you have a
CD, and if your machine supports booting directly off the CD, great! Simply 
configure your system for booting off a CD as described in Section 3.6.2, "Boot
Device Selection", insert your CD, reboot, and proceed to the next chapter.

Note that certain CD drives may require special drivers, and thus be
inaccessible in the early installation stages. If it turns out the standard way
of booting off a CD doesn't work for your hardware, revisit this chapter and
read about alternate kernels and installation methods which may work for you.

Even if you cannot boot from CD-ROM, you can probably install the Ubuntu system
components and any packages you want from CD-ROM. Simply boot using a different
medium and when it's time to install the operating system, base system, and any
additional packages, point the installation system at the CD-ROM drive.

If you have problems booting, see Section 5.4, "Troubleshooting the
Installation Process".

5.1.3. 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 Section 4.4, "Preparing Files for Hard Disk
Booting".

If you intend to use the hard drive only for booting and then download
everything over the network, you should download the netboot/ubuntu-installer/
i386/initrd.gz file and its corresponding kernel netboot/ubuntu-installer/i386/
linux. This will allow you to repartition the hard disk from which you boot the
installer, although you should do so with care.

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 GRUB1 is quite similar. Locate your menu.lst in the /boot/
grub/ directory (or sometimes /boot/boot/grub/) and add an entry for the
installer, for example (assuming /boot is on the first partition of the first
disk in the system):

title  New Install
root   (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/newinstall/vmlinuz
initrd /boot/newinstall/initrd.gz

The procedure for GRUB2 is very similar. The file is named grub.cfg instead of
menu.lst. An entry for the installer would be for instance for example:

menuentry 'New Install' {
insmod part_msdos
insmod ext2
set root='(hd0,msdos1)'
linux /boot/newinstall/vmlinuz
initrd /boot/newinstall/initrd.gz
}

From here on, there should be no difference between GRUB or LILO.

5.1.4. Booting with TFTP

Booting from the network requires that you have a network connection and a TFTP
network boot server (and probably also a DHCP, RARP, or BOOTP server for
automatic network configuration).

The server-side setup to support network booting is described in Section 4.5,
"Preparing Files for TFTP Net Booting".

There are various ways to do a TFTP boot on i386.

5.1.4.1. NIC or Motherboard that support PXE

It could be that your Network Interface Card or Motherboard provides PXE boot
functionality. This is a Intel (tm) re-implementation of TFTP boot. If so, you
may be able to configure your BIOS to boot from the network.

5.1.4.2. NIC with Network BootROM

It could be that your Network Interface Card provides TFTP boot functionality.

5.1.4.3. Etherboot

The etherboot project provides bootdiskettes and even bootroms that do a
TFTPboot.

5.1.5. The Boot Screen

When the installer boots, you should be presented with a friendly graphical
screen showing the Ubuntu logo and a menu:

Installer boot menu

Install
Advanced options             >
Help
Install with speech synthesis

Note

This graphical screen will look very slightly different depending on how your
computer has booted (BIOS or UEFI), but the same options will be shown.

Depending on the installation method you are using, the "Graphical install"
option may not be available.

For a normal installation, select the "Install" entry -- using either the arrow
keys on your keyboard or by typing the first (highlighted) letter -- and press 
Enter to boot the installer. The "Install" entry is already selected by
default.

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 Tab (BIOS boot) or e (UEFI boot). This will display the boot
command for the selected menu entry and allow you to edit it to suit your
needs. The help screens (see below) list some common possible options. Press 
Enter (BIOS boot) or F10 (UEFI boot) to boot the installer with your options;
pressing Esc 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. To return to the boot
menu after the help screens have been displayed, type 'menu' at the boot prompt
and press Enter. 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 Enter 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).

Note

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.

Note

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 Esc to get a
text boot prompt, or (equally blindly) press "H" followed by Enter 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 vga=normal fb=false to the boot
prompt, as described in the help text.

5.2. Accessibility

Some users may need specific support because of e.g. some visual impairment. 
USB braille displays are detected automatically (not serial displays connected
via a serial-to-USB converter), but most other accessibility features have to
be enabled manually. On machines that support it, the boot menu emits a beep
when it is ready to receive keystrokes. Some boot parameters can then be
appended to enable accessibility features (see also Section 5.1.5, "The Boot
Screen"). Note that on most architectures the boot loader interprets your
keyboard as a QWERTY keyboard.

5.2.1. Installer front-end

The Ubuntu installer supports several front-ends for asking questions, with
varying convenience for accessibility: notably, text uses plain text while newt
uses text-based dialog boxes. The choice can be made at the boot prompt, see
the documentation for DEBIAN_FRONTEND in Section 5.3.2, "Ubuntu Installer
Parameters".

5.2.2. USB Braille Displays

USB braille displays should be automatically detected. A textual version of the
installer will then be automatically selected, and support for the braille
display will be automatically installed on the target system. You can thus just
press Enter at the boot menu. Once brltty is started, you can choose a braille
table by entering the preference menu. Documentation on key bindings for
braille devices is available on the brltty website.

5.2.3. Serial Braille Displays

Serial braille displays cannot safely be automatically detected (since that may
damage some of them). You thus need to append the brltty=driver,port boot
parameter to tell brltty which driver and port it should use. driver should be
replaced by the two-letter driver code for your terminal (see the BRLTTY manual
). port should be replaced by the name of the serial port the display is
connected to, ttyS0 is the default, ttyUSB0 can be typically used when using a
serial-to-USB converter. A third parameter can be provided, to choose the name
of the braille table to be used (see the BRLTTY manual); the English table is
the default. Note that the table can be changed later by entering the
preference menu. A fourth parameter can be provided to pass parameters to the
braille driver, such as protocol=foo which is needed for some rare models.
Documentation on key bindings for braille devices is available on the brltty
website.

5.2.4. Software Speech Synthesis

Support for software speech synthesis is available on all installer images
which have the graphical installer, i.e. all netinst, CD and DVD images, and
the netboot gtk variant. It can be activated by selecting it in the boot menu
by typing s Enter. The textual version of the installer will then be
automatically selected, and support for software speech synthesis will be
automatically installed on the target system.

The first question (language) is spoken in english, and the remainder of
installation is spoken in the selected language (if available in espeak).

The default speech rate is quite slow. To make it faster, press CapsLock+6. To
make it slower, press CapsLock+5. The default volume should be medium. To make
it louder, press CapsLock+2. To make it quieter, press CapsLock+1. To get more
details on the browsing shortcuts, see the Speakup guide.

5.2.5. Hardware Speech Synthesis

Support for hardware speech synthesis devices is available on all installer
images which have the graphical installer, i.e. all netinst, CD and DVD images,
and the netboot gtk variant. You thus need to select a "Graphical install"
entry in the boot menu.

Hardware speech synthesis devices cannot be automatically detected. You thus
need to append the speakup.synth=driver boot parameter to tell speakup which
driver it should use. driver should be replaced by the driver code for your
device (see driver code list). The textual version of the installer will then
be automatically selected, and support for the speech synthesis device will be
automatically installed on the target system.

5.2.6. Board Devices

Some accessibility devices are actual boards that are plugged inside the
machine and that read text directly from the video memory. To get them to work
framebuffer support must be disabled by using the vga=normal fb=false boot
parameter. This will however reduce the number of available languages.

If desired a textual version of the bootloader can be activated before adding
the boot parameter by typing h Enter.

5.2.7. High-Contrast Theme

For users with low vision, the installer can use a high-contrast color theme
that makes it more readable. To enable it, append the theme=dark boot
parameter.

5.2.8. Zoom

For users with low vision, the graphical installer has a very basic zoom
support: the Control++ and Control+- shortcuts increase and decrease the font
size.

5.2.9. Preseeding

Alternatively, Ubuntu can be installed completely automatically by using
preseeding. This is documented in Appendix B, Automating the installation using
preseeding.

5.2.10. Accessibility of the installed system

Documentation on accessibility of the installed system is available on the
Debian Accessibility wiki page.

5.3. Boot Parameters

Boot parameters are Linux kernel parameters which are generally used to make
sure that peripherals are dealt with properly. For the most part, the kernel
can auto-detect information about your peripherals. However, in some cases
you'll have to help the kernel a bit.

If this is the first time you're booting the system, try the default boot
parameters (i.e., don't try setting parameters) and see if it works correctly.
It probably will. If not, you can reboot later and look for any special
parameters that inform the system about your hardware.

Information on many boot parameters can be found in the Linux BootPrompt HOWTO,
including tips for obscure hardware. This section contains only a sketch of the
most salient parameters. Some common gotchas are included below in Section 5.4,
"Troubleshooting the Installation Process".

5.3.1. Boot console

If you are booting with a serial console, generally the kernel will autodetect
this. If you have a videocard (framebuffer) and a keyboard also attached to the
computer which you wish to boot via serial console, you may have to pass the
console=device argument to the kernel, where device is your serial device,
which is usually something like ttyS0.

You may need to specify parameters for the serial port, such as speed and
parity, for instance console=ttyS0,9600n8; other typical speeds may be 57600 or
115200. Be sure to specify this option after "---", so that it is copied into
the bootloader configuration for the installed system (if supported by the
installer for the bootloader).

In order to ensure the terminal type used by the installer matches your
terminal emulator, the parameter TERM=type can be added. Note that the
installer only supports the following terminal types: linux, bterm, ansi, vt102
and dumb. The default for serial console in debian-installer is vt102. If you
are using a virtualization tool which does not provide conversion into such
terminals types itself, e.g. QEMU/KVM, you can start it inside a screen
session. That will indeed perform translation into the screen terminal type,
which is very close to vt102.

5.3.2. Ubuntu Installer Parameters

The installation system recognizes a few additional boot parameters^[4] which
may be useful.

A number of parameters have a "short form" that helps avoid the limitations of
the kernel command line options and makes entering the parameters easier. If a
parameter has a short form, it will be listed in brackets behind the (normal)
long form. Examples in this manual will normally use the short form too.

debconf/priority (priority)

    This parameter sets the lowest priority of messages to be displayed.

    The default installation uses priority=high. This means that both high and
    critical priority messages are shown, but medium and low priority messages
    are skipped. If problems are encountered, the installer adjusts the
    priority as needed.

    If you add priority=medium as boot parameter, you will be shown the
    installation menu and gain more control over the installation. When
    priority=low is used, all messages are shown (this is equivalent to the 
    expert boot method). With priority=critical, the installation system will
    display only critical messages and try to do the right thing without fuss.

DEBIAN_FRONTEND

    This boot parameter controls the type of user interface used for the
    installer. The current possible parameter settings are:

      □ DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive

      □ DEBIAN_FRONTEND=text

      □ DEBIAN_FRONTEND=newt

      □ DEBIAN_FRONTEND=gtk

    The default frontend is DEBIAN_FRONTEND=newt. DEBIAN_FRONTEND=text may be
    preferable for serial console installs. Some specialized types of install
    media may only offer a limited selection of frontends, but the newt and
    text frontends are available on most default install media. On
    architectures that support it, the graphical installer uses the gtk
    frontend.

BOOT_DEBUG

    Setting this boot parameter to 2 will cause the installer's boot process to
    be verbosely logged. Setting it to 3 makes debug shells available at
    strategic points in the boot process. (Exit the shells to continue the boot
    process.)

    BOOT_DEBUG=0

        This is the default.

    BOOT_DEBUG=1

        More verbose than usual.

    BOOT_DEBUG=2

        Lots of debugging information.

    BOOT_DEBUG=3

        Shells are run at various points in the boot process to allow detailed
        debugging. Exit the shell to continue the boot.

INSTALL_MEDIA_DEV

    The value of the parameter is the path to the device to load the Ubuntu
    installer from. For example, INSTALL_MEDIA_DEV=/dev/floppy/0

    The boot floppy, which normally scans all floppies it can to find the root
    floppy, can be overridden by this parameter to only look at the one device.

log_host, log_port

    Causes the installer to send log messages to a remote syslog on the
    specified host and port as well as to a local file. If not specified, the
    port defaults to the standard syslog port 514.

lowmem

    Can be used to force the installer to a lowmem level higher than the one
    the installer sets by default based on available memory. Possible values
    are 1 and 2. See also Section 6.3.1.1, "Check available memory / low memory
    mode".

noshell

    Prevents the installer from offering interactive shells on tty2 and tty3.
    Useful for unattended installations where physical security is limited.

debian-installer/framebuffer (fb)

    Some architectures use the kernel framebuffer to offer installation in a
    number of languages. If framebuffer causes a problem on your system you can
    disable the feature using the parameter vga=normal fb=false. Problem
    symptoms are error messages about bterm or bogl, a blank screen, or a
    freeze within a few minutes after starting the install.

debian-installer/theme (theme)

    A theme determines how the user interface of the installer looks (colors,
    icons, etc.). What themes are available differs per frontend. Currently
    both the newt and gtk frontends only have a "dark" theme that was designed
    for visually impaired users. Set the theme by booting with theme=dark.

netcfg/disable_autoconfig

    By default, the debian-installer automatically probes for network
    configuration via IPv6 autoconfiguration and DHCP. If the probe succeeds,
    you won't have a chance to review and change the obtained settings. You can
    get to the manual network setup only in case the automatic configuration
    fails.

    If you have an IPv6 router or a DHCP server on your local network, but want
    to avoid them because e.g. they give wrong answers, you can use the
    parameter netcfg/disable_autoconfig=true to prevent any automatic
    configuration of the network (neither v4 nor v6) and to enter the
    information manually.

hw-detect/start_pcmcia

    Set to false to prevent starting PCMCIA services, if that causes problems.
    Some laptops are well known for this misbehavior.

disk-detect/dmraid/enable (dmraid)

    Set to true to enable support for Serial ATA RAID (also called ATA RAID,
    BIOS RAID or fake RAID) disks in the installer. Note that this support is
    currently experimental. Additional information can be found on the Debian
    Installer Wiki.

preseed/url (url)

    Specify the url to a preconfiguration file to download and use for
    automating the install. See Section 4.6, "Automatic Installation".

preseed/file (file)

    Specify the path to a preconfiguration file to load for automating the
    install. See Section 4.6, "Automatic Installation".

preseed/interactive

    Set to true to display questions even if they have been preseeded. Can be
    useful for testing or debugging a preconfiguration file. Note that this
    will have no effect on parameters that are passed as boot parameters, but
    for those a special syntax can be used. See Section B.5.2, "Using
    preseeding to change default values" for details.

auto-install/enable (auto)

    Delay questions that are normally asked before preseeding is possible until
    after the network is configured. See Section B.2.3, "Auto mode" for details
    about using this to automate installs.

finish-install/keep-consoles

    During installations from serial or management console, the regular virtual
    consoles (VT1 to VT6) are normally disabled in /etc/inittab. Set to true to
    prevent this.

cdrom-detect/eject

    By default, before rebooting, debian-installer automatically ejects the
    optical media used during the installation. This can be unnecessary if the
    system does not automatically boot off the CD. In some cases it may even be
    undesirable, for example if the optical drive cannot reinsert the media
    itself and the user is not there to do it manually. Many slot loading,
    slim-line, and caddy style drives cannot reload media automatically.

    Set to false to disable automatic ejection, and be aware that you may need
    to ensure that the system does not automatically boot from the optical
    drive after the initial installation.

base-installer/install-recommends (recommends)

    By setting this option to false, the package management system will be
    configured to not automatically install "Recommends", both during the
    installation and for the installed system. See also Section 6.3.4,
    "Installing the Base System".

    Note that this option allows to have a leaner system, but can also result
    in features being missing that you might normally expect to be available.
    You may have to manually install some of the recommended packages to obtain
    the full functionality you want. This option should therefore only be used
    by very experienced users.

debian-installer/allow_unauthenticated

    By default the installer requires that repositories be authenticated using
    a known gpg key. Set to true to disable that authentication. Warning:
    insecure, not recommended.

rescue/enable

    Set to true to enter rescue mode rather than performing a normal
    installation. See Section 8.7, "Recovering a Broken System".

5.3.3. Using boot parameters to answer questions

With some exceptions, a value can be set at the boot prompt for any question
asked during the installation, though this is only really useful in specific
cases. General instructions how to do this can be found in Section B.2.2,
"Using boot parameters to preseed questions". Some specific examples are listed
below.

debian-installer/language (language), debian-installer/country (country), 
    debian-installer/locale (locale)

    There are two ways to specify the language, country and locale to use for
    the installation and the installed system.

    The first and easiest is to pass only the parameter locale. Language and
    country will then be derived from its value. You can for example use locale
    =de_CH to select German as language and Switzerland as country (de_CH.UTF-8
    will be set as default locale for the installed system). Limitation is that
    not all possible combinations of language, country and locale can be
    achieved this way.

    The second, more flexible option is to specify language and country
    separately. In this case locale can optionally be added to specify a
    specific default locale for the installed system. Example: language=en
    country=DE locale=en_GB.UTF-8.

anna/choose_modules (modules)

    Can be used to automatically load installer components that are not loaded
    by default. Examples of optional components that may be useful are
    openssh-client-udeb (so you can use scp during the installation) and
    ppp-udeb (see Section D.6, "Installing Ubuntu using PPP over Ethernet
    (PPPoE)").

netcfg/disable_autoconfig

    Set to true if you want to disable IPv6 autoconfiguration and DHCP and
    instead force static network configuration.

mirror/protocol (protocol)

    By default the installer will use the http protocol to download files from
    Ubuntu mirrors and changing that to ftp is not possible during
    installations at normal priority. By setting this parameter to ftp, you can
    force the installer to use that protocol instead. Note that you cannot
    select an ftp mirror from a list, you have to enter the hostname manually.

tasksel:tasksel/first (tasks)

    Can be used to select tasks that are not available from the interactive
    task list, such as the kde-desktop task. See Section 6.3.5.2, "Selecting
    and Installing Software" for additional information.

apt-setup/restricted=false apt-setup/multiverse=false

    This is the equivalent of enabling the "Free Software Only" boot mode. This
    will disable the restricted and multiverse repositories at the earliest
    stages of the debian-installer. This can be helpful is you don't need them
    at all or don't mirror those repositoriesat your local mirror.'

5.3.4. Passing parameters to kernel modules

If drivers are compiled into the kernel, you can pass parameters to them as
described in the kernel documentation. However, if drivers are compiled as
modules and because kernel modules are loaded a bit differently during an
installation than when booting an installed system, it is not possible to pass
parameters to modules as you would normally do. Instead, you need to use a
special syntax recognized by the installer which will then make sure that the
parameters are saved in the proper configuration files and will thus be used
when the modules are actually loaded. The parameters will also be propagated
automatically to the configuration for the installed system.

Note that it is now quite rare that parameters need to be passed to modules. In
most cases the kernel will be able to probe the hardware present in a system
and set good defaults that way. However, in some situations it may still be
needed to set parameters manually.

The syntax to use to set parameters for modules is:

module_name.parameter_name=value

If you need to pass multiple parameters to the same or different modules, just
repeat this. For example, to set an old 3Com network interface card to use the
BNC (coax) connector and IRQ 10, you would pass:

3c509.xcvr=3 3c509.irq=10

5.3.5. Blacklisting kernel modules

Sometimes it may be necessary to blacklist a module to prevent it from being
loaded automatically by the kernel and udev. One reason could be that a
particular module causes problems with your hardware. The kernel also sometimes
lists two different drivers for the same device. This can cause the device to
not work correctly if the drivers conflict or if the wrong driver is loaded
first.

You can blacklist a module using the following syntax: module_name.blacklist=
yes. This will cause the module to be blacklisted in /etc/modprobe.d/
blacklist.local both during the installation and for the installed system.

Note that a module may still be loaded by the installation system itself. You
can prevent that from happening by running the installation in expert mode and
unselecting the module from the list of modules displayed during the hardware
detection phases.

5.4. Troubleshooting the Installation Process

5.4.1. CD-ROM Reliability

Sometimes, especially with older CD-ROM drives, the installer may fail to boot
from a CD-ROM. The installer may also -- even after booting successfully from
CD-ROM -- fail to recognize the CD-ROM or return errors while reading from it
during the installation.

There are many different possible causes for these problems. We can only list
some common issues and provide general suggestions on how to deal with them.
The rest is up to you.

There are two very simple things that you should try first.

  • If the CD-ROM does not boot, check that it was inserted correctly and that
    it is not dirty.

  • If the installer fails to recognize a CD-ROM, try just running the option 
    Detect and mount CD-ROM a second time. Some DMA related issues with very
    old CD-ROM drives are known to be resolved in this way.

If this does not work, then try the suggestions in the subsections below. Most,
but not all, suggestions discussed there are valid for both CD-ROM and DVD, but
we'll use the term CD-ROM for simplicity.

If you cannot get the installation working from CD-ROM, try one of the other
installation methods that are available.

5.4.1.1. Common issues

  • Some older CD-ROM drives do not support reading from discs that were burned
    at high speeds using a modern CD writer.

  • Some very old CD-ROM drives do not work correctly if "direct memory access"
    (DMA) is enabled for them.

5.4.1.2. How to investigate and maybe solve issues

If the CD-ROM fails to boot, try the suggestions listed below.

  • Check that your BIOS actually supports booting from CD-ROM (only an issue
    for very old systems) and that CD booting is enabled in the BIOS.

  • If you downloaded an iso image, check that the md5sum of that image matches
    the one listed for the image in the MD5SUMS file that should be present in
    the same location as where you downloaded the image from.

    $ md5sum debian-testing-i386-netinst.iso
    a20391b12f7ff22ef705cee4059c6b92  debian-testing-i386-netinst.iso

    Next, check that the md5sum of the burned CD-ROM matches as well. The
    following command should work. It uses the size of the image to read the
    correct number of bytes from the CD-ROM.

    $ dd if=/dev/cdrom | \
    > head -c `stat --format=%s debian-testing-i386-netinst.iso` | \
    > md5sum
    a20391b12f7ff22ef705cee4059c6b92  -
    262668+0 records in
    262668+0 records out
    134486016 bytes (134 MB) copied, 97.474 seconds, 1.4 MB/s

If, after the installer has been booted successfully, the CD-ROM is not
detected, sometimes simply trying again may solve the problem. If you have more
than one CD-ROM drive, try changing the CD-ROM to the other drive. If that does
not work or if the CD-ROM is recognized but there are errors when reading from
it, try the suggestions listed below. Some basic knowledge of Linux is required
for this. To execute any of the commands, you should first switch to the second
virtual console (VT2) and activate the shell there.

  • Switch to VT4 or view the contents of /var/log/syslog (use nano as editor)
    to check for any specific error messages. After that, also check the output
    of dmesg.

  • Check in the output of dmesg if your CD-ROM drive was recognized. You
    should see something like (the lines do not necessarily have to be
    consecutive):

    Probing IDE interface ide1...
    hdc: TOSHIBA DVD-ROM SD-R6112, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
    ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
    hdc: ATAPI 24X DVD-ROM DVD-R CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache, UDMA(33)
    Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20

    If you don't see something like that, chances are the controller your
    CD-ROM is connected to was not recognized or may be not supported at all.
    If you know what driver is needed for the controller, you can try loading
    it manually using modprobe.

  • Check that there is a device node for your CD-ROM drive under /dev/. In the
    example above, this would be /dev/hdc. There should also be a /dev/cdrom.

  • Use the mount command to check if the CD-ROM is already mounted; if not,
    try mounting it manually:

    $ mount /dev/hdc /cdrom

    Check if there are any error messages after that command.

  • Check if DMA is currently enabled:

    $ cd /proc/ide/hdc
    $ grep using_dma settings
    using_dma      1       0       1       rw

    A "1" in the first column after using_dma means it is enabled. If it is,
    try disabling it:

    $ echo -n "using_dma:0" >settings

    Make sure that you are in the directory for the device that corresponds to
    your CD-ROM drive.

  • If there are any problems during the installation, try checking the
    integrity of the CD-ROM using the option near the bottom of the installer's
    main menu. This option can also be used as a general test if the CD-ROM can
    be read reliably.

5.4.2. Boot Configuration

If you have problems and the kernel hangs during the boot process, doesn't
recognize peripherals you actually have, or drives are not recognized properly,
the first thing to check is the boot parameters, as discussed in Section 5.3,
"Boot Parameters".

In some cases, malfunctions can be caused by missing device firmware (see
Section 2.2, "Devices Requiring Firmware" and Section 6.4, "Loading Missing
Firmware").

5.4.3. Software Speech Synthesis

If software speech synthesis does not work, there is most probably an issue
with your sound board, usually because either the driver for it is not included
in the installer, or because it has unusual mixer level names which are set to
muted by default. You should thus submit a bug report which includes the output
of the following commands, run on the same machine from a Linux system which is
known to have sound working (e.g., a live CD).

  • dmesg

  • lspci

  • lsmod

  • amixer

5.4.4. Common 32-bit PC Installation Problems

There are some common installation problems that can be solved or avoided by
passing certain boot parameters to the installer.

If your screen begins to show a weird picture while the kernel boots, eg. pure
white, pure black or colored pixel garbage, your system may contain a
problematic video card which does not switch to the framebuffer mode properly.
Then you can use the boot parameter fb=false to disable the framebuffer
console. Only a reduced set of languages will be available during the
installation due to limited console features. See Section 5.3, "Boot
Parameters" for details.

5.4.4.1. System Freeze During the PCMCIA Configuration Phase

Some very old laptop models produced by Dell are known to crash when PCMCIA
device detection tries to access some hardware addresses. Other laptops may
display similar problems. If you experience such a problem and you don't need
PCMCIA support during the installation, you can disable PCMCIA using the
hw-detect/start_pcmcia=false boot parameter. You can then configure PCMCIA
after the installation is completed and exclude the resource range causing the
problems.

Alternatively, you can boot the installer in expert mode. You will then be
asked to enter the resource range options your hardware needs. For example, if
you have one of the Dell laptops mentioned above, you should enter exclude port
0x800-0x8ff here. There is also a list of some common resource range options in
the System resource settings section of the PCMCIA HOWTO. Note that you have to
omit the commas, if any, when you enter this value in the installer.

5.4.5. Interpreting the Kernel Startup Messages

During the boot sequence, you may see many messages in the form can't find
something, or something not present, can't initialize something, or even this
driver release depends on something. Most of these messages are harmless. You
see them because the kernel for the installation system is built to run on
computers with many different peripheral devices. Obviously, no one computer
will have every possible peripheral device, so the operating system may emit a
few complaints while it looks for peripherals you don't own. You may also see
the system pause for a while. This happens when it is waiting for a device to
respond, and that device is not present on your system. If you find the time it
takes to boot the system unacceptably long, you can create a custom kernel
later (see Section 8.6, "Compiling a New Kernel").

5.4.6. Reporting Installation Problems

If you get through the initial boot phase but cannot complete the install, the
menu option Save debug logs may be helpful. It lets you store system error logs
and configuration information from the installer to a floppy, or download them
using a web browser. This information may provide clues as to what went wrong
and how to fix it. If you are submitting a bug report, you may want to attach
this information to the bug report.

Other pertinent 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.

5.4.7. Submitting Installation Reports

If you still have problems, please submit an installation report. We also
encourage installation reports to be sent even if the installation is
successful, so that we can get as much information as possible on the largest
number of hardware configurations.

Note that your installation report will be published in the Debian Bug Tracking
System (BTS) and forwarded to a public mailing list. Make sure that you use an
e-mail address that you do not mind being made public.

If you have a working Ubuntu system, the easiest way to send an installation
report is to install the installation-report and reportbug packages (aptitude
install installation-report reportbug), configure reportbug as explained in
Section 8.5.2, "Sending E-Mails Outside The System", and run the command 
reportbug installation-reports.

Alternatively you can use this template when filling out installation reports,
and send the report to <ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com>.

Package: installation-reports

Boot method: <How did you boot the installer? CD? floppy? network?>
Image version: <Full URL to image you downloaded is best>
Date: <Date and time of the install>

Machine: <Description of machine (eg, IBM Thinkpad R32)>
Processor:
Memory:
Partitions: <df -Tl will do; the raw partition table is preferred>

Output of lspci -knn (or lspci -nn):

Base System Installation Checklist:
[O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it

Initial boot:           [ ]
Detect network card:    [ ]
Configure network:      [ ]
Detect CD:              [ ]
Load installer modules: [ ]
Detect hard drives:     [ ]
Partition hard drives:  [ ]
Install base system:    [ ]
Clock/timezone setup:   [ ]
User/password setup:    [ ]
Install tasks:          [ ]
Install boot loader:    [ ]
Overall install:        [ ]

Comments/Problems:

<Description of the install, in prose, and any thoughts, comments
      and ideas you had during the initial install.>

In the bug report, describe what the problem is, including the last visible
kernel messages in the event of a kernel hang. Describe the steps that you did
which brought the system into the problem state.


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

^[4] With current kernels (2.6.9 or newer) you can use 32 command line options
and 32 environment options. If these numbers are exceeded, the kernel will
panic.

Chapter 6. Using the Ubuntu Installer

Table of Contents

6.1. How the Installer Works
6.2. Components Introduction
6.3. Using Individual Components

    6.3.1. Setting up Ubuntu Installer and Hardware Configuration
    6.3.2. Setting Up Users And Passwords
    6.3.3. Partitioning and Mount Point Selection
    6.3.4. Installing the Base System
    6.3.5. Installing Additional Software
    6.3.6. Making Your System Bootable
    6.3.7. Finishing the Installation
    6.3.8. Troubleshooting
    6.3.9. Installation Over the Network

6.4. Loading Missing Firmware

    6.4.1. Preparing a medium
    6.4.2. Firmware and the Installed System

6.1. How the Installer Works

The Ubuntu Installer (based on the Debian Installer, and so often called simply
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 debian-installer 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 Section 5.3.2, "Ubuntu Installer Parameters" 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
debian-installer.

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 Enter 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.

Error messages and logs are redirected to the fourth console. You can access
this console by pressing Left Alt+F4 (hold the left Alt key while pressing the 
F4 function key); get back to the main installer process with Left Alt+F1.

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.

6.2. Components Introduction

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 Section 6.3, "Using Individual Components".

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 Go Back 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 an Ubuntu 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 Ubuntu 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 debian-installer 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 Ubuntu.

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 Ubuntu 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 Linux
    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 Ubuntu developers later.

6.3. Using Individual Components

In this section we will describe each installer component in detail. The
components have been grouped into stages that should be recognizable for users.
They are presented in the order they appear during the install. Note that not
all modules will be used for every installation; which modules are actually
used depends on the installation method you use and on your hardware.

6.3.1. Setting up Ubuntu Installer and Hardware Configuration

Let's assume the Ubuntu Installer has booted and you are facing its first
screen. At this time, the capabilities of debian-installer are still quite
limited. It doesn't know much about your hardware, preferred language, or even
the task it should perform. Don't worry. Because debian-installer is quite
clever, it can automatically probe your hardware, locate the rest of its
components and upgrade itself to a capable installation system. However, you
still need to help debian-installer with some information it can't determine
automatically (like selecting your preferred language, keyboard layout or
desired network mirror).

You will notice that debian-installer performs hardware detection several times
during this stage. The first time is targeted specifically at the hardware
needed to load installer components (e.g. your CD-ROM or network card). As not
all drivers may be available during this first run, hardware detection needs to
be repeated later in the process.

During hardware detection debian-installer checks if any of the drivers for the
hardware devices in your system require firmware to be loaded. If any firmware
is requested but unavailable, a dialog will be displayed that allows the
missing firmware to be loaded from a removable medium. See Section 6.4,
"Loading Missing Firmware" for further details.

6.3.1.1. Check available memory / low memory mode

One of the first things debian-installer does, is to check available memory. If
the available memory is limited, this component will make some changes in the
installation process which hopefully will allow you to install Ubuntu on your
system.

The first measure taken to reduce memory consumption by the installer is to
disable translations, which means that the installation can only be done in
English. Of course, you can still localize the installed system after the
installation has completed.

If that is not sufficient, the installer will further reduce memory consumption
by loading only those components essential to complete a basic installation.
This reduces the functionality of the installation system. You will be given
the opportunity to load additional components manually, but you should be aware
that each component you select will use additional memory and thus may cause
the installation to fail.

If the installer runs in low memory mode, it is recommended to create a
relatively large swap partition (64-128MB). The swap partition will be used as
virtual memory and thus increases the amount of memory available to the system.
The installer will activate the swap partition as early as possible in the
installation process. Note that heavy use of swap will reduce performance of
your system and may lead to high disk activity.

Despite these measures, it is still possible that your system freezes, that
unexpected errors occur or that processes are killed by the kernel because the
system runs out of memory (which will result in "Out of memory" messages on VT4
and in the syslog).

For example, it has been reported that creating a big ext3 file system fails in
low memory mode when there is insufficient swap space. If a larger swap doesn't
help, try creating the file system as ext2 (which is an essential component of
the installer) instead. It is possible to change an ext2 partition to ext3
after the installation.

It is possible to force the installer to use a higher lowmem level than the one
based on available memory by using the boot parameter "lowmem" as described in
Section 5.3.2, "Ubuntu Installer Parameters".

6.3.1.2. Selecting Localization Options

In most cases the first questions you will be asked concern the selection of
localization options to be used both for the installation and for the installed
system. The localization options consist of language, location and locales.

The language you choose will be used for the rest of the installation process,
provided a translation of the different dialogs is available. If no valid
translation is available for the selected language, the installer will default
to English.

The selected geographic location (in most cases a country) will be used later
in the installation process to select the correct time zone and an Ubuntu
mirror appropriate for that country. Language and country together will help
determine the default locale for your system and select the correct keyboard
layout.

You will first be asked to select your preferred language. The language names
are listed both in English (left side) and in the language itself (right side);
the names on the right side are also shown in the proper script for the
language. The list is sorted on the English names. At the top of the list is an
extra option that allows you to select the "C" locale instead of a language.
Choosing the "C" locale will result in the installation proceding in English;
the installed system will have no localization support as the locales package
will not be installed.

Next you will be asked to select your geographic location. If you selected a
language that is recognized as an official language for more than one country^
[5], you will be shown a list of only those countries. To select a country that
is not in that list, choose other (the last option). You will then be presented
with a list of continents; selecting a continent will lead to a list of
relevant countries on that continent.

If the language has only one country associated with it, a list of countries
will be displayed for the continent or region the country belongs to, with that
country selected as the default. Use the Go Back option to select countries on
a different continent.

Note

It is important to select the country where you live or where you are located
as it determines the time zone that will be configured for the installed
system.

If you selected a combination of language and country for which no locale is
defined and there exist multiple locales for the language, then the installer
will allow you to choose which of those locales you prefer as the default
locale for the installed system^[6]. In all other cases a default locale will
be selected based on the selected language and country.

Any default locale selected as described in the previous paragraph will use
UTF-8 as character encoding.

If you are installing at low priority, you will have the option of selecting
additional locales, including so-called "legacy" locales^[7], to be generated
for the installed system; if you do, you will be asked which of the selected
locales should be the default for the installed system.

6.3.1.3. Choosing a Keyboard

Keyboards are often tailored to the characters used in a language. Select a
layout that conforms to the keyboard you are using, or select something close
if the keyboard layout you want isn't represented. Once the system installation
is complete, you'll be able to select a keyboard layout from a wider range of
choices (run dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration as root after you have
completed the installation).

Move the highlight to the keyboard selection you desire and press Enter. Use
the arrow keys to move the highlight -- they are in the same place in all
national language keyboard layouts, so they are independent of the keyboard
configuration.

6.3.1.4. Looking for the Ubuntu Installer ISO Image

When installing via the hd-media method, there will be a moment where you need
to find and mount the Ubuntu Installer iso image in order to get the rest of
the installation files. The component iso-scan does exactly this.

At first, iso-scan automatically mounts all block devices (e.g. partitions)
which have some known filesystem on them and sequentially searches for
filenames ending with .iso (or .ISO for that matter). Beware that the first
attempt scans only files in the root directory and in the first level of
subdirectories (i.e. it finds /whatever.iso, /data/whatever.iso, but not /data/
tmp/whatever.iso). After an iso image has been found, iso-scan checks its
content to determine if the image is a valid Ubuntu iso image or not. In the
former case we are done, in the latter iso-scan seeks for another image.

In case the previous attempt to find an installer iso image fails, iso-scan
will ask you whether you would like to perform a more thorough search. This
pass doesn't just look into the topmost directories, but really traverses whole
filesystem.

If iso-scan does not discover your installer iso image, reboot back to your
original operating system and check if the image is named correctly (ending in
.iso), if it is placed on a filesystem recognizable by debian-installer, and if
it is not corrupted (verify the checksum). Experienced Unix users could do this
without rebooting on the second console.

6.3.1.5. Configuring the Network

As you enter this step, if the system detects that you have more than one
network device, you'll be asked to choose which device will be your primary
network interface, i.e. the one which you want to use for installation. The
other interfaces won't be configured at this time. You may configure additional
interfaces after installation is complete; see the interfaces(5) man page.

6.3.1.5.1. Automatic network configuration

By default, debian-installer tries to configure your computer's network
automatically as far as possible. If the automatic configuration fails, that
may be caused by many factors ranging from an unplugged network cable to
missing infrastructure for automatic configuration. For further explanation in
case of errors, check the error messages on the fourth console. In any case,
you will be asked if you want to retry, or if you want to perform a manual
setup. Sometimes the network services used for autoconfiguration can be slow in
their responses, so if you are sure everything is in place, simply start the
autoconfiguration attempt again. If autoconfiguration fails repeatedly, you can
instead choose the manual network setup.

6.3.1.5.2. Manual network configuration

The manual network setup in turn asks you a number of questions about your
network, notably IP address, Netmask, Gateway, Name server addresses, and a
Hostname. Moreover, if you have a wireless network interface, you will be asked
to provide your Wireless ESSID ("wireless network name") and a WEP key or WPA/
WPA2 passphrase. Fill in the answers from Section 3.3, "Information You Will
Need".

Note

Some technical details you might, or might not, find handy: the program assumes
the network IP address is the bitwise-AND of your system's IP address and your
netmask. The default broadcast address is calculated as the bitwise OR of your
system's IP address with the bitwise negation of the netmask. It will also
guess your gateway. If you can't find any of these answers, use the offered
defaults -- if necessary, you can change them by editing /etc/network/
interfaces once the system has been installed.

6.3.1.5.3. IPv4 and IPv6

Ubuntu supports IPv6 as well as the "classic" IPv4. All combinations of IPv4
and IPv6 (IPv4-only, IPv6-only and dual-stack configurations) are supported.

Autoconfiguration for IPv4 is done via DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration
Protocol). Autoconfiguration for IPv6 supports stateless autoconfiguration
using NDP (Neighbor Discovery Protocol, including recursive DNS server (RDNSS)
assignment), stateful autoconfiguration via DHCPv6 and mixed stateless/stateful
autoconfiguration (address configuration via NDP, additional parameters via
DHCPv6).

6.3.1.6. Configuring the Clock and Time Zone

The installer will first attempt to connect to a time server on the Internet
(using the NTP protocol) in order to correctly set the system time. If this
does not succeed, the installer will assume the time and date obtained from the
system clock when the installation system was booted are correct. It is not
possible to manually set the system time during the installation process.

Depending on the location selected earlier in the installation process, you may
be shown a list of time zones relevant for that location. If your location has
only one time zone and you are doing a default installation, you will not be
asked anything and the system will assume that time zone.

In expert mode or when installing at medium priority, you will have the
additional option to select "Coordinated Universal Time" (UTC) as time zone.

If for some reason you wish to set a time zone for the installed system that
does not match the selected location, there are two options.

 1. The simplest option is to just select a different time zone after the
    installation has been completed and you've booted into the new system. The
    command to do this is:

    # dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

 2. Alternatively, the time zone can be set at the very start of the
    installation by passing the parameter time/zone=value when you boot the
    installation system. The value should of course be a valid time zone, for
    example Europe/London or UTC.

For automated installations the time zone can be set to any desired value using
preseeding.

6.3.2. Setting Up Users And Passwords

Just before configuring the clock, the installer will allow you to set up the "
root" account and/or an account for the first user. Other user accounts can be
created after the installation has been completed.

6.3.2.1. Create an Ordinary User

The system will ask you whether you wish to create an ordinary user account at
this point. This account should be your main personal log-in.

The account you create at this point will be given root privileges by means of
the sudo command, and the root account itself will have login disabled. If you
wish, you can enable the root account later by setting a password for it with
the command sudo passwd root.

You should not use the root account for daily use or as your personal login,
nor should you use sudo except when root privileges are really required.

Why not? Well, one reason to avoid using root's privileges is that it is very
easy to do irreparable damage as root. Another reason is that you might be
tricked into running a Trojan-horse program -- that is a program that takes
advantage of your super-user powers to compromise the security of your system
behind your back. Any good book on Unix system administration will cover this
topic in more detail -- consider reading one if it is new to you.

You will first be prompted for the user's full name. Then you'll be asked for a
name for the user account; generally your first name or something similar will
suffice and indeed will be the default. Finally, you will be prompted for a
password for this account.

If at any point after installation you would like to create another account,
use the adduser command.

6.3.3. Partitioning and Mount Point Selection

At this time, after hardware detection has been executed a final time,
debian-installer should be at its full strength, customized for the user's
needs and ready to do some real work. As the title of this section indicates,
the main task of the next few components lies in partitioning your disks,
creating filesystems, assigning mountpoints and optionally configuring closely
related options like RAID, LVM or encrypted devices.

If you are uncomfortable with partitioning, or just want to know more details,
see Appendix C, Partitioning for Ubuntu.

First you will be given the opportunity to automatically partition either an
entire drive, or available free space on a drive. This is also called "guided"
partitioning. If you do not want to autopartition, choose Manual from the menu.

6.3.3.1. Supported partitioning options

The partitioner used in debian-installer is fairly versatile. It allows to
create many different partitioning schemes, using various partition tables,
file systems and advanced block devices.

Exactly which options are available depends mainly on the architecture, but
also on other factors. For example, on systems with limited internal memory
some options may not be available. Defaults may vary as well. The type of
partition table used by default can for example be different for large capacity
hard disks than for smaller hard disks. Some options can only be changed when
installing at medium or low debconf priority; at higher priorities sensible
defaults will be used.

The installer supports various forms of advanced partitioning and use of
storage devices, which in many cases can be used in combination.

  • Logical Volume Management (LVM)

  • Software RAID

    Supported are RAID levels 0, 1, 4, 5, 6 and 10.

  • Encryption

  • Serial ATA RAID (using dmraid)

    Also called "fake RAID" or "BIOS RAID". Support for Serial ATA RAID is
    currently only available if enabled when the installer is booted. Further
    information is available on our Wiki.

  • Multipath (experimental)

    See our Wiki for information. Support for multipath is currently only
    available if enabled when the installer is booted.

The following file systems are supported.

  • ext2, ext3, ext4

    The default file system selected in most cases is ext4; for /boot
    partitions ext2 will be selected by default when guided partitioning is
    used.

  • jfs (not available on all architectures)

  • xfs (not available on all architectures)

  • reiserfs (optional; not available on all architectures)

    Support for the Reiser file system is no longer available by default. When
    the installer is running at medium or low debconf priority it can be
    enabled by selecting the partman-reiserfs component. Only version 3 of the
    file system is supported.

  • qnx4

    Existing partitions will be recognized and it is possible to assign mount
    points for them. It is not possible to create new qnx4 partitions.

  • FAT16, FAT32

  • NTFS (read-only)

    Existing NTFS partitions can be resized and it is possible to assign mount
    points for them. It is not possible to create new NTFS partitions.

6.3.3.2. Guided Partitioning

If you choose guided partitioning, you may have three options: to create
partitions directly on the hard disk (classic method), or to create them using
Logical Volume Management (LVM), or to create them using encrypted LVM^[8].

Note

The option to use (encrypted) LVM may not be available on all architectures.

When using LVM or encrypted LVM, the installer will create most partitions
inside one big partition; the advantage of this method is that partitions
inside this big partition can be resized relatively easily later. In the case
of encrypted LVM the big partition will not be readable without knowing a
special key phrase, thus providing extra security of your (personal) data.

When using encrypted LVM, the installer will also automatically erase the disk
by writing random data to it. This further improves security (as it makes it
impossible to tell which parts of the disk are in use and also makes sure that
any traces of previous installations are erased), but may take some time
depending on the size of your disk.

Note

If you choose guided partitioning using LVM or encrypted LVM, some changes in
the partition table will need to be written to the selected disk while LVM is
being set up. These changes effectively erase all data that is currently on the
selected hard disk and you will not be able to undo them later. However, the
installer will ask you to confirm these changes before they are written to
disk.

If you choose guided partitioning (either classic or using (encrypted) LVM) for
a whole disk, you will first be asked to select the disk you want to use. Check
that all your disks are listed and, if you have several disks, make sure you
select the correct one. The order they are listed in may differ from what you
are used to. The size of the disks may help to identify them.

Any data on the disk you select will eventually be lost, but you will always be
asked to confirm any changes before they are written to the disk. If you have
selected the classic method of partitioning, you will be able to undo any
changes right until the end; when using (encrypted) LVM this is not possible.

Next, you will be able to choose from the schemes listed in the table below.
All schemes have their pros and cons, some of which are discussed in
Appendix C, Partitioning for Ubuntu. If you are unsure, choose the first one.
Bear in mind that guided partitioning needs a certain minimal amount of free
space to operate with. If you don't give it at least about 1GB of space
(depends on chosen scheme), guided partitioning will fail.

┌──────────────────────────────────────┬────────────┬─────────────────────────┐
│         Partitioning scheme          │  Minimum   │   Created partitions    │
│                                      │   space    │                         │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼────────────┼─────────────────────────┤
│All files in one partition            │600MB       │/, swap                  │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼────────────┼─────────────────────────┤
│Separate /home partition              │500MB       │/, /home, swap           │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼────────────┼─────────────────────────┤
│Separate /home, /var and /tmp         │1GB         │/, /home, /var, /tmp,    │
│partitions                            │            │swap                     │
└──────────────────────────────────────┴────────────┴─────────────────────────┘

If you choose guided partitioning using (encrypted) LVM, the installer will
also create a separate /boot partition. The other partitions, including the
swap partition, will be created inside the LVM partition.

If you have booted in EFI mode then within the guided partitioning setup there
will be an additional partition, formatted as a FAT32 bootable filesystem, for
the EFI boot loader. This partition is known as an EFI System Partition (ESP).
There is also an additional menu item in the formatting menu to manually set up
a partition as an ESP.

After selecting a scheme, the next screen will show your new partition table,
including information on whether and how partitions will be formatted and where
they will be mounted.

The list of partitions might look like this:

  SCSI1 (0,0,0) (sda) - 6.4 GB WDC AC36400L
        #1 primary   16.4 MB  B f ext2       /boot
        #2 primary  551.0 MB      swap       swap
        #3 primary    5.8 GB      ntfs
           pri/log    8.2 MB      FREE SPACE

  SCSI2 (1,0,0) (sdb) - 80.0 GB ST380021A
        #1 primary   15.9 MB      ext3
        #2 primary  996.0 MB      fat16
        #3 primary    3.9 GB      xfs        /home
        #5 logical    6.0 GB    f ext4       /
        #6 logical    1.0 GB    f ext3       /var
        #7 logical  498.8 MB      ext3

This example shows two hard drives divided into several partitions; the first
disk has some free space. Each partition line consists of the partition number,
its type, size, optional flags, file system, and mountpoint (if any). Note:
this particular setup cannot be created using guided partitioning but it does
show possible variation that can be achieved using manual partitioning.

This concludes the guided partitioning. If you are satisfied with the generated
partition table, you can choose Finish partitioning and write changes to disk
from the menu to implement the new partition table (as described at the end of
this section). If you are not happy, you can choose to Undo changes to
partitions and run guided partitioning again, or modify the proposed changes as
described below for manual partitioning.

6.3.3.3. Manual Partitioning

A similar screen to the one shown just above will be displayed if you choose
manual partitioning except that your existing partition table will be shown and
without the mount points. How to manually set up your partition table and the
usage of partitions by your new Ubuntu system will be covered in the remainder
of this section.

If you select a pristine disk which has neither partitions nor free space on
it, you will be asked if a new partition table should be created (this is
needed so you can create new partitions). After this, a new line entitled "FREE
SPACE" should appear in the table under the selected disk.

If you select some free space, you will have the opportunity to create a new
partition. You will have to answer a quick series of questions about its size,
type (primary or logical), and location (beginning or end of the free space).
After this, you will be presented with a detailed overview of your new
partition. The main setting is Use as:, which determines if the partition will
have a file system on it, or be used for swap, software RAID, LVM, an encrypted
file system, or not be used at all. Other settings include mountpoint, mount
options, and bootable flag; which settings are shown depends on how the
partition is to be used. If you don't like the preselected defaults, feel free
to change them to your liking. E.g. by selecting the option Use as:, you can
choose a different filesystem for this partition, including options to use the
partition for swap, software RAID, LVM, or not use it at all. When you are
satisfied with your new partition, select Done setting up the partition and you
will return to partman's main screen.

If you decide you want to change something about your partition, simply select
the partition, which will bring you to the partition configuration menu. This
is the same screen as is used when creating a new partition, so you can change
the same settings. One thing that may not be very obvious at a first glance is
that you can resize the partition by selecting the item displaying the size of
the partition. Filesystems known to work are at least fat16, fat32, ext2, ext3
and swap. This menu also allows you to delete a partition.

Be sure to create at least two partitions: one for the root filesystem (which
must be mounted as /) and one for swap. If you forget to mount the root
filesystem, partman won't let you continue until you correct this issue.

If you boot in EFI mode but forget to select and format an EFI System
Partition, partman will detect this and will not let you continue until you
allocate one.

Capabilities of partman can be extended with installer modules, but are
dependent on your system's architecture. So if you can't see all promised
goodies, check if you have loaded all required modules (e.g. partman-ext3,
partman-xfs, or partman-lvm).

After you are satisfied with partitioning, select Finish partitioning and write
changes to disk from the partitioning menu. You will be presented with a
summary of changes made to the disks and asked to confirm that the filesystems
should be created as requested.

6.3.3.4. Configuring Multidisk Devices (Software RAID)

If you have more than one harddrive^[9] in your computer, you can use mdcfg to
set up your drives for increased performance and/or better reliability of your
data. The result is called Multidisk Device (or after its most famous variant
software RAID).

MD is basically a bunch of partitions located on different disks and combined
together to form a logical device. This device can then be used like an
ordinary partition (i.e. in partman you can format it, assign a mountpoint,
etc.).

What benefits this brings depends on the type of MD device you are creating.
Currently supported are:

RAID0

    Is mainly aimed at performance. RAID0 splits all incoming data into stripes
    and distributes them equally over each disk in the array. This can increase
    the speed of read/write operations, but when one of the disks fails, you
    will lose everything (part of the information is still on the healthy disk
    (s), the other part was on the failed disk).

    The typical use for RAID0 is a partition for video editing.

RAID1

    Is suitable for setups where reliability is the first concern. It consists
    of several (usually two) equally-sized partitions where every partition
    contains exactly the same data. This essentially means three things. First,
    if one of your disks fails, you still have the data mirrored on the
    remaining disks. Second, you can use only a fraction of the available
    capacity (more precisely, it is the size of the smallest partition in the
    RAID). Third, file-reads are load-balanced among the disks, which can
    improve performance on a server, such as a file server, that tends to be
    loaded with more disk reads than writes.

    Optionally you can have a spare disk in the array which will take the place
    of the failed disk in the case of failure.

RAID5

    Is a good compromise between speed, reliability and data redundancy. RAID5
    splits all incoming data into stripes and distributes them equally on all
    but one disk (similar to RAID0). Unlike RAID0, RAID5 also computes parity
    information, which gets written on the remaining disk. The parity disk is
    not static (that would be called RAID4), but is changing periodically, so
    the parity information is distributed equally on all disks. When one of the
    disks fails, the missing part of information can be computed from remaining
    data and its parity. RAID5 must consist of at least three active
    partitions. Optionally you can have a spare disk in the array which will
    take the place of the failed disk in the case of failure.

    As you can see, RAID5 has a similar degree of reliability to RAID1 while
    achieving less redundancy. On the other hand, it might be a bit slower on
    write operations than RAID0 due to computation of parity information.

RAID6

    Is similar to RAID5 except that it uses two parity devices instead of one.

    A RAID6 array can survive up to two disk failures.

RAID10

    RAID10 combines striping (as in RAID0) and mirroring (as in RAID1). It
    creates n copies of incoming data and distributes them across the
    partitions so that none of the copies of the same data are on the same
    device. The default value of n is 2, but it can be set to something else in
    expert mode. The number of partitions used must be at least n. RAID10 has
    different layouts for distributing the copies. The default is near copies.
    Near copies have all of the copies at about the same offset on all of the
    disks. Far copies have the copies at different offsets on the disks. Offset
    copies copy the stripe, not the individual copies.

    RAID10 can be used to achieve reliability and redundancy without the
    drawback of having to calculate parity.

To sum it up:

┌──────┬───────┬────────┬───────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│      │Minimum│ Spare  │ Survives  │                                         │
│ Type │Devices│ Device │   disk    │             Available Space             │
│      │       │        │ failure?  │                                         │
├──────┼───────┼────────┼───────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│RAID0 │2      │no      │no         │Size of the smallest partition multiplied│
│      │       │        │           │by number of devices in RAID             │
├──────┼───────┼────────┼───────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│RAID1 │2      │optional│yes        │Size of the smallest partition in RAID   │
├──────┼───────┼────────┼───────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│RAID5 │3      │optional│yes        │Size of the smallest partition multiplied│
│      │       │        │           │by (number of devices in RAID minus one) │
├──────┼───────┼────────┼───────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│RAID6 │4      │optional│yes        │Size of the smallest partition multiplied│
│      │       │        │           │by (number of devices in RAID minus two) │
├──────┼───────┼────────┼───────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│RAID10│2      │optional│yes        │Total of all partitions divided by the   │
│      │       │        │           │number of chunk copies (defaults to two) │
└──────┴───────┴────────┴───────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────┘

If you want to know more about Software RAID, have a look at Software RAID
HOWTO.

To create an MD device, you need to have the desired partitions it should
consist of marked for use in a RAID. (This is done in partman in the Partition
settings menu where you should select Use as: → physical volume for RAID.)

Note

Make sure that the system can be booted with the partitioning scheme you are
planning. In general it will be necessary to create a separate file system for
/boot when using RAID for the root (/) file system. Most boot loaders 
(including lilo and grub) do support mirrored (not striped!) RAID1, so using
for example RAID5 for / and RAID1 for /boot can be an option.

Next, you should choose Configure software RAID from the main partman menu.
(The menu will only appear after you mark at least one partition for use as 
physical volume for RAID.) On the first screen of mdcfg simply select Create MD
device. You will be presented with a list of supported types of MD devices,
from which you should choose one (e.g. RAID1). What follows depends on the type
of MD you selected.

  • RAID0 is simple -- you will be issued with the list of available RAID
    partitions and your only task is to select the partitions which will form
    the MD.

  • RAID1 is a bit more tricky. First, you will be asked to enter the number of
    active devices and the number of spare devices which will form the MD.
    Next, you need to select from the list of available RAID partitions those
    that will be active and then those that will be spare. The count of
    selected partitions must be equal to the number provided earlier. Don't
    worry. If you make a mistake and select a different number of partitions,
    debian-installer won't let you continue until you correct the issue.

  • RAID5 has a setup procedure similar to RAID1 with the exception that you
    need to use at least three active partitions.

  • RAID6 also has a setup procedure similar to RAID1 except that at least four
    active partitions are required.

  • RAID10 again has a setup procedure similar to RAID1 except in expert mode.
    In expert mode, debian-installer will ask you for the layout. The layout
    has two parts. The first part is the layout type. It is either n (for near
    copies), f (for far copies), or o (for offset copies). The second part is
    the number of copies to make of the data. There must be at least that many
    active devices so that all of the copies can be distributed onto different
    disks.

It is perfectly possible to have several types of MD at once. For example, if
you have three 200 GB hard drives dedicated to MD, each containing two 100 GB
partitions, you can combine the first partitions on all three disks into the
RAID0 (fast 300 GB video editing partition) and use the other three partitions
(2 active and 1 spare) for RAID1 (quite reliable 100 GB partition for /home).

After you set up MD devices to your liking, you can Finish mdcfg to return back
to the partman to create filesystems on your new MD devices and assign them the
usual attributes like mountpoints.

6.3.3.5. Configuring the Logical Volume Manager (LVM)

If you are working with computers at the level of system administrator or "
advanced" user, you have surely seen the situation where some disk partition
(usually the most important one) was short on space, while some other partition
was grossly underused and you had to manage this situation by moving stuff
around, symlinking, etc.

To avoid the described situation you can use Logical Volume Manager (LVM).
Simply said, with LVM you can combine your partitions (physical volumes in LVM
lingo) to form a virtual disk (so called volume group), which can then be
divided into virtual partitions (logical volumes). The point is that logical
volumes (and of course underlying volume groups) can span across several
physical disks.

Now when you realize you need more space for your old 160GB /home partition,
you can simply add a new 300GB disk to the computer, join it with your existing
volume group and then resize the logical volume which holds your /home
filesystem and voila -- your users have some room again on their renewed 460GB
partition. This example is of course a bit oversimplified. If you haven't read
it yet, you should consult the LVM HOWTO.

LVM setup in debian-installer is quite simple and completely supported inside 
partman. First, you have to mark the partition(s) to be used as physical
volumes for LVM. This is done in the Partition settings menu where you should
select Use as: → physical volume for LVM.

When you return to the main partman screen, you will see a new option Configure
the Logical Volume Manager. When you select that, you will first be asked to
confirm pending changes to the partition table (if any) and after that the LVM
configuration menu will be shown. Above the menu a summary of the LVM
configuration is shown. The menu itself is context sensitive and only shows
valid actions. The possible actions are:

  • Display configuration details: shows LVM device structure, names and sizes
    of logical volumes and more

  • Create volume group

  • Create logical volume

  • Delete volume group

  • Delete logical volume

  • Extend volume group

  • Reduce volume group

  • Finish: return to the main partman screen

Use the options in that menu to first create a volume group and then create
your logical volumes inside it.

After you return to the main partman screen, any created logical volumes will
be displayed in the same way as ordinary partitions (and you should treat them
as such).

6.3.3.6. Configuring Encrypted Volumes

debian-installer allows you to set up encrypted partitions. Every file you
write to such a partition is immediately saved to the device in encrypted form.
Access to the encrypted data is granted only after entering the passphrase used
when the encrypted partition was originally created. This feature is useful to
protect sensitive data in case your laptop or hard drive gets stolen. The thief
might get physical access to the hard drive, but without knowing the right
passphrase, the data on the hard drive will look like random characters.

The two most important partitions to encrypt are: the home partition, where
your private data resides, and the swap partition, where sensitive data might
be stored temporarily during operation. Of course, nothing prevents you from
encrypting any other partitions that might be of interest. For example /var
where database servers, mail servers or print servers store their data, or /tmp
which is used by various programs to store potentially interesting temporary
files. Some people may even want to encrypt their whole system. The only
exception is the /boot partition which must remain unencrypted, because
currently there is no way to load the kernel from an encrypted partition.

Note

Please note that the performance of encrypted partitions will be less than that
of unencrypted ones because the data needs to be decrypted or encrypted for
every read or write. The performance impact depends on your CPU speed, chosen
cipher and a key length.

To use encryption, you have to create a new partition by selecting some free
space in the main partitioning menu. Another option is to choose an existing
partition (e.g. a regular partition, an LVM logical volume or a RAID volume).
In the Partition settings menu, you need to select physical volume for
encryption at the Use as: option. The menu will then change to include several
cryptographic options for the partition.

The encryption method supported by debian-installer is dm-crypt (included in
newer Linux kernels, able to host LVM physical volumes).

Let's have a look at the options available when you select encryption via
Device-mapper (dm-crypt). As always: when in doubt, use the defaults, because
they have been carefully chosen with security in mind.

Encryption: aes

    This option lets you select the encryption algorithm (cipher) which will be
    used to encrypt the data on the partition. debian-installer currently
    supports the following block ciphers: aes, blowfish, serpent, and twofish.
    It is beyond the scope of this document to discuss the qualities of these
    different algorithms, however, it might help your decision to know that in
    2000, AES was chosen by the American National Institute of Standards and
    Technology as the standard encryption algorithm for protecting sensitive
    information in the 21st century.

Key size: 256

    Here you can specify the length of the encryption key. With a larger key
    size, the strength of the encryption is generally improved. On the other
    hand, increasing the length of the key usually has a negative impact on
    performance. Available key sizes vary depending on the cipher.

IV algorithm: xts-plain64

    The Initialization Vector or IV algorithm is used in cryptography to ensure
    that applying the cipher on the same clear text data with the same key
    always produces a unique cipher text. The idea is to prevent the attacker
    from deducing information from repeated patterns in the encrypted data.

    From the provided alternatives, the default xts-plain64 is currently the
    least vulnerable to known attacks. Use the other alternatives only when you
    need to ensure compatibility with some previously installed system that is
    not able to use newer algorithms.

Encryption key: Passphrase

    Here you can choose the type of the encryption key for this partition.

    Passphrase

        The encryption key will be computed^[10] on the basis of a passphrase
        which you will be able to enter later in the process.

    Random key

        A new encryption key will be generated from random data each time you
        try to bring up the encrypted partition. In other words: on every
        shutdown the content of the partition will be lost as the key is
        deleted from memory. (Of course, you could try to guess the key with a
        brute force attack, but unless there is an unknown weakness in the
        cipher algorithm, it is not achievable in our lifetime.)

        Random keys are useful for swap partitions because you do not need to
        bother yourself with remembering the passphrase or wiping sensitive
        information from the swap partition before shutting down your computer.
        However, it also means that you will not be able to use the "
        suspend-to-disk" functionality offered by newer Linux kernels as it
        will be impossible (during a subsequent boot) to recover the suspended
        data written to the swap partition.

Erase data: yes

    Determines whether the content of this partition should be overwritten with
    random data before setting up the encryption. This is recommended because
    it might otherwise be possible for an attacker to discern which parts of
    the partition are in use and which are not. In addition, this will make it
    harder to recover any leftover data from previous installations^[11].

After you have selected the desired parameters for your encrypted partitions,
return back to the main partitioning menu. There should now be a new menu item
called Configure encrypted volumes. After you select it, you will be asked to
confirm the deletion of data on partitions marked to be erased and possibly
other actions such as writing a new partition table. For large partitions this
might take some time.

Next you will be asked to enter a passphrase for partitions configured to use
one. Good passphrases should be longer than 8 characters, should be a mixture
of letters, numbers and other characters and should not contain common
dictionary words or information easily associable with you (such as birthdates,
hobbies, pet names, names of family members or relatives, etc.).

Warning

Before you input any passphrases, you should have made sure that your keyboard
is configured correctly and generates the expected characters. If you are
unsure, you can switch to the second virtual console and type some text at the
prompt. This ensures that you won't be surprised later, e.g. by trying to input
a passphrase using a qwerty keyboard layout when you used an azerty layout
during the installation. This situation can have several causes. Maybe you
switched to another keyboard layout during the installation, or the selected
keyboard layout might not have been set up yet when entering the passphrase for
the root file system.

If you selected to use methods other than a passphrase to create encryption
keys, they will be generated now. Because the kernel may not have gathered a
sufficient amount of entropy at this early stage of the installation, the
process may take a long time. You can help speed up the process by generating
entropy: e.g. by pressing random keys, or by switching to the shell on the
second virtual console and generating some network and disk traffic
(downloading some files, feeding big files into /dev/null, etc.). This will be
repeated for each partition to be encrypted.

After returning to the main partitioning menu, you will see all encrypted
volumes as additional partitions which can be configured in the same way as
ordinary partitions. The following example shows a volume encrypted via
dm-crypt.

Encrypted volume (sda2_crypt) - 115.1 GB Linux device-mapper
     #1 115.1 GB  F ext3

Now is the time to assign mount points to the volumes and optionally change the
file system types if the defaults do not suit you.

Pay attention to the identifiers in parentheses (sda2_crypt in this case) and
the mount points you assigned to each encrypted volume. You will need this
information later when booting the new system. The differences between the
ordinary boot process and the boot process with encryption involved will be
covered later in Section 7.2, "Mounting encrypted volumes".

Once you are satisfied with the partitioning scheme, continue with the
installation.

6.3.4. Installing the Base System

Although this stage is the least problematic, it consumes a significant
fraction of the install because it downloads, verifies and unpacks the whole
base system. If you have a slow computer or network connection, this could take
some time.

During installation of the base system, package unpacking and setup messages
are redirected to tty4. You can access this terminal by pressing Left Alt+F4;
get back to the main installer process with Left Alt+F1.

The unpack/setup messages generated during this phase are also saved in /var/
log/syslog. You can check them there if the installation is performed over a
serial console.

As part of the installation, a Linux kernel will be installed. At the default
priority, the installer will choose one for you that best matches your
hardware. In lower priority modes, you will be able to choose from a list of
available kernels.

When packages are installed using the package management system, it will by
default also install packages that are recommended by those packages.
Recommended packages are not strictly required for the core functionality of
the selected software, but they do enhance that software and should, in the
view of the package maintainers, normally be installed together with that
software.

Note

For technical reasons packages installed during the installation of the base
system are installed without their "Recommends". The rule described above only
takes effect after this point in the installation process.

6.3.5. Installing Additional Software

At this point you have a usable but limited system. Most users will want to
install additional software on the system to tune it to their needs, and the
installer allows you do so. This step can take even longer than installing the
base system if you have a slow computer or network connection.

6.3.5.1. Configuring apt

One of the tools used to install packages on a Ubuntu system is a program
called apt-get, from the apt package^[12]. Other front-ends for package
management, like aptitude and synaptic, are also in use. These front-ends are
recommended for new users, since they integrate some additional features
(package searching and status checks) in a nice user interface.

apt must be configured so that it knows from where to retrieve packages. The
results of this configuration are written to the file /etc/apt/sources.list.
You can examine and edit this file to your liking after the installation is
complete.

If you are installing at default priority, the installer will largely take care
of the configuration automatically, based on the installation method you are
using and possibly using choices made earlier in the installation. In most
cases the installer will automatically add a security mirror and, if you are
installing the stable distribution, a mirror for the "stable-updates" service.

If you are installing at a lower priority (e.g. in expert mode), you will be
able to make more decisions yourself. You can choose whether or not to use the
security and/or stable-updates services, and you can choose to add packages
from the "contrib" and "non-free" sections of the archive.

6.3.5.1.1. Installing from more than one CD or DVD

If you are installing from a CD or a DVD that is part of a larger set, the
installer will ask if you want to scan additional CDs or DVDs. If you have
additional CDs or DVDs available, you probably want to do this so the installer
can use the packages included on them.

If you do not have any additional CDs or DVDs, that is no problem: using them
is not required. If you also do not use a network mirror (as explained in the
next section), it can mean that not all packages belonging to the tasks you
select in the next step of the installation can be installed.

Note

Packages are included on CDs (and DVDs) in the order of their popularity. This
means that for most uses only the first CDs in a set are needed and that only
very few people actually use any of the packages included on the last CDs in a
set.

It also means that buying or downloading and burning a full CD set is just a
waste of money as you'll never use most of them. In most cases you are better
off getting only the first 3 to 8 CDs and installing any additional packages
you may need from the Internet by using a mirror. The same goes for DVD sets:
the first DVD, or maybe the first two DVDs will cover most needs.

If you do scan multiple CDs or DVDs, the installer will prompt you to exchange
them when it needs packages from another CD/DVD than the one currently in the
drive. Note that only CDs or DVDs that belong to the same set should be
scanned. The order in which they are scanned does not really matter, but
scanning them in ascending order will reduce the chance of mistakes.

6.3.5.1.2. Using a network mirror

One question that will be asked during most installs is whether or not to use a
network mirror as a source for packages. In most cases the default answer
should be fine, but there are some exceptions.

If you are not installing from a full CD or DVD or using a full CD/DVD image,
you really should use a network mirror as otherwise you will end up with only a
very minimal system. However, if you have a limited Internet connection it is
best not to select the desktop task in the next step of the installation.

If you are installing from a single full CD or using a full CD image, using a
network mirror is not required, but is still strongly recommended because a
single CD contains only a fairly limited number of packages. If you have a
limited Internet connection it may still be best to not select a network mirror
here, but to finish the installation using only what's available on the CD and
selectively install additional packages after the installation (i.e. after you
have rebooted into the new system).

If you are installing from a DVD or using a DVD image, any packages needed
during the installation should be present on the first DVD. The same is true if
you have scanned multiple CDs as explained in the previous section. Use of a
network mirror is optional.

One advantage of adding a network mirror is that updates that have occurred
since the CD/DVD set was created and have been included in a point release,
will become available for installation, thus extending the life of your CD/DVD
set without compromising the security or stability of the installed system.

In summary: selecting a network mirror is generally a good idea, except if you
do not have a good Internet connection. If the current version of a package is
available from CD/DVD, the installer will always use that. The amount of data
that will be downloaded if you do select a mirror thus depends on

 1. the tasks you select in the next step of the installation,

 2. which packages are needed for those tasks,

 3. which of those packages are present on the CDs or DVDs you have scanned,
    and

 4. whether any updated versions of packages included on the CDs or DVDs are
    available from a mirror (either a regular package mirror, or a mirror for
    security or stable-updates).

Note that the last point means that, even if you choose not to use a network
mirror, some packages may still be downloaded from the Internet if there is a
security or stable-updates update available for them and those services have
been configured.

6.3.5.1.3. Choosing a network mirror

If you have selected to use a network mirror during the installation (optional
for CD/DVD installs, required for netboot images), you will be presented with a
list of geographically nearby (and therefore hopefully fast) network mirrors,
based upon your country selection earlier in the installation process. Choosing
the offered default is usually fine.

A mirror can also be specified by hand by choosing "enter information manually"
. You can then specify a mirror host name and an optional port number. As of
Wheezy, that actually has to be a URL base, i.e. when specifying an IPv6
address, one has to add square brackets around it, for instance "[2001:db8::1]"
.

6.3.5.2. Selecting and Installing Software

During the installation process, you may be given the opportunity to select
additional software to install. Rather than picking individual software
packages from the 61052 available packages, this stage of the installation
process focuses on selecting and installing predefined collections of software
to quickly set up your computer to perform various tasks.

So, you have the ability to choose tasks first, and then add on more individual
packages later. These tasks loosely represent a number of different jobs or
things you want to do with your computer, such as "Desktop environment", "Web
server", or "Print server"^[13]. Section D.2, "Disk Space Needed for Tasks"
lists the space requirements for the available tasks.

Some tasks may be pre-selected based on the characteristics of the computer you
are installing. If you disagree with these selections you can deselect them.
You can even opt to install no tasks at all at this point.

Tip

In the standard user interface of the installer, you can use the space bar to
toggle selection of a task.

The various server tasks will install software roughly as follows. Web server:
apache2; Print server: cups;

The "Standard system" task will install any package that has a priority "
standard". This includes a lot of common utilities that are normally available
on any Linux or Unix system. You should leave this task selected unless you
know what you are doing and want a really minimal system.

If during language selection a default locale other than the "C" locale was
selected, tasksel will check if any localization tasks are defined for that
locale and will automatically try to install relevant localization packages.
This includes for example packages containing word lists or special fonts for
your language. If a desktop environment was selected, it will also install
appropriate localization packages for that (if available).

Once you've selected your tasks, select Continue. At this point, aptitude will
install the packages that are part of the selected tasks. If a particular
program needs more information from the user, it will prompt you during this
process.

You should be aware that especially the Desktop task is very large. Especially
when installing from a normal CD-ROM in combination with a mirror for packages
not on the CD-ROM, the installer may want to retrieve a lot of packages over
the network. If you have a relatively slow Internet connection, this can take a
long time. There is no option to cancel the installation of packages once it
has started.

Even when packages are included on the CD-ROM, the installer may still retrieve
them from the mirror if the version available on the mirror is more recent than
the one included on the CD-ROM. If you are installing the stable distribution,
this can happen after a point release (an update of the original stable
release); if you are installing the testing distribution this will happen if
you are using an older image.

6.3.6. Making Your System Bootable

If you are installing a diskless workstation, obviously, booting off the local
disk isn't a meaningful option, and this step will be skipped.

6.3.6.1. Detecting other operating systems

Before a boot loader is installed, the installer will attempt to probe for
other operating systems which are installed on the machine. If it finds a
supported operating system, you will be informed of this during the boot loader
installation step, and the computer will be configured to boot this other
operating system in addition to Ubuntu.

Note that multiple operating systems booting on a single machine is still
something of a black art. The automatic support for detecting and setting up
boot loaders to boot other operating systems varies by architecture and even by
subarchitecture. If it does not work you should consult your boot manager's
documentation for more information.

6.3.6.2. Install the Grub Boot Loader on a Hard Disk

The main i386 boot loader is called "grub". Grub is a flexible and robust boot
loader and a good default choice for new users and old hands alike.

By default, grub will be installed into the Master Boot Record (MBR), where it
will take over complete control of the boot process. If you prefer, you can
install it elsewhere. See the grub manual for complete information.

If you do not want to install grub, use the Go Back button to get to the main
menu, and from there select whatever bootloader you would like to use.

6.3.6.3. Install the LILO Boot Loader on a Hard Disk

The second i386 boot loader is called "LILO". It is an old complex program
which offers lots of functionality, including DOS, Windows, and OS/2 boot
management. Please carefully read the instructions in the directory /usr/share/
doc/lilo/ if you have special needs; also see the LILO mini-HOWTO.

Note

Currently the LILO installation will only create menu entries for other
operating systems if these can be chainloaded. This means you may have to
manually add a menu entry for operating systems like GNU/Linux and GNU/Hurd
after the installation.

debian-installer offers you three choices on where to install the LILO boot
loader:

Master Boot Record (MBR)

    This way the LILO will take complete control of the boot process.

new Ubuntu partition

    Choose this if you want to use another boot manager. LILO will install
    itself at the beginning of the new Ubuntu partition and it will serve as a
    secondary boot loader.

Other choice

    Useful for advanced users who want to install LILO somewhere else. In this
    case you will be asked for desired location. You can use traditional device
    names such as /dev/sda.

If you can no longer boot into Windows 9x (or DOS) after this step, you'll need
to use a Windows 9x (MS-DOS) boot disk and use the fdisk /mbr command to
reinstall the MS-DOS master boot record -- however, this means that you'll need
to use some other way to get back into Ubuntu!

6.3.6.4. Continue Without Boot Loader

This option can be used to complete the installation even when no boot loader
is to be installed, either because the arch/subarch doesn't provide one, or
because none is desired (e.g. you will use existing boot loader).

If you plan to manually configure your bootloader, you should check the name of
the installed kernel in /target/boot. You should also check that directory for
the presence of an initrd; if one is present, you will probably have to
instruct your bootloader to use it. Other information you will need are the
disk and partition you selected for your / filesystem and, if you chose to
install /boot on a separate partition, also your /boot filesystem.

6.3.7. Finishing the Installation

This is the last step in the Ubuntu installation process during which the
installer will do any last minute tasks. It mostly consists of tidying up after
the debian-installer.

6.3.7.1. Setting the System Clock

The installer may ask you if the computer's clock is set to UTC. Normally this
question is avoided if possible and the installer tries to work out whether the
clock is set to UTC based on things like what other operating systems are
installed.

In expert mode you will always be able to choose whether or not the clock is
set to UTC. Systems that (also) run Dos or Windows are normally set to local
time. If you want to dual-boot, select local time instead of UTC.

At this point debian-installer will also attempt to save the current time to
the system's hardware clock. This will be done either in UTC or local time,
depending on the selection that was just made.

6.3.7.2. Reboot the System

You will be prompted to remove the boot media (CD, floppy, etc) that you used
to boot the installer. After that the system will be rebooted into your new
Ubuntu system.

6.3.8. Troubleshooting

The components listed in this section are usually not involved in the
installation process, but are waiting in the background to help the user in
case something goes wrong.

6.3.8.1. Saving the installation logs

If the installation is successful, the logfiles created during the installation
process will be automatically saved to /var/log/installer/ on your new Ubuntu
system.

Choosing Save debug logs from the main menu allows you to save the log files to
a floppy disk, network, hard disk, or other media. This can be useful if you
encounter fatal problems during the installation and wish to study the logs on
another system or attach them to an installation report.

6.3.8.2. Using the Shell and Viewing the Logs

There are several methods you can use to get a shell while running an
installation. On most systems, and if you are not installing over serial
console, the easiest method is to switch to the second virtual console by
pressing Left Alt+F2^[14] (on a Mac keyboard, Option+F2). Use Left Alt+F1 to
switch back to the installer itself.

If you cannot switch consoles, there is also an Execute a Shell item on the
main menu that can be used to start a shell. You can get to the main menu from
most dialogs by using the Go Back button one or more times. Type exit to close
the shell and return to the installer.

At this point you are booted from the RAM disk, and there is a limited set of
Unix utilities available for your use. You can see what programs are available
with the command ls /bin /sbin /usr/bin /usr/sbin and by typing help. The shell
is a Bourne shell clone called ash and has some nice features like
autocompletion and history.

To edit and view files, use the text editor nano. Log files for the
installation system can be found in the /var/log directory.

Note

Although you can do basically anything in a shell that the available commands
allow you to do, the option to use a shell is really only there in case
something goes wrong and for debugging.

Doing things manually from the shell may interfere with the installation
process and result in errors or an incomplete installation. In particular, you
should always use let the installer activate your swap partition and not do
this yourself from a shell.

6.3.9. Installation Over the Network

One of the more interesting components is network-console. It allows you to do
a large part of the installation over the network via SSH. The use of the
network implies you will have to perform the first steps of the installation
from the console, at least to the point of setting up the networking. (Although
you can automate that part with Section 4.6, "Automatic Installation".)

This component is not loaded into the main installation menu by default, so you
have to explicitly ask for it. If you are installing from CD, you need to boot
with medium priority or otherwise invoke the main installation menu and choose 
Load installer components from CD and from the list of additional components
select network-console: Continue installation remotely using SSH. Successful
load is indicated by a new menu entry called Continue installation remotely
using SSH.

After selecting this new entry, you will be asked for a new password to be used
for connecting to the installation system and for its confirmation. That's all.
Now you should see a screen which instructs you to login remotely as the user 
installer with the password you just provided. Another important detail to
notice on this screen is the fingerprint of this system. You need to transfer
the fingerprint securely to the person who will continue the installation
remotely.

Should you decide to continue with the installation locally, you can always
press Enter, which will bring you back to the main menu, where you can select
another component.

Now let's switch to the other side of the wire. As a prerequisite, you need to
configure your terminal for UTF-8 encoding, because that is what the
installation system uses. If you do not, remote installation will be still
possible, but you may encounter strange display artefacts like destroyed dialog
borders or unreadable non-ascii characters. Establishing a connection with the
installation system is as simple as typing:

$ ssh -l installer install_host

Where install_host is either the name or IP address of the computer being
installed. Before the actual login the fingerprint of the remote system will be
displayed and you will have to confirm that it is correct.

Note

The ssh server in the installer uses a default configuration that does not send
keep-alive packets. In principle, a connection to the system being installed
should be kept open indefinitely. However, in some situations -- depending on
your local network setup -- the connection may be lost after some period of
inactivity. One common case where this can happen is when there is some form of
Network Address Translation (NAT) somewhere between the client and the system
being installed. Depending on at which point of the installation the connection
was lost, you may or may not be able to resume the installation after
reconnecting.

You may be able to avoid the connection being dropped by adding the option
-o ServerAliveInterval=value when starting the ssh connection, or by adding
that option in your ssh configuration file. Note however that in some cases
adding this option may also cause a connection to be dropped (for example if
keep-alive packets are sent during a brief network outage, from which ssh would
otherwise have recovered), so it should only be used when needed.

Note

If you install several computers in turn and they happen to have the same IP
address or hostname, ssh will refuse to connect to such host. The reason is
that it will have different fingerprint, which is usually a sign of a spoofing
attack. If you are sure this is not the case, you will need to delete the
relevant line from ~/.ssh/known_hosts^[15] and try again.

After the login you will be presented with an initial screen where you have two
possibilities called Start menu and Start shell. The former brings you to the
main installer menu, where you can continue with the installation as usual. The
latter starts a shell from which you can examine and possibly fix the remote
system. You should only start one SSH session for the installation menu, but
may start multiple sessions for shells.

Warning

After you have started the installation remotely over SSH, you should not go
back to the installation session running on the local console. Doing so may
corrupt the database that holds the configuration of the new system. This in
turn may result in a failed installation or problems with the installed system.

6.4. Loading Missing Firmware

As described in Section 2.2, "Devices Requiring Firmware", some devices require
firmware to be loaded. In most cases the device will not work at all if the
firmware is not available; sometimes basic functionality is not impaired if it
is missing and the firmware is only needed to enable additional features.

If a device driver requests firmware that is not available, debian-installer
will display a dialog offering to load the missing firmware. If this option is
selected, debian-installer will scan available devices for either loose
firmware files or packages containing firmware. If found, the firmware will be
copied to the correct location (/lib/firmware) and the driver module will be
reloaded.

Note

Which devices are scanned and which file systems are supported depends on the
architecture, the installation method and the stage of the installation.
Especially during the early stages of the installation, loading the firmware is
most likely to succeed from a FAT-formatted floppy disk or USB stick. On i386
and amd64 firmware can also be loaded from an MMC or SD card.

Note that it is possible to skip loading the firmware if you know the device
will also function without it, or if the device is not needed during the
installation.

debian-installer only prompts for firmware needed by kernel modules loaded
during the installation. Not all drivers are included in debian-installer, in
particular radeon is not, so this implies that the capabilities of some devices
may be no different at the end of the installation from what they were at the
beginning. Consequently, some of your hardware may not be being used to its
full potential. If you suspect this is the case, or are just curious, it is not
a bad idea to check the output of the dmesg command on the newly booted system
and search for "firmware".

6.4.1. Preparing a medium

To prepare a USB stick (or other medium like a hard drive partition, or floppy
disk), the firmware files or packages must be placed in either the root
directory or a directory named /firmware of the file system on the medium. The
recommended file system to use is FAT as that is most certain to be supported
during the early stages of the installation.

Tarballs and zip files containing current packages for the most common firmware
are available from:

  • http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/firmware/

Just download the tarball or zip file for the correct release and unpack it to
the file system on the medium.

If the firmware you need is not included in the tarball, you can also download
specific firmware packages from the (non-free section of the) archive. The
following overview should list most available firmware packages but is not
guaranteed to be complete and may also contain non-firmware packages:

  • http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=firmware

It is also possible to copy individual firmware files to the medium. Loose
firmware could be obtained for example from an already installed system or from
a hardware vendor.

6.4.2. Firmware and the Installed System

Any firmware loaded during the installation will be copied automatically to the
installed system. In most cases this will ensure that the device that requires
the firmware will also work correctly after the system is rebooted into the
installed system. However, if the installed system runs a different kernel
version from the installer there is a slight chance that the firmware cannot be
loaded due to version skew.

If the firmware was loaded from a firmware package, debian-installer will also
install this package for the installed system and will automatically add the
non-free section of the package archive in APT's sources.list. This has the
advantage that the firmware should be updated automatically if a new version
becomes available.

If loading the firmware was skipped during the installation, the relevant
device will probably not work with the installed system until the firmware
(package) is installed manually.

Note

If the firmware was loaded from loose firmware files, the firmware copied to
the installed system will not be automatically updated unless the corresponding
firmware package (if available) is installed after the installation is
completed.


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

^[5] In technical terms: where multiple locales exist for that language with
differing country codes.

^[6] At medium and low priority you can always select your preferred locale
from those available for the selected language (if there's more than one).

^[7] Legacy locales are locales which do not use UTF-8, but one of the older
standards for character encoding such as ISO 8859-1 (used by West European
languages) or EUC-JP (used by Japanese).

^[8] The installer will encrypt the LVM volume group using a 256 bit AES key
and makes use of the kernel's "dm-crypt" support.

^[9] To be honest, you can construct an MD device even from partitions residing
on single physical drive, but that won't give any benefits.

^[10] Using a passphrase as the key currently means that the partition will be
set up using LUKS.

^[11] It is believed that the guys from three-letter agencies can restore the
data even after several rewrites of the magnetooptical media, though.

^[12] Note that the program which actually installs the packages is called dpkg
. However, this program is more of a low-level tool. apt-get is a higher-level
tool, which will invoke dpkg as appropriate. It knows how to retrieve packages
from your CD, the network, or wherever. It is also able to automatically
install other packages which are required to make the package you're trying to
install work correctly.

^[13] You should know that to present this list, the installer is merely
invoking the tasksel program. It can be run at any time after installation to
install more packages (or remove them), or you can use a more fine-grained tool
such as aptitude. If you are looking for a specific single package, after
installation is complete, simply run aptitude install package, where package is
the name of the package you are looking for.

^[14] That is: press the Alt key on the left-hand side of the space bar and the
F2 function key at the same time.

^[15] The following command will remove an existing entry for a host: 
ssh-keygen -R <hostname|IP address>.

Chapter 7. Booting Into Your New Ubuntu System

Table of Contents

7.1. The Moment of Truth
7.2. Mounting encrypted volumes

    7.2.1. Troubleshooting

7.3. Log In

7.1. The Moment of Truth

Your system's first boot on its own power is what electrical engineers call the
"smoke test".

If you did a default installation, the first thing you should see when you boot
the system is the menu of the grub or possibly the lilo bootloader. The first
choices in the menu will be for your new Ubuntu system. If you had any other
operating systems on your computer (like Windows) that were detected by the
installation system, those will be listed lower down in the menu.

If the system fails to start up correctly, don't panic. If the installation was
successful, chances are good that there is only a relatively minor problem that
is preventing the system from booting Ubuntu. In most cases such problems can
be fixed without having to repeat the installation. One available option to fix
boot problems is to use the installer's built-in rescue mode (see Section 8.7,
"Recovering a Broken System").

If you had any other operating systems on your computer that were not detected
or not detected correctly, please file an installation report.

7.2. Mounting encrypted volumes

If you created encrypted volumes during the installation and assigned them
mount points, you will be asked to enter the passphrase for each of these
volumes during the boot.

For partitions encrypted using dm-crypt you will be shown the following prompt
during the boot:

Starting early crypto disks... part_crypt(starting)
Enter LUKS passphrase:

In the first line of the prompt, part is the name of the underlying partition,
e.g. sda2 or md0. You are now probably wondering for which volume you are
actually entering the passphrase. Does it relate to your /home? Or to /var? Of
course, if you have just one encrypted volume, this is easy and you can just
enter the passphrase you used when setting up this volume. If you set up more
than one encrypted volume during the installation, the notes you wrote down as
the last step in Section 6.3.3.6, "Configuring Encrypted Volumes" come in
handy. If you did not make a note of the mapping between part_crypt and the
mount points before, you can still find it in /etc/crypttab and /etc/fstab of
your new system.

The prompt may look somewhat different when an encrypted root file system is
mounted. This depends on which initramfs generator was used to generate the
initrd used to boot the system. The example below is for an initrd generated
using initramfs-tools:

Begin: Mounting root file system... ...
Begin: Running /scripts/local-top ...
Enter LUKS passphrase:

No characters (even asterisks) will be shown while entering the passphrase. If
you enter the wrong passphrase, you have two more tries to correct it. After
the third try the boot process will skip this volume and continue to mount the
next filesystem. Please see Section 7.2.1, "Troubleshooting" for further
information.

After entering all passphrases the boot should continue as usual.

7.2.1. Troubleshooting

If some of the encrypted volumes could not be mounted because a wrong
passphrase was entered, you will have to mount them manually after the boot.
There are several cases.

  • The first case concerns the root partition. When it is not mounted
    correctly, the boot process will halt and you will have to reboot the
    computer to try again.

  • The easiest case is for encrypted volumes holding data like /home or /srv.
    You can simply mount them manually after the boot.

    However for dm-crypt this is a bit tricky. First you need to register the
    volumes with device mapper by running:

    # /etc/init.d/cryptdisks start

    This will scan all volumes mentioned in /etc/crypttab and will create
    appropriate devices under the /dev directory after entering the correct
    passphrases. (Already registered volumes will be skipped, so you can repeat
    this command several times without worrying.) After successful registration
    you can simply mount the volumes the usual way:

    # mount /mount_point

  • If any volume holding noncritical system files could not be mounted (/usr
    or /var), the system should still boot and you should be able to mount the
    volumes manually like in the previous case. However, you will also need to
    (re)start any services usually running in your default runlevel because it
    is very likely that they were not started. The easiest way is to just
    reboot the computer.

7.3. Log In

Once your system boots, you'll be presented with the login prompt. Log in using
the personal login and password you selected during the installation process.
Your system is now ready for use.

If you are a new user, you may want to explore the documentation which is
already installed on your system as you start to use it. There are currently
several documentation systems, work is proceeding on integrating the different
types of documentation. Here are a few starting points.

Documentation accompanying programs you have installed can be found in /usr/
share/doc/, under a subdirectory named after the program (or, more precise, the
Ubuntu package that contains the program). However, more extensive
documentation is often packaged separately in special documentation packages
that are mostly not installed by default. For example, documentation about the
package management tool apt can be found in the packages apt-doc or apt-howto.

In addition, there are some special folders within the /usr/share/doc/
hierarchy. Linux HOWTOs are installed in .gz (compressed) format, in /usr/share
/doc/HOWTO/en-txt/. After installing dhelp, you will find a browsable index of
documentation in /usr/share/doc/HTML/index.html.

One easy way to view these documents using a text based browser is to enter the
following commands:

$ cd /usr/share/doc/
$ w3m .

The dot after the w3m command tells it to show the contents of the current
directory.

If you have a graphical desktop environment installed, you can also use its web
browser. Start the web browser from the application menu and enter /usr/share/
doc/ in the address bar.

You can also type info command or man command to see documentation on most
commands available at the command prompt. Typing help will display help on
shell commands. And typing a command followed by --help will usually display a
short summary of the command's usage. If a command's results scroll past the
top of the screen, type | more after the command to cause the results to pause
before scrolling past the top of the screen. To see a list of all commands
available which begin with a certain letter, type the letter and then two tabs.

Chapter 8. Next Steps and Where to Go From Here

Table of Contents

8.1. Shutting down the system
8.2. If You Are New to Unix
8.3. Orienting Yourself to Ubuntu

    8.3.1. Ubuntu Packaging System
    8.3.2. Additional Software Available for Ubuntu
    8.3.3. Application Version Management
    8.3.4. Cron Job Management

8.4. Further Reading and Information
8.5. Setting Up Your System To Use E-Mail

    8.5.1. Default E-Mail Configuration
    8.5.2. Sending E-Mails Outside The System
    8.5.3. Configuring the Exim4 Mail Transport Agent

8.6. Compiling a New Kernel

    8.6.1. Kernel Image Management

8.7. Recovering a Broken System

8.1. Shutting down the system

To shut down a running Ubuntu system, you must not reboot with the reset switch
on the front or back of your computer, or just turn off the computer. Ubuntu
should be shut down in a controlled manner, otherwise files might get lost and/
or disk damage might occur. If you run a desktop environment, there is usually
an option to "log out" available from the application menu that allows you to
shutdown (or reboot) the system.

Alternatively you can press the key combination Ctrl+Alt+Del . If the key
combinations do not work, a last option is to log in as root and type the
necessary commands. Use reboot to reboot the system. Use halt to halt the
system without powering it off ^[16]. To power off the machine, use poweroff or
shutdown -h now. The systemd init system provides additional commands that
perform the same functions; for example systemctl reboot or systemctl poweroff.

8.2. If You Are New to Unix

If you are new to Unix, you probably should go out and buy some books and do
some reading. A lot of valuable information can also be found in the Debian
Reference. This list of Unix FAQs contains a number of UseNet documents which
provide a nice historical reference.

Linux is an implementation of Unix. The Linux Documentation Project (LDP)
collects a number of HOWTOs and online books relating to Linux. Most of these
documents can be installed locally; just install the doc-linux-html package
(HTML versions) or the doc-linux-text package (ASCII versions), then look in /
usr/share/doc/HOWTO. International versions of the LDP HOWTOs are also
available as Ubuntu packages.

8.3. Orienting Yourself to Ubuntu

Ubuntu is a little different from other distributions. Even if you're familiar
with Linux in other distributions, there are things you should know about
Ubuntu to help you to keep your system in a good, clean state. This chapter
contains material to help you get oriented; it is not intended to be a tutorial
for how to use Ubuntu, but just a very brief glimpse of the system for the very
rushed.

8.3.1. Ubuntu Packaging System

The most important concept to grasp is the Ubuntu packaging system, which may
be familiar to those who have already used Debian. In essence, large parts of
your system should be considered under the control of the packaging system.
These include:

  • /usr (excluding /usr/local)

  • /var (you could make /var/local and be safe in there)

  • /bin

  • /sbin

  • /lib

For instance, if you replace /usr/bin/perl, that will work, but then if you
upgrade your perl package, the file you put there will be replaced. Experts can
get around this by putting packages on "hold" in aptitude.

One of the best installation methods is apt. You can use the command line
version apt-get, the full-screen text version aptitude, or the graphical
version synaptic. Note apt will also let you merge main, contrib, and non-free
so you can have export-restricted packages as well as standard versions.

8.3.2. Additional Software Available for Ubuntu

There are official and unofficial software repositories that are not enabled in
the default Ubuntu install. These contain software which many find important
and expect to have. Information on these additional repositories can be found
on the Ubuntu Wiki page titled The Software Available for Ubuntu's Stable
Release.

8.3.3. Application Version Management

Alternative versions of applications are managed by update-alternatives. If you
are maintaining multiple versions of your applications, read the
update-alternatives man page.

8.3.4. Cron Job Management

Any jobs under the purview of the system administrator should be in /etc, since
they are configuration files. If you have a root cron job for daily, weekly, or
monthly runs, put them in /etc/cron.{daily,weekly,monthly}. These are invoked
from /etc/crontab, and will run in alphabetic order, which serializes them.

On the other hand, if you have a cron job that (a) needs to run as a special
user, or (b) needs to run at a special time or frequency, you can use either /
etc/crontab, or, better yet, /etc/cron.d/whatever. These particular files also
have an extra field that allows you to stipulate the user account under which
the cron job runs.

In either case, you just edit the files and cron will notice them
automatically. There is no need to run a special command. For more information
see cron(8), crontab(5), and /usr/share/doc/cron/README.Debian.

8.4. Further Reading and Information

If you need information about a particular program, you should first try man 
program, or info program.

There is lots of useful documentation in /usr/share/doc as well. In particular,
/usr/share/doc/HOWTO and /usr/share/doc/FAQ contain lots of interesting
information. To submit bugs, look at /usr/share/doc/debian/bug*. To read about
Debian/Ubuntu-specific issues for particular programs, look at /usr/share/doc/
(package name)/README.Debian.

Help on Ubuntu can be found on the Ubuntu web site. In particular, see the
Ubuntu documentation pages for information on a wide variety of topics. The
Ubuntu mailing lists and the Ubuntu Forums can be invaluable sources of help
from the Ubuntu community.

A general source of information on GNU/Linux is the Linux Documentation Project
. There you will find the HOWTOs and pointers to other very valuable
information on parts of a GNU/Linux system.

8.5. Setting Up Your System To Use E-Mail

Today, email is an important part of many people's life. As there are many
options as to how to set it up, and as having it set up correctly is important
for some Ubuntu utilities, we will try to cover the basics in this section.

There are three main functions that make up an e-mail system. First there is
the Mail User Agent (MUA) which is the program a user actually uses to compose
and read mails. Then there is the Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) that takes care of
transferring messages from one computer to another. And last there is the Mail
Delivery Agent (MDA) that takes care of delivering incoming mail to the user's
inbox.

These three functions can be performed by separate programs, but they can also
be combined in one or two programs. It is also possible to have different
programs handle these functions for different types of mail.

On Linux and Unix systems mutt is historically a very popular MUA. Like most
traditional Linux programs it is text based. It is often used in combination
with exim or sendmail as MTA and procmail as MDA.

With the increasing popularity of graphical desktop systems, the use of
graphical e-mail programs like GNOME's evolution, KDE's kmail or Mozilla's 
thunderbird is becoming more popular. These programs combine the function of a
MUA, MTA and MDA, but can -- and often are -- also be used in combination with
the traditional Linux tools.

8.5.1. Default E-Mail Configuration

Even if you are planning to use a graphical mail program, it is important that
a traditional MTA/MDA is also installed and correctly set up on your Ubuntu
system. Reason is that various utilities running on the system^[17] can send
important notices by e-mail to inform the system administrator of (potential)
problems or changes.

For this reason the packages exim4 and mutt will be installed by default
(provided you did not unselect the "standard" task during the installation).
exim4 is a combination MTA/MDA that is relatively small but very flexible. By
default it will be configured to only handle e-mail local to the system itself
and e-mails addressed to the system administrator (root account) will be
delivered to the regular user account created during the installation^[18].

When system e-mails are delivered they are added to a file in /var/mail/
account_name. The e-mails can be read using mutt.

8.5.2. Sending E-Mails Outside The System

As mentioned earlier, the installed Ubuntu system is only set up to handle
e-mail local to the system, not for sending mail to others nor for receiving
mail from others.

If you would like exim4 to handle external e-mail, please refer to the next
subsection for the basic available configuration options. Make sure to test
that mail can be sent and received correctly.

If you intend to use a graphical mail program and use a mail server of your
Internet Service Provider (ISP) or your company, there is not really any need
to configure exim4 for handling external e-mail. Just configure your favorite
graphical mail program to use the correct servers to send and receive e-mail
(how is outside the scope of this manual).

However, in that case you may need to configure individual utilities to
correctly send e-mails. One such utility is reportbug, a program that
facilitates submitting bug reports against Ubuntu packages. By default it
expects to be able to use exim4 to submit bug reports.

To correctly set up reportbug to use an external mail server, please run the
command reportbug --configure and answer "no" to the question if an MTA is
available. You will then be asked for the SMTP server to be used for submitting
bug reports.

8.5.3. Configuring the Exim4 Mail Transport Agent

If you would like your system to also handle external e-mail, you will need to
reconfigure the exim4 package^[19]:

# dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config

After entering that command (as root), you will be asked if you want split the
configuration into small files. If you are unsure, select the default option.

Next you will be presented with several common mail scenarios. Choose the one
that most closely resembles your needs.

internet site

    Your system is connected to a network and your mail is sent and received
    directly using SMTP. On the following screens you will be asked a few basic
    questions, like your machine's mail name, or a list of domains for which
    you accept or relay mail.

mail sent by smarthost

    In this scenario your outgoing mail is forwarded to another machine, called
    a "smarthost", which takes care of sending the message on to its
    destination. The smarthost also usually stores incoming mail addressed to
    your computer, so you don't need to be permanently online. That also means
    you have to download your mail from the smarthost via programs like
    fetchmail.

    In a lot of cases the smarthost will be your ISP's mail server, which makes
    this option very suitable for dial-up users. It can also be a company mail
    server, or even another system on your own network.

mail sent by smarthost; no local mail

    This option is basically the same as the previous one except that the
    system will not be set up to handle mail for a local e-mail domain. Mail on
    the system itself (e.g. for the system administrator) will still be
    handled.

local delivery only

    This is the option your system is configured for by default.

no configuration at this time

    Choose this if you are absolutely convinced you know what you are doing.
    This will leave you with an unconfigured mail system -- until you configure
    it, you won't be able to send or receive any mail and you may miss some
    important messages from your system utilities.

If none of these scenarios suits your needs, or if you need a finer grained
setup, you will need to edit configuration files under the /etc/exim4 directory
after the installation is complete. More information about exim4 may be found
under /usr/share/doc/exim4; the file README.Debian.gz has further details about
configuring exim4 and explains where to find additional documentation.

Note that sending mail directly to the Internet when you don't have an official
domain name, can result in your mail being rejected because of anti-spam
measures on receiving servers. Using your ISP's mail server is preferred. If
you still do want to send out mail directly, you may want to use a different
e-mail address than is generated by default. If you use exim4 as your MTA, this
is possible by adding an entry in /etc/email-addresses.

8.6. Compiling a New Kernel

Why would someone want to compile a new kernel? It is often not necessary since
the default kernel shipped with Ubuntu handles most configurations. Also,
Ubuntu often offers several alternative kernels. So you may want to check first
if there is an alternative kernel image package that better corresponds to your
hardware. However, it can be useful to compile a new kernel in order to:

  • handle special hardware needs, or hardware conflicts with the pre-supplied
    kernels

  • use options of the kernel which are not supported in the pre-supplied
    kernels (such as high memory support)

  • optimize the kernel by removing useless drivers to speed up boot time

  • create a monolithic instead of a modularized kernel

  • run an updated or development kernel

  • learn more about linux kernels

8.6.1. Kernel Image Management

Don't be afraid to try compiling the kernel. It's fun and profitable.

To compile a kernel the Debian/Ubuntu way, you need some packages: fakeroot,
kernel-package, linux-source-2.6 and a few others which are probably already
installed (see /usr/share/doc/kernel-package/README.gz for the complete list).

This method will make a .deb of your kernel source, and, if you have
non-standard modules, make a synchronized dependent .deb of those too. It's a
better way to manage kernel images; /boot will hold the kernel, the System.map,
and a log of the active config file for the build.

Note that you don't have to compile your kernel the "Debian/Ubuntu way"; but we
find that using the packaging system to manage your kernel is actually safer
and easier. In fact, you can get your kernel sources right from Linus instead
of linux-source-2.6, yet still use the kernel-package compilation method.

Note that you'll find complete documentation on using kernel-package under /usr
/share/doc/kernel-package. This section just contains a brief tutorial.

Hereafter, we'll assume you have free rein over your machine and will extract
your kernel source to somewhere in your home directory^[20]. We'll also assume
that your kernel version is 4.15. Make sure you are in the directory to where
you want to unpack the kernel sources, extract them using tar xf /usr/src/
linux-source-4.15.tar.xz and change to the directory linux-source-4.15 that
will have been created.

Now, you can configure your kernel. Run make xconfig if X11 is installed,
configured and being run; run make menuconfig otherwise (you'll need
libncurses5-dev installed). Take the time to read the online help and choose
carefully. When in doubt, it is typically better to include the device driver
(the software which manages hardware peripherals, such as Ethernet cards, SCSI
controllers, and so on) you are unsure about. Be careful: other options, not
related to a specific hardware, should be left at the default value if you do
not understand them. Do not forget to select "Kernel module loader" in "
Loadable module support" (it is not selected by default). If not included, your
Ubuntu installation will experience problems.

Clean the source tree and reset the kernel-package parameters. To do that, do
make-kpkg clean.

Now, compile the kernel: fakeroot make-kpkg --initrd --revision=1.0.custom
kernel_image. The version number of "1.0" can be changed at will; this is just
a version number that you will use to track your kernel builds. Likewise, you
can put any word you like in place of "custom" (e.g., a host name). Kernel
compilation may take quite a while, depending on the power of your machine.

Once the compilation is complete, you can install your custom kernel like any
package. As root, do dpkg -i ../linux-image-4.15-subarchitecture
_1.0.custom_i386.deb. The subarchitecture part is an optional sub-architecture,
such as "686", depending on what kernel options you set. dpkg -i will install
the kernel, along with some other nice supporting files. For instance, the
System.map will be properly installed (helpful for debugging kernel problems),
and /boot/config-4.15 will be installed, containing your current configuration
set. Your new kernel package is also clever enough to automatically update your
boot loader to use the new kernel. If you have created a modules package,
you'll need to install that package as well.

It is time to reboot the system: read carefully any warning that the above step
may have produced, then shutdown -r now.

For more information on Debian/Ubuntu kernels and kernel compilation, see the
Debian Linux Kernel Handbook. For more information on kernel-package, read the
fine documentation in /usr/share/doc/kernel-package.

8.7. Recovering a Broken System

Sometimes, things go wrong, and the system you've carefully installed is no
longer bootable. Perhaps the boot loader configuration broke while trying out a
change, or perhaps a new kernel you installed won't boot, or perhaps cosmic
rays hit your disk and flipped a bit in /sbin/init. Regardless of the cause,
you'll need to have a system to work from while you fix it, and rescue mode can
be useful for this.

To access rescue mode, select rescue from the boot menu, type rescue at the
boot: prompt, or boot with the rescue/enable=true boot parameter. You'll be
shown the first few screens of the installer, with a note in the corner of the
display to indicate that this is rescue mode, not a full installation. Don't
worry, your system is not about to be overwritten! Rescue mode simply takes
advantage of the hardware detection facilities available in the installer to
ensure that your disks, network devices, and so on are available to you while
repairing your system.

Instead of the partitioning tool, you should now be presented with a list of
the partitions on your system, and asked to select one of them. Normally, you
should select the partition containing the root file system that you need to
repair. You may select partitions on RAID and LVM devices as well as those
created directly on disks.

If possible, the installer will now present you with a shell prompt in the file
system you selected, which you can use to perform any necessary repairs. For
example, if you need to reinstall the GRUB boot loader into the master boot
record of the first hard disk, you could enter the command grub-install '(hd0)'
to do so.

If the installer cannot run a usable shell in the root file system you
selected, perhaps because the file system is corrupt, then it will issue a
warning and offer to give you a shell in the installer environment instead. You
may not have as many tools available in this environment, but they will often
be enough to repair your system anyway. The root file system you selected will
be mounted on the /target directory.

In either case, after you exit the shell, the system will reboot.

Finally, note that repairing broken systems can be difficult, and this manual
does not attempt to go into all the things that might have gone wrong or how to
fix them. If you have problems, consult an expert.


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

^[16] Under the SysV init system halt had the same effect as poweroff, but with
systemd as init system (the default in jessie) their effects are different.

^[17] Examples are: cron, quota, logcheck, aide, ...

^[18] The forwarding of mail for root to the regular user account is configured
in /etc/aliases. If no regular user account was created, the mail will of
course be delivered to the root account itself.

^[19] You can of course also remove exim4 and replace it with an alternative
MTA/MDA.

^[20] There are other locations where you can extract kernel sources and build
your custom kernel, but this is easiest as it does not require special
permissions.

Appendix A. Installation Howto

Table of Contents

A.1. Booting the installer

    A.1.1. CDROM
    A.1.2. USB memory stick
    A.1.3. Booting from network

A.2. Installation
A.3. And finally...

This document describes how to install Ubuntu 18.04 "Bionic Beaver" for the 
32-bit PC ("i386"). It is a quick walkthrough of the installation process which
should contain all the information you will need for most installs. When more
information can be useful, we will link to more detailed explanations in other
parts of this document.

A.1. Booting the installer

For more information on where to get CDs, see Section 4.1, "Official Ubuntu
CD-ROMs".

Some installation methods require other images than CD images. Section 4.2.1,
"Where to Find Installation Images" explains how to find images on Ubuntu
mirrors.

The subsections below will give the details about which images you should get
for each possible means of installation.

A.1.1. CDROM

Download the image for your architecture and burn it to a CD. To boot the CD,
you may need to change your BIOS configuration, as explained in Section 3.6.1,
"Invoking the BIOS Set-Up Menu".

A.1.2. USB memory stick

It's also possible to install from removable USB storage devices. For example a
USB keychain can make a handy Ubuntu install medium that you can take with you
anywhere.

The easiest way to prepare your USB memory stick is to download any Ubuntu CD
or DVD image that will fit on it, and write the CD image directly to the memory
stick. Of course this will destroy anything already on the memory stick. This
works because Ubuntu CD images are "isohybrid" images that can boot both from
CD and from USB drives.

There are other, more flexible ways to set up a memory stick to use the Ubuntu
installer. For details, see Section 4.3, "Preparing Files for USB Memory Stick
Booting".

Some BIOSes can boot USB storage directly, and some cannot. You may need to
configure your BIOS to boot from a "removable drive" or even a "USB-ZIP" to get
it to boot from the USB device. For helpful hints and details, see
Section 5.1.1, "Booting from USB Memory Stick".

A.1.3. Booting from network

It's also possible to boot the Ubuntu installer completely from the net. The
various methods to netboot depend on your architecture and netboot setup. The
files in netboot/ can be used to netboot the Ubuntu installer.

The easiest thing to set up is probably PXE netbooting. Untar the file netboot/
pxeboot.tar.gz into /srv/tftp or wherever is appropriate for your tftp server.
Set up your DHCP server to pass filename pxelinux.0 to clients, and with luck
everything will just work. For detailed instructions, see Section 4.5,
"Preparing Files for TFTP Net Booting".

A.2. Installation

Once the installer starts, you will be greeted with an initial screen. Press 
Enter to boot, or read the instructions for other boot methods and parameters
(see Section 5.3, "Boot Parameters").

After a while you will be asked to select your language. Use the arrow keys to
pick a language and press Enter to continue. Next you'll be asked to select
your country, with the choices including countries where your language is
spoken. If it's not on the short list, a list of all the countries in the world
is available.

You may be asked to confirm your keyboard layout. Choose the default unless you
know better.

Now sit back while the installer detects some of your hardware, and loads the
rest of itself from CD, floppy, USB, etc.

Next the installer will try to detect your network hardware and set up
networking by DHCP. If you are not on a network or do not have DHCP, you will
be given the opportunity to configure the network manually.

The next step is setting up your clock and time zone. The installer will try to
contact a time server on the Internet to ensure the clock is set correctly. The
time zone is based on the country selected earlier and the installer will only
ask to select one if a country has multiple zones.

Setting up your clock and time zone is followed by the creation of user
accounts. By default you are asked to provide a password for the "root"
(administrator) account and information necessary to create one regular user
account. If you do not specify a password for the "root" user this account will
be disabled but the sudo package will be installed later to enable
administrative tasks to be carried out on the new system.

Now it is time to partition your disks. First you will be given the opportunity
to automatically partition either an entire drive, or available free space on a
drive (see Section 6.3.3.2, "Guided Partitioning"). This is recommended for new
users or anyone in a hurry. If you do not want to autopartition, choose Manual
from the menu.

If you have an existing DOS or Windows partition that you want to preserve, be
very careful with automatic partitioning. If you choose manual partitioning,
you can use the installer to resize existing FAT or NTFS partitions to create
room for the Ubuntu install: simply select the partition and specify its new
size.

If you want to customize the partition layout, choose Manually edit partition
table from the menu, and the next screen will show you your partition table,
how the partitions will be formatted, and where they will be mounted. Select a
partition to modify or delete it. Remember to assign at least one partition for
swap space and to mount a partition on /. For more detailed information on how
to use the partitioner, please refer to Section 6.3.3, "Partitioning and Mount
Point Selection"; the appendix Appendix C, Partitioning for Ubuntu has more
general information about partitioning.

Now the installer formats your partitions and starts to install the base
system, which can take a while. That is followed by installing a kernel.

The base system that was installed earlier is a working, but very minimal
installation. To make the system more functional the next step allows you to
install additional packages by selecting tasks. Before packages can be
installed apt needs to be configured as that defines from where the packages
will be retrieved. The "Standard system" task will be selected by default and
should normally be installed. Select the "Desktop environment" task if you
would like to have a graphical desktop after the installation. See
Section 6.3.5.2, "Selecting and Installing Software" for additional information
about this step.

The last step is to install a boot loader. If the installer detects other
operating systems on your computer, it will add them to the boot menu and let
you know. By default GRUB will be installed to the master boot record of the
first harddrive, which is generally a good choice.

The installer will now tell you that the first stage of installation has
finished. Remove the CD and hit Enter to reboot your machine. It should boot up
into the newly installed system and allow you to log in. This is explained in
Chapter 7, Booting Into Your New Ubuntu System.

If you need more information on the install process, see Chapter 6, Using the
Ubuntu Installer.

A.3. And finally...

We hope that your Ubuntu installation is pleasant and that you find Ubuntu
useful. You might want to read Chapter 8, Next Steps and Where to Go From Here.

Appendix B. Automating the installation using preseeding

Table of Contents

B.1. Introduction

    B.1.1. Preseeding methods
    B.1.2. Limitations
    B.1.3. Debconf basics

B.2. Using preseeding

    B.2.1. Loading the preconfiguration file
    B.2.2. Using boot parameters to preseed questions
    B.2.3. Auto mode
    B.2.4. Aliases useful with preseeding
    B.2.5. Using a DHCP server to specify preconfiguration files

B.3. Creating a preconfiguration file
B.4. Contents of the preconfiguration file (for bionic)

    B.4.1. Localization
    B.4.2. Network configuration
    B.4.3. Network console
    B.4.4. Mirror settings
    B.4.5. Account setup
    B.4.6. Clock and time zone setup
    B.4.7. Partitioning
    B.4.8. Base system installation
    B.4.9. Apt setup
    B.4.10. Package selection
    B.4.11. Boot loader installation
    B.4.12. Finishing up the installation
    B.4.13. Preseeding other packages

B.5. Advanced options

    B.5.1. Running custom commands during the installation
    B.5.2. Using preseeding to change default values
    B.5.3. Chainloading preconfiguration files

This appendix explains how to preseed answers to questions in debian-installer
to automate your installation.

The configuration fragments used in this appendix are also available as an
example preconfiguration file from ../example-preseed.txt.

B.1. Introduction

Preseeding provides a way to set answers to questions asked during the
installation process, without having to manually enter the answers while the
installation is running. This makes it possible to fully automate most types of
installation and even offers some features not available during normal
installations.

Preseeding is not required. If you use an empty preseed file, the installer
will behave just the same way as in a normal manual installation. Each question
you preseed will (if you got it right!) modify the installation in some way
from that baseline.

B.1.1. Preseeding methods

There are three methods that can be used for preseeding: initrd, file and
network. Initrd preseeding will work with any installation method and supports
preseeding of more things, but it requires the most preparation. File and
network preseeding each can be used with different installation methods.

The following table shows which preseeding methods can be used with which
installation methods.

┌───────────────────────────────────────────────┬─────────┬──────┬──────────┐
│              Installation method              │ initrd  │ file │ network  │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────┼─────────┼──────┼──────────┤
│CD/DVD                                         │yes      │yes   │yes^[a]   │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────┼─────────┼──────┼──────────┤
│netboot                                        │yes      │no    │yes       │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────┼─────────┼──────┼──────────┤
│hd-media (including usb-stick)                 │yes      │yes   │yes^[a]   │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────┴─────────┴──────┴──────────┤
│^[a] but only if you have network access, and set preseed/url appropriately│
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

An important difference between the preseeding methods is the point at which
the preconfiguration file is loaded and processed. For initrd preseeding this
is right at the start of the installation, before the first question is even
asked. Preseeding from the kernel command line happens just after. It is thus
possible to override configuration set in the initrd by editing the kernel
command line (either in the bootloader configuration or manually at boot time
for bootloaders that allow it). For file preseeding this is after the CD or CD
image has been loaded. For network preseeding it is only after the network has
been configured.

Important

Obviously, any questions that have been processed before the preconfiguration
file is loaded cannot be preseeded (this will include questions that are only
displayed at medium or low priority, like the first hardware detection run). A
not so convenient way to avoid these questions from being asked is to preseed
them through the boot parameters, as described in Section B.2.2, "Using boot
parameters to preseed questions".

In order to easily avoid the questions that would normally appear before the
preseeding occurs, you can start the installer in "auto" mode. This delays
questions that would normally be asked too early for preseeding (i.e. language,
country and keyboard selection) until after the network comes up, thus allowing
them to be preseeded. It also runs the installation at critical priority, which
avoids many unimportant questions. See Section B.2.3, "Auto mode" for details.

B.1.2. Limitations

Although most questions used by debian-installer can be preseeded using this
method, there are some notable exceptions. You must (re)partition an entire
disk or use available free space on a disk; it is not possible to use existing
partitions.

B.1.3. Debconf basics

Preseeding makes use of the debconf framework. This framework is the preferred
mechanism used in Ubuntu to interact with the user when configuring packages
and also forms the heart of debian-installer. In the debconf framework
questions or dialogs are based on templates. There are different types of
templates for different types of questions. The actual questions are "generated
" from templates at runtime; multiple questions can use the same template.

The following types of templates are relevant for preseeding.

  • string: allows the user to type any value

  • password: similar to string but the value typed is not displayed

  • boolean: for yes/no or true/false type of questions

  • select: allows the user to select one option from a list

  • multiselect: allows the user to select zero, one or more options from a
    list

  • note: used to display a message

In debian-installer templates are stored in a readable file /var/cache/debconf/
templates.dat. This file contains all fixed text and all translations. It can
also contain a default value for the template. The fixed text can include
variables that will be replaced at runtime.

Another readable file /var/cache/debconf/questions.dat is used to store the
values for variables and the answers given to questions. A question always
refers to the template used to ask it. For obvious security reasons the values
for questions of type "password" are stored in a separate, non-readable file in
the same directory.

B.2. Using preseeding

You will first need to create a preconfiguration file and place it in the
location from where you want to use it. Creating the preconfiguration file is
covered later in this appendix. Putting it in the correct location is fairly
straightforward for network preseeding or if you want to read the file off a
floppy or usb-stick. If you want to include the file on a CD or DVD, you will
have to remaster the ISO image. How to get the preconfiguration file included
in the initrd is outside the scope of this document; please consult the
developers' documentation for debian-installer.

An example preconfiguration file that you can use as basis for your own
preconfiguration file is available from ../example-preseed.txt. This file is
based on the configuration fragments included in this appendix.

B.2.1. Loading the preconfiguration file

If you are using initrd preseeding, you only have to make sure a file named
preseed.cfg is included in the root directory of the initrd. The installer will
automatically check if this file is present and load it.

For the other preseeding methods you need to tell the installer what file to
use when you boot it. This is normally done by passing the kernel a boot
parameter, either manually at boot time or by editing the bootloader
configuration file (e.g. syslinux.cfg) and adding the parameter to the end of
the append line(s) for the kernel.

If you do specify the preconfiguration file in the bootloader configuration,
you might change the configuration so you don't need to hit enter to boot the
installer. For syslinux this means setting the timeout to 1 in syslinux.cfg.

To make sure the installer gets the right preconfiguration file, you can
optionally specify a checksum for the file. Currently this needs to be a
md5sum, and if specified it must match the preconfiguration file or the
installer will refuse to use it.

Boot parameters to specify:
- if you're netbooting:
  preseed/url=http://host/path/to/preseed.cfg
  preseed/url/checksum=5da499872becccfeda2c4872f9171c3d
- or
  preseed/url=tftp://host/path/to/preseed.cfg
  preseed/url/checksum=5da499872becccfeda2c4872f9171c3d

- if you're booting a remastered CD:
  preseed/file=/cdrom/preseed.cfg
  preseed/file/checksum=5da499872becccfeda2c4872f9171c3d

- if you're installing from USB media (put the preconfiguration file in the
  toplevel directory of the USB stick):
  preseed/file=/hd-media/preseed.cfg
  preseed/file/checksum=5da499872becccfeda2c4872f9171c3d

Note that preseed/url can be shortened to just url, preseed/file to just file
and preseed/file/checksum to just preseed-md5 when they are passed as boot
parameters.

B.2.2. Using boot parameters to preseed questions

If a preconfiguration file cannot be used to preseed some steps, the install
can still be fully automated, since you can pass preseed values on the command
line when booting the installer.

Boot parameters can also be used if you do not really want to use preseeding,
but just want to provide an answer for a specific question. Some examples where
this can be useful are documented elsewhere in this manual.

To set a value to be used inside debian-installer, just pass path/to/variable=
value for any of the preseed variables listed in the examples in this appendix.
If a value is to be used to configure packages for the target system, you will
need to prepend the owner^[21] of the variable as in owner:path/to/variable=
value. If you don't specify the owner, the value for the variable will not be
copied to the debconf database in the target system and thus remain unused
during the configuration of the relevant package.

Normally, preseeding a question in this way will mean that the question will
not be asked. To set a specific default value for a question, but still have
the question asked, use "?=" instead of "=" as operator. See also
Section B.5.2, "Using preseeding to change default values".

Note that some variables that are frequently set at the boot prompt have a
shorter alias. If an alias is available, it is used in the examples in this
appendix instead of the full variable. The preseed/url variable for example has
been aliased as url. Another example is the tasks alias, which translates to
tasksel:tasksel/first.

A "---" in the boot options has special meaning. Kernel parameters that appear
after the last "---" may be copied into the bootloader configuration for the
installed system (if supported by the installer for the bootloader). The
installer will automatically filter out any options (like preconfiguration
options) that it recognizes.

Note

Current linux kernels (2.6.9 and later) accept a maximum of 32 command line
options and 32 environment options, including any options added by default for
the installer. If these numbers are exceeded, the kernel will panic (crash).
(For earlier kernels, these numbers were lower.)

For most installations some of the default options in your bootloader
configuration file, like vga=normal, may be safely removed which may allow you
to add more options for preseeding.

Note

It may not always be possible to specify values with spaces for boot
parameters, even if you delimit them with quotes.

B.2.3. Auto mode

There are several features of Ubuntu Installer that combine to allow fairly
simple command lines at the boot prompt to result in arbitrarily complex
customized automatic installs.

This is enabled by using the Automated install boot choice, also called auto
for some architectures or boot methods. In this section, auto is thus not a
parameter, it means selecting that boot choice, and appending the following
boot parameters on the boot prompt. See Section 5.1.5, "The Boot Screen" for
information on how to add a boot parameter.

To illustrate this, here are some examples that can be used at the boot prompt:

auto url=autoserver

This relies on there being a DHCP server that will get the machine to the point
where autoserver can be resolved by DNS, perhaps after adding the local domain
if that was provided by DHCP. If this was done at a site where the domain is
example.com, and they have a reasonably sane DHCP setup, it would result in the
preseed file being retrieved from http://autoserver.example.com/d-i/bionic/./
preseed.cfg.

The last part of that url (d-i/bionic/./preseed.cfg) is taken from auto-install
/defaultroot. By default this includes the directory bionic to allow future
versions to specify their own codename and let people migrate forwards in a
controlled manner. The /./ bit is used to indicate a root, relative to which
subsequent paths can be anchored (for use in preseed/include and preseed/run).
This allows files to be specified either as full URLs, paths starting with /
that are thus anchored, or even paths relative to the location where the last
preseed file was found. This can be used to construct more portable scripts
where an entire hierarchy of scripts can be moved to a new location without
breaking it, for example copying the files onto a USB stick when they started
out on a web server. In this example, if the preseed file sets preseed/run to /
scripts/late_command.sh then the file will be fetched from http://
autoserver.example.com/d-i/bionic/./scripts/late_command.sh.

If there is no local DHCP or DNS infrastructure, or if you do not want to use
the default path to preseed.cfg, you can still use an explicit url, and if you
don't use the /./ element it will be anchored to the start of the path (i.e.
the third / in the URL). Here is an example that requires minimal support from
the local network infrastructure:

auto url=http://192.168.1.2/path/to/mypreseed.file

The way this works is that:

  • if the URL is missing a protocol, http is assumed,

  • if the hostname section contains no periods, it has the domain derived from
    DHCP appended to it, and

  • if there's no /'s after the hostname, then the default path is added.

In addition to specifying the url, you can also specify settings that do not
directly affect the behavior of debian-installer itself, but can be passed
through to scripts specified using preseed/run in the loaded preseed file. At
present, the only example of this is auto-install/classes, which has an alias
classes. This can be used thus:

auto url=example.com classes=class_A;class_B

The classes could for example denote the type of system to be installed, or the
localization to be used.

It is of course possible to extend this concept, and if you do, it is
reasonable to use the auto-install namespace for this. So one might have
something like auto-install/style which is then used in your scripts. If you
feel the need to do this, please mention it on the <
debian-boot@lists.debian.org> mailing list so that we can avoid namespace
conflicts, and perhaps add an alias for the parameter for you.

The auto boot choice is not yet defined on all arches. The same effect may be
achieved by simply adding the two parameters auto=true priority=critical to the
kernel command line. The auto kernel parameter is an alias for auto-install/
enable and setting it to true delays the locale and keyboard questions until
after there has been a chance to preseed them, while priority is an alias for
debconf/priority and setting it to critical stops any questions with a lower
priority from being asked.

Additional options that may be of interest while attempting to automate an
install while using DHCP are: interface=auto netcfg/dhcp_timeout=60 which makes
the machine choose the first viable NIC and be more patient about getting a
reply to its DHCP query.

Tip

An extensive example of how to use this framework, including example scripts
and classes, can be found on the website of its developer. The examples
available there also show many other nice effects that can be achieved by
creative use of preconfiguration.

B.2.4. Aliases useful with preseeding

The following aliases can be useful when using (auto mode) preseeding. Note
that these are simply short aliases for question names, and you always need to
specify a value as well: for example, auto=true or interface=eth0.

priority    debconf/priority
fb          debian-installer/framebuffer
language    debian-installer/language
country     debian-installer/country
locale      debian-installer/locale
theme       debian-installer/theme
auto        auto-install/enable
classes     auto-install/classes
file        preseed/file
url         preseed/url
domain      netcfg/get_domain
hostname    netcfg/get_hostname
interface   netcfg/choose_interface
protocol    mirror/protocol
suite       mirror/suite
modules     anna/choose_modules
recommends  base-installer/install-recommends
tasks       tasksel:tasksel/first
desktop     tasksel:tasksel/desktop
dmraid      disk-detect/dmraid/enable
keymap      keyboard-configuration/xkb-keymap
preseed-md5 preseed/file/checksum

B.2.5. Using a DHCP server to specify preconfiguration files

It's also possible to use DHCP to specify a preconfiguration file to download
from the network. DHCP allows specifying a filename. Normally this is a file to
netboot, but if it appears to be an URL then installation media that support
network preseeding will download the file from the URL and use it as a
preconfiguration file. Here is an example of how to set it up in the dhcpd.conf
for version 3 of the ISC DHCP server (the isc-dhcp-server Ubuntu package).

if substring (option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 3) = "d-i" {
    filename "http://host/preseed.cfg";
}

Note that the above example limits this filename to DHCP clients that identify
themselves as "d-i", so it will not affect regular DHCP clients, but only the
installer. You can also put the text in a stanza for only one particular host
to avoid preseeding all installs on your network.

A good way to use the DHCP preseeding is to only preseed values specific to
your network, such as the Ubuntu mirror to use. This way installs on your
network will automatically get a good mirror selected, but the rest of the
installation can be performed interactively. Using DHCP preseeding to fully
automate Ubuntu installs should only be done with care.

B.3. Creating a preconfiguration file

The preconfiguration file is in the format used by the debconf-set-selections
command. The general format of a line in a preconfiguration file is:

<owner> <question name> <question type> <value>

There are a few rules to keep in mind when writing a preconfiguration file.

  • Put only a single space or tab between type and value: any additional
    whitespace will be interpreted as belonging to the value.

  • A line can be split into multiple lines by appending a backslash ("\") as
    the line continuation character. A good place to split a line is after the
    question name; a bad place is between type and value. Split lines will be
    joined into a single line with all leading/trailing whitespace condensed to
    a single space.

  • For debconf variables (templates) used only in the installer itself, the
    owner should be set to "d-i"; to preseed variables used in the installed
    system, the name of the package that contains the corresponding debconf
    template should be used. Only variables that have their owner set to
    something other than "d-i" will be propagated to the debconf database for
    the installed system.

  • Most questions need to be preseeded using the values valid in English and
    not the translated values. However, there are some questions (for example
    in partman) where the translated values need to be used.

  • Some questions take a code as value instead of the English text that is
    shown during installation.

The easiest way to create a preconfiguration file is to use the example file
linked in Section B.4, "Contents of the preconfiguration file (for bionic)" as
basis and work from there.

An alternative method is to do a manual installation and then, after rebooting,
use the debconf-get-selections from the debconf-utils package to dump both the
debconf database and the installer's cdebconf database to a single file:

$ debconf-get-selections --installer > file
$ debconf-get-selections >> file

However, a file generated in this manner will have some items that should not
be preseeded, and the example file is a better starting place for most users.

Note

This method relies on the fact that, at the end of the installation, the
installer's cdebconf database is saved to the installed system in /var/log/
installer/cdebconf. However, because the database may contain sensitive
information, by default the files are only readable by root.

The directory /var/log/installer and all files in it will be deleted from your
system if you purge the package installation-report.

To check possible values for questions, you can use nano to examine the files
in /var/lib/cdebconf while an installation is in progress. View templates.dat
for the raw templates and questions.dat for the current values and for the
values assigned to variables.

To check if the format of your preconfiguration file is valid before performing
an install, you can use the command debconf-set-selections -c preseed.cfg.

B.4. Contents of the preconfiguration file (for bionic)

The configuration fragments used in this appendix are also available as an
example preconfiguration file from ../example-preseed.txt.

Note that this example is based on an installation for the Intel x86
architecture. If you are installing a different architecture, some of the
examples (like keyboard selection and bootloader installation) may not be
relevant and will need to be replaced by debconf settings appropriate for your
architecture.

Details on how the different Debian Installer components actually work can be
found in Section 6.3, "Using Individual Components".

B.4.1. Localization

During a normal install the questions about localization are asked first, so
these values can only be preseeded via the initrd or kernel boot parameter
methods. Auto mode (Section B.2.3, "Auto mode") includes the setting of
auto-install/enable=true (normally via the auto preseed alias). This delays the
asking of the localisation questions, so that they can be preseeded by any
method.

The locale can be used to specify both language and country and can be any
combination of a language supported by debian-installer and a recognized
country. If the combination does not form a valid locale, the installer will
automatically select a locale that is valid for the selected language. To
specify the locale as a boot parameter, use locale=en_US.

Although this method is very easy to use, it does not allow preseeding of all
possible combinations of language, country and locale^[22]. So alternatively
the values can be preseeded individually. Language and country can also be
specified as boot parameters.

# Preseeding only locale sets language, country and locale.
d-i debian-installer/locale string en_US

# The values can also be preseeded individually for greater flexibility.
#d-i debian-installer/language string en
#d-i debian-installer/country string NL
#d-i debian-installer/locale string en_GB.UTF-8
# Optionally specify additional locales to be generated.
#d-i localechooser/supported-locales multiselect en_US.UTF-8, nl_NL.UTF-8

Keyboard configuration consists of selecting a keymap and (for non-latin
keymaps) a toggle key to switch between the non-latin keymap and the US keymap.
Only basic keymap variants are available during installation. Advanced variants
are available only in the installed system, through dpkg-reconfigure
keyboard-configuration.

To specify the keymap as a boot parameter, use console-setup/ask_detect=false
keyboard-configuration/xkb-keymap=us. The keymap is an X layout name, as would
be used in the XkbLayout option in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

# Keyboard selection.
# Disable automatic (interactive) keymap detection.
d-i console-setup/ask_detect boolean false
d-i keyboard-configuration/xkb-keymap select us
# To select a variant of the selected layout:
#d-i keyboard-configuration/xkb-keymap select us(dvorak)
# d-i keyboard-configuration/toggle select No toggling

To skip keyboard configuration, preseed keymap with SKIP. This will result in
the kernel keymap remaining active.

B.4.2. Network configuration

Of course, preseeding the network configuration won't work if you're loading
your preconfiguration file from the network. But it's great when you're booting
from CD or USB stick. If you are loading preconfiguration files from the
network, you can pass network config parameters by using kernel boot
parameters.

If you need to pick a particular interface when netbooting before loading a
preconfiguration file from the network, use a boot parameter such as interface=
eth1.

Although preseeding the network configuration is normally not possible when
using network preseeding (using "preseed/url"), you can use the following hack
to work around that, for example if you'd like to set a static address for the
network interface. The hack is to force the network configuration to run again
after the preconfiguration file has been loaded by creating a "preseed/run"
script containing the following commands:

kill-all-dhcp; netcfg

The following debconf variables are relevant for network configuration.

# Disable network configuration entirely. This is useful for cdrom
# installations on non-networked devices where the network questions,
# warning and long timeouts are a nuisance.
#d-i netcfg/enable boolean false

# netcfg will choose an interface that has link if possible. This makes it
# skip displaying a list if there is more than one interface.
d-i netcfg/choose_interface select auto

# To pick a particular interface instead:
#d-i netcfg/choose_interface select eth1

# To set a different link detection timeout (default is 3 seconds).
# Values are interpreted as seconds.
#d-i netcfg/link_wait_timeout string 10

# If you have a slow dhcp server and the installer times out waiting for
# it, this might be useful.
#d-i netcfg/dhcp_timeout string 60
#d-i netcfg/dhcpv6_timeout string 60

# If you prefer to configure the network manually, uncomment this line and
# the static network configuration below.
#d-i netcfg/disable_autoconfig boolean true

# If you want the preconfiguration file to work on systems both with and
# without a dhcp server, uncomment these lines and the static network
# configuration below.
#d-i netcfg/dhcp_failed note
#d-i netcfg/dhcp_options select Configure network manually

# Static network configuration.
#
# IPv4 example
#d-i netcfg/get_ipaddress string 192.168.1.42
#d-i netcfg/get_netmask string 255.255.255.0
#d-i netcfg/get_gateway string 192.168.1.1
#d-i netcfg/get_nameservers string 192.168.1.1
#d-i netcfg/confirm_static boolean true
#
# IPv6 example
#d-i netcfg/get_ipaddress string fc00::2
#d-i netcfg/get_netmask string ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff::
#d-i netcfg/get_gateway string fc00::1
#d-i netcfg/get_nameservers string fc00::1
#d-i netcfg/confirm_static boolean true

# Any hostname and domain names assigned from dhcp take precedence over
# values set here. However, setting the values still prevents the questions
# from being shown, even if values come from dhcp.
d-i netcfg/get_hostname string unassigned-hostname
d-i netcfg/get_domain string unassigned-domain

# If you want to force a hostname, regardless of what either the DHCP
# server returns or what the reverse DNS entry for the IP is, uncomment
# and adjust the following line.
#d-i netcfg/hostname string somehost

# Disable that annoying WEP key dialog.
d-i netcfg/wireless_wep string
# The wacky dhcp hostname that some ISPs use as a password of sorts.
#d-i netcfg/dhcp_hostname string radish

# If non-free firmware is needed for the network or other hardware, you can
# configure the installer to always try to load it, without prompting. Or
# change to false to disable asking.
#d-i hw-detect/load_firmware boolean true

Please note that netcfg will automatically determine the netmask if netcfg/
get_netmask is not preseeded. In this case, the variable has to be marked as
seen for automatic installations. Similarly, netcfg will choose an appropriate
address if netcfg/get_gateway is not set. As a special case, you can set netcfg
/get_gateway to "none" to specify that no gateway should be used.

B.4.3. Network console

# Use the following settings if you wish to make use of the network-console
# component for remote installation over SSH. This only makes sense if you
# intend to perform the remainder of the installation manually.
#d-i anna/choose_modules string network-console
#d-i network-console/authorized_keys_url string http://10.0.0.1/openssh-key
#d-i network-console/password password r00tme
#d-i network-console/password-again password r00tme
# Use this instead if you prefer to use key-based authentication
#d-i network-console/authorized_keys_url http://host/authorized_keys

B.4.4. Mirror settings

Depending on the installation method you use, a mirror may be used to download
additional components of the installer, to install the base system, and to set
up the /etc/apt/sources.list for the installed system.

The parameter mirror/suite determines the suite for the installed system.

The parameter mirror/udeb/suite determines the suite for additional components
for the installer. It is only useful to set this if components are actually
downloaded over the network and should match the suite that was used to build
the initrd for the installation method used for the installation. Normally the
installer will automatically use the correct value and there should be no need
to set this.

The parameter mirror/udeb/components determines the archive components from
which additional installer components are fetched. It is only useful to set
this if components are actually downloaded over the network. The default
components are main and restricted.

# If you select ftp, the mirror/country string does not need to be set.
#d-i mirror/protocol string ftp
d-i mirror/country string manual
d-i mirror/http/hostname string archive.ubuntu.com
d-i mirror/http/directory string /ubuntu
d-i mirror/http/proxy string

# Alternatively: by default, the installer uses CC.archive.ubuntu.com where
# CC is the ISO-3166-2 code for the selected country. You can preseed this
# so that it does so without asking.
#d-i mirror/http/mirror select CC.archive.ubuntu.com

# Suite to install.
#d-i mirror/suite string bionic
# Suite to use for loading installer components (optional).
#d-i mirror/udeb/suite string bionic
# Components to use for loading installer components (optional).
#d-i mirror/udeb/components multiselect main, restricted

B.4.5. Account setup

The password for the root account and name and password for a first regular
user's account can be preseeded. For the passwords you can use either clear
text values or crypt(3) hashes.

Warning

Be aware that preseeding passwords is not completely secure as everyone with
access to the preconfiguration file will have the knowledge of these passwords.
Storing hashed passwords is considered secure unless a weak hashing algorithm
like DES or MD5 is used which allow for bruteforce attacks. Recommended
password hashing algorithms are SHA-256 and SHA512.

# Skip creation of a root account (normal user account will be able to
# use sudo). The default is false; preseed this to true if you want to set
# a root password.
#d-i passwd/root-login boolean false
# Alternatively, to skip creation of a normal user account.
#d-i passwd/make-user boolean false

# Root password, either in clear text
#d-i passwd/root-password password r00tme
#d-i passwd/root-password-again password r00tme
# or encrypted using a crypt(3)  hash.
#d-i passwd/root-password-crypted password [crypt(3) hash]

# To create a normal user account.
#d-i passwd/user-fullname string Ubuntu User
#d-i passwd/username string ubuntu
# Normal user's password, either in clear text
#d-i passwd/user-password password insecure
#d-i passwd/user-password-again password insecure
# or encrypted using a crypt(3) hash.
#d-i passwd/user-password-crypted password [crypt(3) hash]
# Create the first user with the specified UID instead of the default.
#d-i passwd/user-uid string 1010
# The installer will warn about weak passwords. If you are sure you know
# what you're doing and want to override it, uncomment this.
#d-i user-setup/allow-password-weak boolean true

# The user account will be added to some standard initial groups. To
# override that, use this.
#d-i passwd/user-default-groups string audio cdrom video

# Set to true if you want to encrypt the first user's home directory.
d-i user-setup/encrypt-home boolean false

The passwd/root-password-crypted and passwd/user-password-crypted variables can
also be preseeded with "!" as their value. In that case, the corresponding
account is disabled. This may be convenient for the root account, provided of
course that an alternative method is set up to allow administrative activities
or root login (for instance by using SSH key authentication or sudo).

The following command (available from the whois package) can be used to
generate a SHA-512 based crypt(3) hash for a password:

mkpasswd -m sha-512

B.4.6. Clock and time zone setup

# Controls whether or not the hardware clock is set to UTC.
d-i clock-setup/utc boolean true

# You may set this to any valid setting for $TZ; see the contents of
# /usr/share/zoneinfo/ for valid values.
d-i time/zone string US/Eastern

# Controls whether to use NTP to set the clock during the install
d-i clock-setup/ntp boolean true
# NTP server to use. The default is almost always fine here.
#d-i clock-setup/ntp-server string ntp.example.com

B.4.7. Partitioning

Using preseeding to partition the harddisk is limited to what is supported by
partman-auto. You can choose to partition either existing free space on a disk
or a whole disk. The layout of the disk can be determined by using a predefined
recipe, a custom recipe from a recipe file or a recipe included in the
preconfiguration file.

Preseeding of advanced partition setups using RAID, LVM and encryption is
supported, but not with the full flexibility possible when partitioning during
a non-preseeded install.

The examples below only provide basic information on the use of recipes. For
detailed information see the files partman-auto-recipe.txt and
partman-auto-raid-recipe.txt included in the debian-installer package. Both
files are also available from the debian-installer source repository. Note that
the supported functionality may change between releases.

Warning

The identification of disks is dependent on the order in which their drivers
are loaded. If there are multiple disks in the system, make very sure the
correct one will be selected before using preseeding.

B.4.7.1. Partitioning example

# If the system has free space you can choose to only partition that space.
# This is only honoured if partman-auto/method (below) is not set.
# Alternatives: custom, some_device, some_device_crypto, some_device_lvm.
#d-i partman-auto/init_automatically_partition select biggest_free

# Alternatively, you may specify a disk to partition. If the system has only
# one disk the installer will default to using that, but otherwise the device
# name must be given in traditional, non-devfs format (so e.g. /dev/sda
# and not e.g. /dev/discs/disc0/disc).
# For example, to use the first SCSI/SATA hard disk:
#d-i partman-auto/disk string /dev/sda
# In addition, you'll need to specify the method to use.
# The presently available methods are:
# - regular: use the usual partition types for your architecture
# - lvm:     use LVM to partition the disk
# - crypto:  use LVM within an encrypted partition
d-i partman-auto/method string lvm

# If one of the disks that are going to be automatically partitioned
# contains an old LVM configuration, the user will normally receive a
# warning. This can be preseeded away...
d-i partman-lvm/device_remove_lvm boolean true
# The same applies to pre-existing software RAID array:
d-i partman-md/device_remove_md boolean true
# And the same goes for the confirmation to write the lvm partitions.
d-i partman-lvm/confirm boolean true
d-i partman-lvm/confirm_nooverwrite boolean true

# For LVM partitioning, you can select how much of the volume group to use
# for logical volumes.
#d-i partman-auto-lvm/guided_size string max
#d-i partman-auto-lvm/guided_size string 10GB
#d-i partman-auto-lvm/guided_size string 50%

# You can choose one of the three predefined partitioning recipes:
# - atomic: all files in one partition
# - home:   separate /home partition
# - multi:  separate /home, /var, and /tmp partitions
d-i partman-auto/choose_recipe select atomic

# Or provide a recipe of your own...
# If you have a way to get a recipe file into the d-i environment, you can
# just point at it.
#d-i partman-auto/expert_recipe_file string /hd-media/recipe

# If not, you can put an entire recipe into the preconfiguration file in one
# (logical) line. This example creates a small /boot partition, suitable
# swap, and uses the rest of the space for the root partition:
#d-i partman-auto/expert_recipe string                         \
#      boot-root ::                                            \
#              40 50 100 ext3                                  \
#                      $primary{ } $bootable{ }                \
#                      method{ format } format{ }              \
#                      use_filesystem{ } filesystem{ ext3 }    \
#                      mountpoint{ /boot }                     \
#              .                                               \
#              500 10000 1000000000 ext3                       \
#                      method{ format } format{ }              \
#                      use_filesystem{ } filesystem{ ext3 }    \
#                      mountpoint{ / }                         \
#              .                                               \
#              64 512 300% linux-swap                          \
#                      method{ swap } format{ }                \
#              .

# If you just want to change the default filesystem from ext3 to something
# else, you can do that without providing a full recipe.
#d-i partman/default_filesystem string ext4

# The full recipe format is documented in the file partman-auto-recipe.txt
# included in the 'debian-installer' package or available from D-I source
# repository. This also documents how to specify settings such as file
# system labels, volume group names and which physical devices to include
# in a volume group.

# This makes partman automatically partition without confirmation, provided
# that you told it what to do using one of the methods above.
d-i partman-partitioning/confirm_write_new_label boolean true
d-i partman/choose_partition select finish
d-i partman/confirm boolean true
d-i partman/confirm_nooverwrite boolean true

B.4.7.2. Partitioning using RAID

You can also use preseeding to set up partitions on software RAID arrays.
Supported are RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 6 and 10, creating degraded arrays and
specifying spare devices.

If you are using RAID 1, you can preseed grub to install to all devices used in
the array; see Section B.4.11, "Boot loader installation".

Warning

This type of automated partitioning is easy to get wrong. It is also
functionality that receives relatively little testing from the developers of
debian-installer. The responsibility to get the various recipes right (so they
make sense and don't conflict) lies with the user. Check /var/log/syslog if you
run into problems.

# The method should be set to "raid".
#d-i partman-auto/method string raid
# Specify the disks to be partitioned. They will all get the same layout,
# so this will only work if the disks are the same size.
#d-i partman-auto/disk string /dev/sda /dev/sdb

# Next you need to specify the physical partitions that will be used.
#d-i partman-auto/expert_recipe string \
#      multiraid ::                                         \
#              1000 5000 4000 raid                          \
#                      $primary{ } method{ raid }           \
#              .                                            \
#              64 512 300% raid                             \
#                      method{ raid }                       \
#              .                                            \
#              500 10000 1000000000 raid                    \
#                      method{ raid }                       \
#              .

# Last you need to specify how the previously defined partitions will be
# used in the RAID setup. Remember to use the correct partition numbers
# for logical partitions. RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 6 and 10 are supported;
# devices are separated using "#".
# Parameters are:
# <raidtype> <devcount> <sparecount> <fstype> <mountpoint> \
#          <devices> <sparedevices>

#d-i partman-auto-raid/recipe string \
#    1 2 0 ext3 /                    \
#          /dev/sda1#/dev/sdb1       \
#    .                               \
#    1 2 0 swap -                    \
#          /dev/sda5#/dev/sdb5       \
#    .                               \
#    0 2 0 ext3 /home                \
#          /dev/sda6#/dev/sdb6       \
#    .

# For additional information see the file partman-auto-raid-recipe.txt
# included in the 'debian-installer' package or available from D-I source
# repository.

# This makes partman automatically partition without confirmation.
d-i partman-md/confirm boolean true
d-i partman-partitioning/confirm_write_new_label boolean true
d-i partman/choose_partition select finish
d-i partman/confirm boolean true
d-i partman/confirm_nooverwrite boolean true

B.4.7.3. Controlling how partitions are mounted

Normally, filesystems are mounted using a universally unique identifier (UUID)
as a key; this allows them to be mounted properly even if their device name
changes. UUIDs are long and difficult to read, so, if you prefer, the installer
can mount filesystems based on the traditional device names, or based on a
label you assign. If you ask the installer to mount by label, any filesystems
without a label will be mounted using a UUID instead.

Devices with stable names, such as LVM logical volumes, will continue to use
their traditional names rather than UUIDs.

Warning

Traditional device names may change based on the order in which the kernel
discovers devices at boot, which may cause the wrong filesystem to be mounted.
Similarly, labels are likely to clash if you plug in a new disk or a USB drive,
and if that happens your system's behaviour when started will be random.

# The default is to mount by UUID, but you can also choose "traditional" to
# use traditional device names, or "label" to try filesystem labels before
# falling back to UUIDs.
#d-i partman/mount_style select uuid

B.4.8. Base system installation

There is actually not very much that can be preseeded for this stage of the
installation. The only questions asked concern the installation of the kernel
and the location of the base pre-configured filesystem for the installation.

# Configure a path to the preconfigured base filesystem. This can be used to
# specify a path for the installer to retrieve the filesystem image that will
# be deployed to disk and used as a base system for the installation.
#d-i live-installer/net-image string /install/filesystem.squashfs

# Configure APT to not install recommended packages by default. Use of this
# option can result in an incomplete system and should only be used by very
# experienced users.
#d-i base-installer/install-recommends boolean false

# The kernel image (meta) package to be installed; "none" can be used if no
# kernel is to be installed.
#d-i base-installer/kernel/image string linux-generic

B.4.9. Apt setup

Setup of the /etc/apt/sources.list and basic configuration options is fully
automated based on your installation method and answers to earlier questions.
You can optionally add other (local) repositories.

# You can choose to install restricted and universe software, or to install
# software from the backports repository.
#d-i apt-setup/restricted boolean true
#d-i apt-setup/universe boolean true
#d-i apt-setup/backports boolean true
# Uncomment this if you don't want to use a network mirror.
#d-i apt-setup/use_mirror boolean false
# Select which update services to use; define the mirrors to be used.
# Values shown below are the normal defaults.
#d-i apt-setup/services-select multiselect security
#d-i apt-setup/security_host string security.ubuntu.com
#d-i apt-setup/security_path string /ubuntu

# Additional repositories, local[0-9] available
#d-i apt-setup/local0/repository string \
#       http://local.server/ubuntu bionic main
#d-i apt-setup/local0/comment string local server
# Enable deb-src lines
#d-i apt-setup/local0/source boolean true
# URL to the public key of the local repository; you must provide a key or
# apt will complain about the unauthenticated repository and so the
# sources.list line will be left commented out
#d-i apt-setup/local0/key string http://local.server/key

# By default the installer requires that repositories be authenticated
# using a known gpg key. This setting can be used to disable that
# authentication. Warning: Insecure, not recommended.
#d-i debian-installer/allow_unauthenticated boolean true

# Uncomment this to add multiarch configuration for i386
#d-i apt-setup/multiarch string i386


B.4.10. Package selection

You can choose to install any combination of tasks that are available.
Available tasks as of this writing include:

  • standard (standard tools)

  • ubuntu-desktop

  • kubuntu-desktop

  • edubuntu-desktop

  • lubuntu-desktop

  • ubuntu-gnome-desktop

  • xubuntu-desktop

  • ubuntu-mate-desktop

  • lamp-server

  • print-server (print server)

You can also choose to install no tasks, and force the installation of a set of
packages in some other way. We recommend always including the standard task.

If you want to install some individual packages in addition to packages
installed by tasks, you can use the parameter pkgsel/include. The value of this
parameter can be a list of packages separated by either commas or spaces, which
allows it to be used easily on the kernel command line as well. By default,
recommended packages will not be installed; to change this, preseed pkgsel/
install-recommends to true.

To install a different set of language packs, you can use the parameter pkgsel/
language-packs. The value of this parameter should be a list of ISO-639
language codes. If not set, the language packs matching the language selected
in the installer will be installed.

tasksel tasksel/first multiselect ubuntu-desktop
#tasksel tasksel/first multiselect lamp-server, print-server
#tasksel tasksel/first multiselect kubuntu-desktop

# Individual additional packages to install
#d-i pkgsel/include string openssh-server build-essential
# Whether to upgrade packages after debootstrap.
# Allowed values: none, safe-upgrade, full-upgrade
#d-i pkgsel/upgrade select none

# Language pack selection
#d-i pkgsel/language-packs multiselect de, en, zh

# Policy for applying updates. May be "none" (no automatic updates),
# "unattended-upgrades" (install security updates automatically), or
# "landscape" (manage system with Landscape).
#d-i pkgsel/update-policy select none

# Some versions of the installer can report back on what software you have
# installed, and what software you use. The default is not to report back,
# but sending reports helps the project determine what software is most
# popular and include it on CDs.
#popularity-contest popularity-contest/participate boolean false

# By default, the system's locate database will be updated after the
# installer has finished installing most packages. This may take a while, so
# if you don't want it, you can set this to "false" to turn it off.
#d-i pkgsel/updatedb boolean true

B.4.11. Boot loader installation

# Grub is the default boot loader (for x86). If you want lilo installed
# instead, uncomment this:
#d-i grub-installer/skip boolean true
# To also skip installing lilo, and install no bootloader, uncomment this
# too:
#d-i lilo-installer/skip boolean true


# This is fairly safe to set, it makes grub install automatically to the MBR
# if no other operating system is detected on the machine.
d-i grub-installer/only_debian boolean true

# This one makes grub-installer install to the MBR if it also finds some other
# OS, which is less safe as it might not be able to boot that other OS.
d-i grub-installer/with_other_os boolean true

# Due notably to potential USB sticks, the location of the MBR can not be
# determined safely in general, so this needs to be specified:
#d-i grub-installer/bootdev  string /dev/sda
# To install to the first device (assuming it is not a USB stick):
#d-i grub-installer/bootdev  string default

# Alternatively, if you want to install to a location other than the mbr,
# uncomment and edit these lines:
#d-i grub-installer/only_debian boolean false
#d-i grub-installer/with_other_os boolean false
#d-i grub-installer/bootdev  string (hd0,1)
# To install grub to multiple disks:
#d-i grub-installer/bootdev  string (hd0,1) (hd1,1) (hd2,1)

# Optional password for grub, either in clear text
#d-i grub-installer/password password r00tme
#d-i grub-installer/password-again password r00tme
# or encrypted using an MD5 hash, see grub-md5-crypt(8).
#d-i grub-installer/password-crypted password [MD5 hash]

# Use the following option to add additional boot parameters for the
# installed system (if supported by the bootloader installer).
# Note: options passed to the installer will be added automatically.
#d-i debian-installer/add-kernel-opts string nousb

An MD5 hash for a password for grub can be generated using grub-md5-crypt, or
using the command from the example in Section B.4.5, "Account setup".

B.4.12. Finishing up the installation

# During installations from serial console, the regular virtual consoles
# (VT1-VT6) are normally disabled in /etc/inittab. Uncomment the next
# line to prevent this.
#d-i finish-install/keep-consoles boolean true

# Avoid that last message about the install being complete.
d-i finish-install/reboot_in_progress note

# This will prevent the installer from ejecting the CD during the reboot,
# which is useful in some situations.
#d-i cdrom-detect/eject boolean false

# This is how to make the installer shutdown when finished, but not
# reboot into the installed system.
#d-i debian-installer/exit/halt boolean true
# This will power off the machine instead of just halting it.
#d-i debian-installer/exit/poweroff boolean true

B.4.13. Preseeding other packages

# Depending on what software you choose to install, or if things go wrong
# during the installation process, it's possible that other questions may
# be asked. You can preseed those too, of course. To get a list of every
# possible question that could be asked during an install, do an
# installation, and then run these commands:
#   debconf-get-selections --installer > file
#   debconf-get-selections >> file

B.5. Advanced options

B.5.1. Running custom commands during the installation

A very powerful and flexible option offered by the preconfiguration tools is
the ability to run commands or scripts at certain points in the installation.

When the filesystem of the target system is mounted, it is available in /
target. If an installation CD is used, when it is mounted it is available in /
cdrom.

# d-i preseeding is inherently not secure. Nothing in the installer checks
# for attempts at buffer overflows or other exploits of the values of a
# preconfiguration file like this one. Only use preconfiguration files from
# trusted locations! To drive that home, and because it's generally useful,
# here's a way to run any shell command you'd like inside the installer,
# automatically.

# This first command is run as early as possible, just after
# preseeding is read.
#d-i preseed/early_command string anna-install some-udeb
# This command is run immediately before the partitioner starts. It may be
# useful to apply dynamic partitioner preseeding that depends on the state
# of the disks (which may not be visible when preseed/early_command runs).
#d-i partman/early_command \
#       string debconf-set partman-auto/disk "$(list-devices disk | head -n1)"
# This command is run just before the install finishes, but when there is
# still a usable /target directory. You can chroot to /target and use it
# directly, or use the apt-install and in-target commands to easily install
# packages and run commands in the target system.
#d-i preseed/late_command string apt-install zsh; in-target chsh -s /bin/zsh

B.5.2. Using preseeding to change default values

It is possible to use preseeding to change the default answer for a question,
but still have the question asked. To do this the seen flag must be reset to "
false" after setting the value for a question.

d-i foo/bar string value
d-i foo/bar seen false

The same effect can be achieved for all questions by setting the parameter
preseed/interactive=true at the boot prompt. This can also be useful for
testing or debugging your preconfiguration file.

Note that the "d-i" owner should only be used for variables used in the
installer itself. For variables belonging to packages installed on the target
system, you should use the name of that package instead. See the footnote to
Section B.2.2, "Using boot parameters to preseed questions".

If you are preseeding using boot parameters, you can make the installer ask the
corresponding question by using the "?=" operator, i.e. foo/bar?=value (or
owner:foo/bar?=value). This will of course only have effect for parameters that
correspond to questions that are actually displayed during an installation and
not for "internal" parameters.

For more debugging information, use the boot parameter DEBCONF_DEBUG=5. This
will cause debconf to print much more detail about the current settings of each
variable and about its progress through each package's installation scripts.

B.5.3. Chainloading preconfiguration files

It is possible to include other preconfiguration files from a preconfiguration
file. Any settings in those files will override pre-existing settings from
files loaded earlier. This makes it possible to put, for example, general
networking settings for your location in one file and more specific settings
for certain configurations in other files.

# More than one file can be listed, separated by spaces; all will be
# loaded. The included files can have preseed/include directives of their
# own as well. Note that if the filenames are relative, they are taken from
# the same directory as the preconfiguration file that includes them.
#d-i preseed/include string x.cfg

# The installer can optionally verify checksums of preconfiguration files
# before using them. Currently only md5sums are supported, list the md5sums
# in the same order as the list of files to include.
#d-i preseed/include/checksum string 5da499872becccfeda2c4872f9171c3d

# More flexibly, this runs a shell command and if it outputs the names of
# preconfiguration files, includes those files.
#d-i preseed/include_command \
#      string if [ "`hostname`" = bob ]; then echo bob.cfg; fi

# Most flexibly of all, this downloads a program and runs it. The program
# can use commands such as debconf-set to manipulate the debconf database.
# More than one script can be listed, separated by spaces.
# Note that if the filenames are relative, they are taken from the same
# directory as the preconfiguration file that runs them.
#d-i preseed/run string foo.sh

It is also possible to chainload from the initrd or file preseeding phase, into
network preseeding by setting preseed/url in the earlier files. This will cause
network preseeding to be performed when the network comes up. You need to be
careful when doing this, since there will be two distinct runs at preseeding,
meaning for example that you get another chance to run the preseed/early
command, the second one happening after the network comes up.


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

^[21] The owner of a debconf variable (or template) is normally the name of the
package that contains the corresponding debconf template. For variables used in
the installer itself the owner is "d-i". Templates and variables can have more
than one owner which helps to determine whether they can be removed from the
debconf database if the package is purged.

^[22] Preseeding locale to en_NL would for example result in en_US.UTF-8 as
default locale for the installed system. If e.g. en_GB.UTF-8 is preferred
instead, the values will need to be preseeded individually.

Appendix C. Partitioning for Ubuntu

Table of Contents

C.1. Deciding on Ubuntu Partitions and Sizes
C.2. The Directory Tree
C.3. Recommended Partitioning Scheme
C.4. Device Names in Linux
C.5. Ubuntu Partitioning Programs

    C.5.1. Partitioning for 32-bit PC

C.1. Deciding on Ubuntu Partitions and Sizes

At a bare minimum, GNU/Linux needs one partition for itself. You can have a
single partition containing the entire operating system, applications, and your
personal files. Most people feel that a separate swap partition is also a
necessity, although it's not strictly true. "Swap" is scratch space for an
operating system, which allows the system to use disk storage as "virtual
memory". By putting swap on a separate partition, Linux can make much more
efficient use of it. It is possible to force Linux to use a regular file as
swap, but it is not recommended.

Most people choose to give GNU/Linux more than the minimum number of
partitions, however. There are two reasons you might want to break up the file
system into a number of smaller partitions. The first is for safety. If
something happens to corrupt the file system, generally only one partition is
affected. Thus, you only have to replace (from the backups you've been
carefully keeping) a portion of your system. At a bare minimum, you should
consider creating what is commonly called a "root partition". This contains the
most essential components of the system. If any other partitions get corrupted,
you can still boot into GNU/Linux to fix the system. This can save you the
trouble of having to reinstall the system from scratch.

The second reason is generally more important in a business setting, but it
really depends on your use of the machine. For example, a mail server getting
spammed with e-mail can easily fill a partition. If you made /var/mail a
separate partition on the mail server, most of the system will remain working
even if you get spammed.

The only real drawback to using more partitions is that it is often difficult
to know in advance what your needs will be. If you make a partition too small
then you will either have to reinstall the system or you will be constantly
moving things around to make room in the undersized partition. On the other
hand, if you make the partition too big, you will be wasting space that could
be used elsewhere. Disk space is cheap nowadays, but why throw your money away?

C.2. The Directory Tree

Ubuntu adheres to the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard for directory and file
naming. This standard allows users and software programs to predict the
location of files and directories. The root level directory is represented
simply by the slash /. At the root level, all Ubuntu systems include these
directories:

┌─────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│Directory│                     Content                      │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│bin      │Essential command binaries                        │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│boot     │Static files of the boot loader                   │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│dev      │Device files                                      │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│etc      │Host-specific system configuration                │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│home     │User home directories                             │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│lib      │Essential shared libraries and kernel modules     │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│media    │Contains mount points for replaceable media       │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│mnt      │Mount point for mounting a file system temporarily│
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│proc     │Virtual directory for system information          │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│root     │Home directory for the root user                  │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│run      │Run-time variable data                            │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│sbin     │Essential system binaries                         │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│sys      │Virtual directory for system information          │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│tmp      │Temporary files                                   │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│usr      │Secondary hierarchy                               │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│var      │Variable data                                     │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│srv      │Data for services provided by the system          │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│opt      │Add-on application software packages              │
└─────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The following is a list of important considerations regarding directories and
partitions. Note that disk usage varies widely given system configuration and
specific usage patterns. The recommendations here are general guidelines and
provide a starting point for partitioning.

  • The root partition / must always physically contain /etc, /bin, /sbin, /lib
    and /dev, otherwise you won't be able to boot. Typically 150-310MB is
    needed for the root partition.

  • /usr: contains all user programs (/usr/bin), libraries (/usr/lib),
    documentation (/usr/share/doc), etc. This is the part of the file system
    that generally takes up most space. You should provide at least 500MB of
    disk space. This amount should be increased depending on the number and
    type of packages you plan to install. A standard Ubuntu desktop requires a
    minimum of 1.5GB here. A generous workstation or server installation should
    allow 4-6GB.

  • It is now recommended to have /usr on the root partition /, otherwise it
    could cause some trouble at boot time. This means that you should provide
    at least 600-750MB of disk space for the root partition including /usr, or
    5-6GB for a workstation or a server installation.

  • It is now recommended to have /usr on the root partition /, otherwise it
    could cause some trouble at boot time. This means that you should provide
    at least 600-750MB of disk space for the root partition including /usr, or
    5-6GB for a workstation or a server installation.

  • /var: variable data like news articles, e-mails, web sites, databases, the
    packaging system cache, etc. will be placed under this directory. The size
    of this directory depends greatly on the usage of your system, but for most
    people will be dictated by the package management tool's overhead. If you
    are going to do a full installation of just about everything Ubuntu has to
    offer, all in one session, setting aside 2 or 3 GB of space for /var should
    be sufficient. If you are going to install in pieces (that is to say,
    install services and utilities, followed by text stuff, then X, ...), you
    can get away with 300-500 MB. If hard drive space is at a premium and you
    don't plan on doing major system updates, you can get by with as little as
    30 or 40 MB.

  • /tmp: temporary data created by programs will most likely go in this
    directory. 40-100MB should usually be enough. Some applications --
    including archive manipulators, CD/DVD authoring tools, and multimedia
    software -- may use /tmp to temporarily store image files. If you plan to
    use such applications, you should adjust the space available in /tmp
    accordingly.

  • /home: every user will put his personal data into a subdirectory of this
    directory. Its size depends on how many users will be using the system and
    what files are to be stored in their directories. Depending on your planned
    usage you should reserve about 100MB for each user, but adapt this value to
    your needs. Reserve a lot more space if you plan to save a lot of
    multimedia files (pictures, MP3, movies) in your home directory.

C.3. Recommended Partitioning Scheme

For new users, personal Ubuntu boxes, home systems, and other single-user
setups, a single / partition (plus swap) is probably the easiest, simplest way
to go. However, if your partition is larger than around 6GB, choose ext3 as
your partition type. Ext2 partitions need periodic file system integrity
checking, and this can cause delays during booting when the partition is large.

For multi-user systems or systems with lots of disk space, it's best to put /
var, /tmp, and /home each on their own partitions separate from the /
partition.

You might need a separate /usr/local partition if you plan to install many
programs that are not part of the Ubuntu distribution. If your machine will be
a mail server, you might need to make /var/mail a separate partition. Often,
putting /tmp on its own partition, for instance 20-50MB, is a good idea. If you
are setting up a server with lots of user accounts, it's generally good to have
a separate, large /home partition. In general, the partitioning situation
varies from computer to computer depending on its uses.

For very complex systems, you should see the Multi Disk HOWTO. This contains
in-depth information, mostly of interest to ISPs and people setting up servers.

With respect to the issue of swap partition size, there are many views. One
rule of thumb which works well is to use as much swap as you have system
memory. It also shouldn't be smaller than 16MB, in most cases. Of course, there
are exceptions to these rules. If you are trying to solve 10000 simultaneous
equations on a machine with 256MB of memory, you may need a gigabyte (or more)
of swap.

On some 32-bit architectures (m68k and PowerPC), the maximum size of a swap
partition is 2GB. That should be enough for nearly any installation. However,
if your swap requirements are this high, you should probably try to spread the
swap across different disks (also called "spindles") and, if possible,
different SCSI or IDE channels. The kernel will balance swap usage between
multiple swap partitions, giving better performance.

As an example, an older home machine might have 32MB of RAM and a 1.7GB IDE
drive on /dev/sda. There might be a 500MB partition for another operating
system on /dev/sda1, a 32MB swap partition on /dev/sda3 and about 1.2GB on /dev
/sda2 as the Linux partition.

For an idea of the space required by Ubuntu, check Section D.3, "Disk Space
Needed".

C.4. Device Names in Linux

Linux disks and partition names may be different from other operating systems.
You need to know the names that Linux uses when you create and mount
partitions. Here's the basic naming scheme:

  • The first floppy drive is named /dev/fd0.

  • The second floppy drive is named /dev/fd1.

  • The first hard disk detected is named /dev/sda.

  • The second hard disk detected is named /dev/sdb, and so on.

  • The first SCSI CD-ROM is named /dev/scd0, also known as /dev/sr0.

The partitions on each disk are represented by appending a decimal number to
the disk name: sda1 and sda2 represent the first and second partitions of the
first SCSI disk drive in your system.

Here is a real-life example. Let's assume you have a system with 2 SCSI disks,
one at SCSI address 2 and the other at SCSI address 4. The first disk (at
address 2) is then named sda, and the second sdb. If the sda drive has 3
partitions on it, these will be named sda1, sda2, and sda3. The same applies to
the sdb disk and its partitions.

Note that if you have two SCSI host bus adapters (i.e., controllers), the order
of the drives can get confusing. The best solution in this case is to watch the
boot messages, assuming you know the drive models and/or capacities.

Linux represents the primary partitions as the drive name, plus the numbers 1
through 4. For example, the first primary partition on the first drive is /dev/
sda1. The logical partitions are numbered starting at 5, so the first logical
partition on that same drive is /dev/sda5. Remember that the extended
partition, that is, the primary partition holding the logical partitions, is
not usable by itself.

C.5. Ubuntu Partitioning Programs

Several varieties of partitioning programs have been adapted by Debian and
Ubuntu developers to work on various types of hard disks and computer
architectures. Following is a list of the program(s) applicable for your
architecture.

partman

    Recommended partitioning tool in Ubuntu. This Swiss army knife can also
    resize partitions, create filesystems ("format" in Windows speak) and
    assign them to the mountpoints.

fdisk

    The original Linux disk partitioner, good for gurus.

    Be careful if you have existing FreeBSD partitions on your machine. The
    installation kernels include support for these partitions, but the way that
    fdisk represents them (or not) can make the device names differ. See the
    Linux+FreeBSD HOWTO.

cfdisk

    A simple-to-use, full-screen disk partitioner for the rest of us.

    Note that cfdisk doesn't understand FreeBSD partitions at all, and, again,
    device names may differ as a result.

One of these programs will be run by default when you select Partition disks
(or similar). It may be possible to use a different partitioning tool from the
command line on VT2, but this is not recommended.

Remember to mark your boot partition as "Bootable".

C.5.1. Partitioning for 32-bit PC

If you have an existing other operating system such as DOS or Windows and you
want to preserve that operating system while installing Ubuntu, you may need to
resize its partition to free up space for the Ubuntu installation. The
installer supports resizing of both FAT and NTFS filesystems; when you get to
the installer's partitioning step, select the option Manual and then simply
select an existing partition and change its size.

The PC BIOS generally adds additional constraints for disk partitioning. There
is a limit to how many "primary" and "logical" partitions a drive can contain.
Additionally, with pre 1994-98 BIOSes, there are limits to where on the drive
the BIOS can boot from. More information can be found in the Linux Partition
HOWTO, but this section will include a brief overview to help you plan most
situations.

"Primary" partitions are the original partitioning scheme for PC disks.
However, there can only be four of them. To get past this limitation, "extended
" and "logical" partitions were invented. By setting one of your primary
partitions as an extended partition, you can subdivide all the space allocated
to that partition into logical partitions. You can create up to 60 logical
partitions per extended partition; however, you can only have one extended
partition per drive.

Linux limits the partitions per drive to 255 partitions for SCSI disks (3
usable primary partitions, 252 logical partitions), and 63 partitions on an IDE
drive (3 usable primary partitions, 60 logical partitions). However the normal
Ubuntu system provides only 20 devices for partitions, so you may not install
on partitions higher than 20 unless you first manually create devices for those
partitions.

If you have a large IDE disk, and are using neither LBA addressing, nor overlay
drivers (sometimes provided by hard disk manufacturers), then the boot
partition (the partition containing your kernel image) must be placed within
the first 1024 cylinders of your hard drive (usually around 524 megabytes,
without BIOS translation).

This restriction doesn't apply if you have a BIOS newer than around 1995-98
(depending on the manufacturer) that supports the "Enhanced Disk Drive Support
Specification". Both Lilo, the Linux loader, and Ubuntu's alternative mbr must
use the BIOS to read the kernel from the disk into RAM. If the BIOS int 0x13
large disk access extensions are found to be present, they will be utilized.
Otherwise, the legacy disk access interface is used as a fall-back, and it
cannot be used to address any location on the disk higher than the 1023rd
cylinder. Once Linux is booted, no matter what BIOS your computer has, these
restrictions no longer apply, since Linux does not use the BIOS for disk
access.

If you have a large disk, you might have to use cylinder translation
techniques, which you can set from your BIOS setup program, such as LBA
(Logical Block Addressing) or CHS translation mode ("Large"). More information
about issues with large disks can be found in the Large Disk HOWTO. If you are
using a cylinder translation scheme, and the BIOS does not support the large
disk access extensions, then your boot partition has to fit within the 
translated representation of the 1024th cylinder.

The recommended way of accomplishing this is to create a small (25-50MB should
suffice) partition at the beginning of the disk to be used as the boot
partition, and then create whatever other partitions you wish to have, in the
remaining area. This boot partition must be mounted on /boot, since that is the
directory where the Linux kernel(s) will be stored. This configuration will
work on any system, regardless of whether LBA or large disk CHS translation is
used, and regardless of whether your BIOS supports the large disk access
extensions.

Appendix D. Random Bits

Table of Contents

D.1. Linux Devices

    D.1.1. Setting Up Your Mouse

D.2. Disk Space Needed for Tasks
D.3. Disk Space Needed
D.4. Installing Ubuntu from a Unix/Linux System

    D.4.1. Getting Started
    D.4.2. Install debootstrap
    D.4.3. Run debootstrap
    D.4.4. Configure The Base System
    D.4.5. Install a Kernel
    D.4.6. Set up the Boot Loader
    D.4.7. Remote access: Installing SSH and setting up access
    D.4.8. Finishing touches
    D.4.9. Create a User
    D.4.10. Install the Ubuntu Desktop

D.5. Installing Ubuntu over Parallel Line IP (PLIP)

    D.5.1. Requirements
    D.5.2. Setting up source
    D.5.3. Installing target

D.6. Installing Ubuntu using PPP over Ethernet (PPPoE)

D.1. Linux Devices

In Linux various special files can be found under the directory /dev. These
files are called device files and behave unlike ordinary files. The most common
types of device files are for block devices and character devices. These files
are an interface to the actual driver (part of the Linux kernel) which in turn
accesses the hardware. Another, less common, type of device file is the named
pipe. The most important device files are listed in the tables below.

┌───┬────────────────────┐
│fd0│First Floppy Drive  │
├───┼────────────────────┤
│fd1│Second Floppy Drive │
└───┴────────────────────┘

┌────┬─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│sda │First hard disk                          │
├────┼─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│sdb │Second hard disk                         │
├────┼─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│sda1│First partition of the first hard disk   │
├────┼─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│sdb7│Seventh partition of the second hard disk│
└────┴─────────────────────────────────────────┘

┌───┬──────────────┐
│sr0│First CD-ROM  │
├───┼──────────────┤
│sr1│Second CD-ROM │
└───┴──────────────┘

┌───────┬────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ttyS0  │Serial port 0, COM1 under MS-DOS                    │
├───────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ttyS1  │Serial port 1, COM2 under MS-DOS                    │
├───────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│psaux  │PS/2 mouse device                                   │
├───────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│gpmdata│Pseudo device, repeater data from GPM (mouse) daemon│
└───────┴────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

┌─────┬──────────────────────────────────────┐
│cdrom│Symbolic link to the CD-ROM drive     │
├─────┼──────────────────────────────────────┤
│mouse│Symbolic link to the mouse device file│
└─────┴──────────────────────────────────────┘

┌────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│null│Anything written to this device will disappear │
├────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│zero│One can endlessly read zeros out of this device│
└────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────┘

D.1.1. Setting Up Your Mouse

The mouse can be used in both the Linux console (with gpm) and the X window
environment. Normally, this is a simple matter of installing gpm and the X
server itself. Both should be configured to use /dev/input/mice as the mouse
device. The correct mouse protocol is named exps2 in gpm, and ExplorerPS/2 in
X. The respective configuration files are /etc/gpm.conf and /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

Certain kernel modules must be loaded in order for your mouse to work. In most
cases the correct modules are autodetected, but not always for old-style serial
and bus mice^[23], which are quite rare except on very old computers. Summary
of Linux kernel modules needed for different mouse types:

┌────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Module │                    Description                    │
├────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│psmouse │PS/2 mice (should be autodetected)                 │
├────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│usbhid  │USB mice (should be autodetected)                  │
├────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│sermouse│Most serial mice                                   │
├────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│logibm  │Bus mouse connected to Logitech adapter card       │
├────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│inport  │Bus mouse connected to ATI or Microsoft InPort card│
└────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

To load a mouse driver module, you can use the modconf command (from the
package with the same name) and look in the category kernel/drivers/input/mouse
.

D.2. Disk Space Needed for Tasks

A standard installation for the amd64 architecture, including all standard
packages and using the default kernel, takes up 822MB of disk space. A minimal
base installation, without the "Standard system" task selected, will take
506MB.

Important

In both cases this is the actual disk space used after the installation is
finished and any temporary files deleted. It also does not take into account
overhead used by the file system, for example for journal files. This means
that significantly more disk space is needed both during the installation and
for normal system use.

The following table lists sizes reported by aptitude for the tasks listed in
tasksel. Note that some tasks have overlapping constituents, so the total
installed size for two tasks together may be less than the total obtained by
adding up the numbers.

By default the installer will install the GNOME desktop environment, but
alternative desktop environments can be selected either by using one of the
special CD images, or by specifying the desired desktop environment when the
installer is booted (see Section 6.3.5.2, "Selecting and Installing Software").

Note that you will need to add the sizes listed in the table to the size of the
standard installation when determining the size of partitions. Most of the size
listed as "Installed size" will end up in /usr and in /lib; the size listed as 
"Download size" is (temporarily) required in /var.

┌─────────────────┬─────────────────┬────────────────┬────────────────────────┐
│      Task       │ Installed size  │ Download size  │Space needed to install │
│                 │      (MB)       │      (MB)      │          (MB)          │
├─────────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────┤
│Desktop          │                 │                │                        │
│environment      │                 │                │                        │
├─────────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────┤
│  • GNOME        │2487             │765             │3252                    │
│(default)        │                 │                │                        │
├─────────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────┤
│  • KDE          │2198             │770             │2968                    │
├─────────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────┤
│  • Xfce         │1529             │503             │2032                    │
├─────────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────┤
│  • LXDE         │1536             │502             │2038                    │
├─────────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────┤
│Web server       │31               │7               │38                      │
├─────────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────┤
│Print server     │234              │73              │307                     │
└─────────────────┴─────────────────┴────────────────┴────────────────────────┘

If you install in a language other than English, tasksel may automatically
install a localization task, if one is available for your language. Space
requirements differ per language; you should allow up to 350MB in total for
download and installation.

D.3. Disk Space Needed

A minimal server installation of bionic requires 400MB of disk space. The
standard Ubuntu desktop installation requires 2GB.

D.4. Installing Ubuntu from a Unix/Linux System

This section explains how to install Ubuntu from an existing Unix or Linux
system, without using the menu-driven installer as explained in the rest of the
manual. This "cross-install" HOWTO has been requested by users switching to
Ubuntu from Debian, Red Hat, Mandriva, and SUSE. In this section some
familiarity with entering *nix commands and navigating the file system is
assumed. In this section, $ symbolizes a command to be entered in the user's
current system, while # refers to a command entered in the Ubuntu chroot.

Once you've got the new Ubuntu system configured to your preference, you can
migrate your existing user data (if any) to it, and keep on rolling. This is
therefore a "zero downtime" Ubuntu install. It's also a clever way for dealing
with hardware that otherwise doesn't play friendly with various boot or
installation media.

Note

As this is a mostly manual procedure, you should bear in mind that you will
need to do a lot of basic configuration of the system yourself, which will also
require more knowledge of Ubuntu and of Linux in general than performing a
regular installation. You cannot expect this procedure to result in a system
that is identical to a system from a regular installation. You should also keep
in mind that this procedure only gives the basic steps to set up a system.
Additional installation and/or configuration steps may be needed. In general,
this method of installation is not recommended for casual or first time users.

D.4.1. Getting Started

With your current *nix partitioning tools, repartition the hard drive as
needed, creating at least one filesystem plus swap. You need around 506MB of
space available for a console only install, or about 1536MB if you plan to
install X (more if you intend to install desktop environments such as GNOME or
KDE).

Next, create file systems on the partitions. For example, to create an ext3
file system on partition /dev/sda6 (that's our example root partition):

# mke2fs -j /dev/sda6

To create an ext2 file system instead, omit -j.

Initialize and activate swap (substitute the partition number for your intended
Ubuntu swap partition):

# mkswap /dev/sda5
# sync
# swapon /dev/sda5

Mount one partition as /mnt/ubuntu (the installation point, to be the root (/)
filesystem on your new system). The mount point name is strictly arbitrary, it
is referenced later below.

# mkdir /mnt/ubuntu
# mount /dev/sda6 /mnt/ubuntu

Note

If you want to have parts of the filesystem (e.g. /usr) mounted on separate
partitions, you will need to create and mount these directories manually before
proceding with the next stage.

D.4.2. Install debootstrap

The utility used by the Ubuntu installer, and recognized as the official way to
install an Ubuntu base system, is debootstrap. It uses wget and ar, but
otherwise depends only on /bin/sh and basic Unix/Linux tools^[24]. Install wget
and ar if they aren't already on your current system, then download and install
debootstrap.

If you have an RPM (Red Hat Package Manager) based system, you can use alien,
which is available in the Debian repositories, to convert the .deb file to a
useable .rpm file.

Or, you can use the following procedure to install it manually. Make a work
folder for extracting the .deb into:

# mkdir work
# cd work

The debootstrap binary is located in the Ubuntu archive (be sure to select the
proper file for your architecture). Download the debootstrap .deb from the pool
, copy the package to the work folder, and extract the files from it. You will
need to have root privileges to install the files.

# ar -x debootstrap_0.X.X_all.deb
# cd /
# zcat /full-path-to-work/work/data.tar.gz | tar xv

D.4.3. Run debootstrap

debootstrap can download the needed files directly from the archive when you
run it. You can substitute any Ubuntu archive mirror for archive.ubuntu.com/
ubuntu in the command example below, preferably a mirror close to you
network-wise. Mirrors are listed at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Archive.

If you have an Ubuntu bionic CD mounted at /cdrom, you could substitute a file
URL instead of the http URL: file:/cdrom/ubuntu/

Substitute one of the following for ARCH in the debootstrap command: amd64,
arm64, armhf, i386, powerpc, ppc64el, or s390x.

# /usr/sbin/debootstrap --arch ARCH bionic /mnt/ubuntu

D.4.4. Configure The Base System

Now you've got a real Ubuntu system, though rather lean, on disk. chroot into
it:

# LANG=C.UTF-8 chroot /mnt/ubuntu /bin/bash

After chrooting you may need to set the terminal definition to be compatible
with the Ubuntu base system, for example:

# export TERM=xterm-color

Depending on the value of TERM, you may have to install the ncurses-term
package to get support for it.

D.4.4.1. Create device files

At this point /dev/ only contains very basic device files. For the next steps
of the installation additional device files may be needed. There are different
ways to go about this and which method you should use depends on the host
system you are using for the installation, on whether you intend to use a
modular kernel or not, and on whether you intend to use dynamic (e.g. using
udev) or static device files for the new system.

A few of the available options are:

  • install the makedev package, and create a default set of static device
    files using (after chrooting)

    # apt-get install makedev
    # mount none /proc -t proc
    # cd /dev
    # MAKEDEV generic

  • manually create only specific device files using MAKEDEV

  • bind mount /dev from your host system on top of /dev in the target system;
    note that the postinst scripts of some packages may try to create device
    files, so this option should only be used with care

D.4.4.2. Mount Partitions

You need to create /etc/fstab.

# editor /etc/fstab

Here is a sample you can modify to suit:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# file system    mount point   type    options                  dump pass
/dev/XXX         /             ext3    defaults                 0    1
/dev/XXX         /boot         ext3    ro,nosuid,nodev          0    2

/dev/XXX         none          swap    sw                       0    0
proc             /proc         proc    defaults                 0    0
sys              /sys          sysfs   defaults                 0    0

/dev/fd0         /media/floppy auto    noauto,rw,sync,user,exec 0    0
/dev/cdrom       /media/cdrom  iso9660 noauto,ro,user,exec      0    0

/dev/XXX         /tmp          ext3    rw,nosuid,nodev          0    2
/dev/XXX         /var          ext3    rw,nosuid,nodev          0    2
/dev/XXX         /usr          ext3    rw,nodev                 0    2
/dev/XXX         /home         ext3    rw,nosuid,nodev          0    2

Use mount -a to mount all the file systems you have specified in your /etc/
fstab, or, to mount file systems individually, use:

# mount /path   # e.g.: mount /usr

Current Ubuntu systems have mountpoints for removable media under /media, but
keep compatibility symlinks in /. Create these as as needed, for example:

# cd /media
# mkdir cdrom0
# ln -s cdrom0 cdrom
# cd /
# ln -s media/cdrom

You can mount the proc and sysfs file systems multiple times and to arbitrary
locations, though /proc and /sys respectively are customary. If you didn't use
mount -a, be sure to mount proc and sysfs before continuing:

# mount -t proc proc /proc
# mount -t sysfs sysfs /sys

The command ls /proc should now show a non-empty directory. Should this fail,
you may be able to mount proc from outside the chroot:

# mount -t proc proc /mnt/ubuntu/proc

D.4.4.3. Setting Timezone

Setting the third line of the file /etc/adjtime to "UTC" or "LOCAL" determines
whether the system will interpret the hardware clock as being set to UTC
respective local time. The following command allows you to set that.

# editor /etc/adjtime

Here is a sample:

0.0 0 0.0
0
UTC

The following command allows you to choose your timezone.

# dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

D.4.4.4. Configure Networking

To configure networking, edit /etc/network/interfaces, /etc/resolv.conf, /etc/
hostname and /etc/hosts.

# editor /etc/network/interfaces

Here are some simple examples from /usr/share/doc/ifupdown/examples:

######################################################################
# /etc/network/interfaces -- configuration file for ifup(8), ifdown(8)
# See the interfaces(5) manpage for information on what options are
# available.
######################################################################

# We always want the loopback interface.
#
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# To use dhcp:
#
# auto eth0
# iface eth0 inet dhcp

# An example static IP setup: (broadcast and gateway are optional)
#
# auto eth0
# iface eth0 inet static
#     address 192.168.0.42
#     network 192.168.0.0
#     netmask 255.255.255.0
#     broadcast 192.168.0.255
#     gateway 192.168.0.1

Enter your nameserver(s) and search directives in /etc/resolv.conf:

# editor /etc/resolv.conf

A simple example /etc/resolv.conf:

search hqdom.local
nameserver 10.1.1.36
nameserver 192.168.9.100

Enter your system's host name (2 to 63 characters):

# echo UbuntuHostName > /etc/hostname

And a basic /etc/hosts with IPv6 support:

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 UbuntuHostName

# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1     ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
ff02::3 ip6-allhosts

If you have multiple network cards, you should arrange the names of driver
modules in the /etc/modules file into the desired order. Then during boot, each
card will be associated with the interface name (eth0, eth1, etc.) that you
expect.

D.4.4.5. Configure Apt

Debootstrap will have created a very basic /etc/apt/sources.list that will
allow installing additional packages. However, it is suggested that you add
some additional sources, for example for source packages and security updates:

deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic main

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-security main
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-security main

Make sure to run aptitude update after you have made changes to the sources
list.

D.4.4.6. Configure Locales and Keyboard

To configure your locale settings to use a language other than English, install
the appropriate language packs and configure them. Currently the use of UTF-8
locales is recommended.

# aptitude install language-pack-de language-pack-gnome-de

To configure your keyboard (if needed):

# aptitude install console-setup
# dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration

Note that the keyboard cannot be set while in the chroot, but will be
configured for the next reboot.

D.4.5. Install a Kernel

If you intend to boot this system, you probably want a Linux kernel and a boot
loader. Identify available pre-packaged kernels with:

# apt-cache search linux-image

Then install the kernel package of your choice using its package name.

# aptitude install linux-image-arch-etc

D.4.6. Set up the Boot Loader

To make your Ubuntu system bootable, set up your boot loader to load the
installed kernel with your new root partition. Note that debootstrap does not
install a boot loader, though you can use aptitude inside your Ubuntu chroot to
do so.

Check info grub or man lilo.conf for instructions on setting up the bootloader.
For an initial install of grub, you should normally run grub-install to install
a grub image on your hard disk, and update-grub to generate a menu.lst
configuration file. If you are keeping the system you used to install Ubuntu,
just add an entry for the Ubuntu install to your existing grub2 grub.cfg or
lilo.conf. For lilo.conf, you could also copy it to the new system and edit it
there. After you are done editing, call lilo (remember it will use lilo.conf
relative to the system you call it from).

Installing and setting up grub2 is as easy as:

# aptitude install grub-pc
# grub-install /dev/sda
# update-grub

The second command will install grub2 (in this case in the MBR of sda). The
last command will create a sane and working /boot/grub/grub.cfg.

Note that this assumes that a /dev/sda device file has been created. There are
alternative methods to install grub2, but those are outside the scope of this
appendix.

Here is a basic /etc/lilo.conf as an example:

boot=/dev/sda6
root=/dev/sda6
install=menu
delay=20
lba32
image=/vmlinuz
initrd=/initrd.img
label=Ubuntu

D.4.7. Remote access: Installing SSH and setting up access

In case you can login to the system via console, you can skip this section. If
the system should be accessible via the network later on, you need to install
SSH and set up access.

# aptitude install ssh

Root login with password is disabled by default, so setting up access can be
done by setting a password and re-enable root login with password:

# passwd
# editor /etc/ssh/sshd_config

This is the option to be enabled:

PermitRootLogin yes

Access can also be set up by adding an ssh key to the root account:

# mkdir /root/.ssh
# cat << EOF > /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
ssh-rsa ....
EOF

Lastly, access can be set up by adding a non-root user and setting a password:

# adduser joe
# passwd joe

D.4.8. Finishing touches

As mentioned earlier, the installed system will be very basic. If you would
like to make the system a bit more mature, there is an easy method to install
all packages with "standard" priority:

# tasksel install standard

Of course, you can also just use aptitude to install packages individually.

After the installation there will be a lot of downloaded packages in /var/cache
/apt/archives/. You can free up some diskspace by running:

# aptitude clean

D.4.9. Create a User

Use the adduser command to create a new user account:

# adduser myusername

You will be prompted for a full name and a password.

The normal Ubuntu configuration is to allow this new user to administer the
system using sudo. To set this up, first create an admin group and add your new
user to it:

# addgroup --system admin
# adduser myusername admin

You can now use the visudo command to add these lines to the end of /etc/
sudoers, so that any user in the admin group can administer the system:

# Members of the admin group may gain root privileges
%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL

If you don't want to follow this configuration, then remember to set a root
password:

# passwd root

D.4.10. Install the Ubuntu Desktop

At this point, you probably want to reboot into your new Ubuntu system to make
sure it all works. Once you've done that, log in as the user you just created,
and run:


 $ sudo tasksel install standard
 $ sudo tasksel install ubuntu-desktop


You will need to enter your password to authorise sudo to run as root.

tasksel will now get on with installing the packages that make up the Ubuntu
desktop, which will take a while. When it's finished, you should be presented
with a graphical login prompt. The installation is now complete, so go ahead
and log in.

D.5. Installing Ubuntu over Parallel Line IP (PLIP)

This section explains how to install Ubuntu on a computer without an Ethernet
card, but with just a remote gateway computer attached via a Null-Modem cable
(also called Null-Printer cable). The gateway computer should be connected to a
network that has an Ubuntu mirror on it (e.g. to the Internet).

In the example in this appendix we will set up a PLIP connection using a
gateway connected to the Internet over a dial-up connection (ppp0). We will use
IP addresses 192.168.0.1 and 192.168.0.2 for the PLIP interfaces on the target
system and the source system respectively (these addresses should be unused
within your network address space).

The PLIP connection set up during the installation will also be available after
the reboot into the installed system (see Chapter 7, Booting Into Your New
Ubuntu System).

Before you start, you will need to check the BIOS configuration (IO base
address and IRQ) for the parallel ports of both the source and target systems.
The most common values are io=0x378, irq=7.

D.5.1. Requirements

  • A target computer, called target, where Ubuntu will be installed.

  • System installation media; see Section 2.4, "Installation Media".

  • Another computer connected to the Internet, called source, that will
    function as the gateway.

  • A DB-25 Null-Modem cable. See the PLIP-Install-HOWTO for more information
    on this cable and instructions how to make your own.

D.5.2. Setting up source

The following shell script is a simple example of how to configure the source
computer as a gateway to the Internet using ppp0.

#!/bin/sh

# We remove running modules from kernel to avoid conflicts and to
# reconfigure them manually.
modprobe -r lp parport_pc
modprobe parport_pc io=0x378 irq=7
modprobe plip

# Configure the plip interface (plip0 for me, see dmesg | grep plip)
ifconfig plip0 192.168.0.2 pointopoint 192.168.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.255 up

# Configure gateway
modprobe iptable_nat
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o ppp0 -j MASQUERADE
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

D.5.3. Installing target

Boot the installation media. The installation needs to be run in expert mode;
enter expert at the boot prompt. If you need to set parameters for kernel
modules, you also need to do this at the boot prompt. For example, to boot the
installer and set values for the "io" and "irq" options for the parport_pc
module, enter the following at the boot prompt:

expert parport_pc.io=0x378 parport_pc.irq=7

Below are the answers that should be given during various stages of the
installation.

 1. Load installer components from CD

    Select the plip-modules option from the list; this will make the PLIP
    drivers available to the installation system.

 2. Detect network hardware

      □ If target does have a network card, a list of driver modules for
        detected cards will be shown. If you want to force debian-installer to
        use plip instead, you have to deselect all listed driver modules.
        Obviously, if target doesn't have a network card, the installer will
        not show this list.

      □ Because no network card was detected/selected earlier, the installer
        will ask you to select a network driver module from a list. Select the
        plip module.

 3. Configure the network

      □ Auto-configure network with DHCP: No

      □ IP address: 192.168.0.1

      □ Point-to-point address: 192.168.0.2

      □ Name server addresses: you can enter the same addresses used on source
        (see /etc/resolv.conf)

D.6. Installing Ubuntu using PPP over Ethernet (PPPoE)

In some countries PPP over Ethernet (PPPoE) is a common protocol for broadband
(ADSL or cable) connections to an Internet Service Provider. Setting up a
network connection using PPPoE is not supported by default in the installer,
but can be made to work very simply. This section explains how.

The PPPoE connection set up during the installation will also be available
after the reboot into the installed system (see Chapter 7, Booting Into Your
New Ubuntu System).

To have the option of setting up and using PPPoE during the installation, you
will need to install using one of the CD-ROM/DVD images that are available. It
is not supported for other installation methods (e.g. netboot).

Installing over PPPoE is mostly the same as any other installation. The
following steps explain the differences.

  • Boot the installer with the boot parameter modules=ppp-udeb^[25]. This will
    ensure the component responsible for the setup of PPPoE (ppp-udeb) will be
    loaded and run automatically.

  • Follow the regular initial steps of the installation (language, country and
    keyboard selection; the loading of additional installer components^[26]).

  • The next step is the detection of network hardware, in order to identify
    any Ethernet cards present in the system.

  • After this the actual setup of PPPoE is started. The installer will probe
    all the detected Ethernet interfaces in an attempt to find a PPPoE
    concentrator (a type of server which handles PPPoE connections).

    It is possible that the concentrator will not to be found at the first
    attempt. This can happen occasionally on slow or loaded networks or with
    faulty servers. In most cases a second attempt to detect the concentrator
    will be successful; to retry, select Configure and start a PPPoE connection
    from the main menu of the installer.

  • After a concentrator is found, the user will be prompted to type the login
    information (the PPPoE username and password).

  • At this point the installer will use the provided information to establish
    the PPPoE connection. If the correct information was provided, the PPPoE
    connection should be configured and the installer should be able to use it
    to connect to the Internet and retrieve packages over it (if needed). If
    the login information is not correct or some error appears, the installer
    will stop, but the configuration can be attempted again by selecting the
    menu entry Configure and start a PPPoE connection.


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

^[23] Serial mice usually have a 9-hole D-shaped connector; bus mice have an
8-pin round connector, not to be confused with the 6-pin round connector of a
PS/2 mouse or the 4-pin round connector of an ADB mouse.

^[24] These include the GNU core utilities and commands like sed, grep, tar and
gzip.

^[25] See Section 5.1.5, "The Boot Screen" for information on how to add a boot
parameter.

^[26] The ppp-udeb component is loaded as one of the additional components in
this step. If you want to install at medium or low priority (expert mode), you
can also manually select the ppp-udeb instead of entering the "modules"
parameter at the boot prompt.

Appendix E. Administrivia

Table of Contents

E.1. About This Document
E.2. Contributing to This Document
E.3. Major Contributions
E.4. Trademark Acknowledgement

E.1. About This Document

This manual was created for Sarge's debian-installer, based on the Woody
installation manual for boot-floppies, which was based on earlier Debian
installation manuals, and on the Progeny distribution manual which was released
under GPL in 2003. It was subsequently modified for use in Ubuntu.

This document is written in DocBook XML. Output formats are generated by
various programs using information from the docbook-xml and docbook-xsl
packages.

In order to increase the maintainability of this document, we use a number of
XML features, such as entities and profiling attributes. These play a role akin
to variables and conditionals in programming languages. The XML source to this
document contains information for each different architecture -- profiling
attributes are used to isolate certain bits of text as architecture-specific.

E.2. Contributing to This Document

If you have problems or suggestions regarding this document, please mail them
to <ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com>.

Please do not contact the authors of this document directly. There is also a
discussion list for debian-installer, which includes discussions of this
manual. The mailing list is <debian-boot@lists.debian.org>. Instructions for
subscribing to this list can be found at the Debian Mailing List Subscription
page; or you can browse the Debian Mailing List Archives online. Please do not
contact debian-boot about issues specific to Ubuntu.

E.3. Major Contributions

This document was originally written by Bruce Perens, Sven Rudolph, Igor
Grobman, James Treacy, and Adam Di Carlo. Sebastian Ley wrote the Installation
Howto.

Miroslav Kuře has documented a lot of the new functionality in Sarge's
debian-installer. Frans Pop was the main editor and release manager during the
Etch, Lenny and Squeeze releases.

Many, many Debian users and developers contributed to this document. Particular
note must be made of Michael Schmitz (m68k support), Frank Neumann (original
author of the Amiga install manual), Arto Astala, Eric Delaunay/Ben Collins
(SPARC information), Tapio Lehtonen, and Stéphane Bortzmeyer for numerous edits
and text. We have to thank Pascal Le Bail for useful information about booting
from USB memory sticks. Colin Watson and others made the modifications for
Ubuntu.

Extremely helpful text and information was found in Jim Mintha's HOWTO for
network booting (no URL available), the Debian FAQ, the Linux/m68k FAQ, the
Linux for SPARC Processors FAQ, the Linux/Alpha FAQ, amongst others. The
maintainers of these freely available and rich sources of information must be
recognized.

The section on chrooted installations in this manual (Section D.4, "Installing
Ubuntu from a Unix/Linux System") was derived in part from documents copyright
Karsten M. Self.

The section on installations over plip in this manual (Section D.5, "Installing
Ubuntu over Parallel Line IP (PLIP)") was based on the PLIP-Install-HOWTO by
Gilles Lamiral.

E.4. Trademark Acknowledgement

All trademarks are property of their respective trademark owners.

Appendix F. GNU General Public License

Version 2, June 1991

Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

Preamble

The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share
and change it. By contrast, the gnu General Public License is intended to
guarantee your freedom to share and change free software -- to make sure the
software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most
of the Free Software Foundation's software and to any other program whose
authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is
covered by the gnu Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to
your programs, too.

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our
General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to
distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish),
that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change
the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you
can do these things.

To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny
you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions
translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the
software, or if you modify it.

For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for
a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make
sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them
these terms so they know their rights.

We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2)
offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and
/or modify the software.

Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain that
everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the
software is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to
know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced
by others will not reflect on the original authors' reputations.

Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish
to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually
obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent
this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's
free use or not licensed at all.

The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification
follow.

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE

TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice
placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of
this General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program
or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any
derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the
Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or
translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without
limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "you".

Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by
this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not
restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents
constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by
running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.

1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as
you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and
appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and
disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License
and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the
Program a copy of this License along with the Program.

You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may
at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus
forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications
or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of
these conditions:

 a. You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that
    you changed the files and the date of any change.

 b. You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in
    part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be
    licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of
    this License.

 c. If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you
    must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most
    ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate
    copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying
    that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program
    under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this
    License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not
    normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not
    required to print an announcement.)

These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable
sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably
considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and
its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate
works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a
work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms
of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire
whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your
rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the
right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on
the Program.

In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the
Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or
distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this
License.

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under
Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and
2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

 a. Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code,
    which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a
    medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

 b. Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give
    any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically
    performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the
    corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1
    and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

 c. Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to
    distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for
    noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object
    code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b
    above.)

The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making
modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the
source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface
definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation
of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed
need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or
binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the
operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself
accompanies the executable.

If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy
from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source
code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though
third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code.

4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as
expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify,
sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate
your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or
rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so
long as such parties remain in full compliance.

5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it.
However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program
or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not
accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or
any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to
do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying
the Program or works based on it.

6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program),
the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to
copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions.
You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the
rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by
third parties to this License.

7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent
infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions
are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that
contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the
conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy
simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent
obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all.
For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution
of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through
you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to
refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any
particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and
the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances.

It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or
other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims; this
section has the sole purpose of protecting the integrity of the free software
distribution system, which is implemented by public license practices. Many
people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software
distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that
system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to
distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that
choice.

This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a
consequence of the rest of this License.

8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain
countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original
copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit
geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that
distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such
case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of
this License.

9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the
General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in
spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems
or concerns. Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the
Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any
later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions
either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software
Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License,
you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.

10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs
whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author to ask for
permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation,
write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes make exceptions for this.
Our decision will be guided by the two goals of preserving the free status of
all derivatives of our free software and of promoting the sharing and reuse of
software generally.

NO WARRANTY

11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR
THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE
STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE
PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND
PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU
ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

12. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL
AND COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE
PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY
GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR
INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA
BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A
FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER
OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS

How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs

If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest possible
use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it free software
which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms.

To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest to attach
them to the start of each source file to most effectively convey the exclusion
of warranty; and each file should have at least the "copyright" line and a
pointer to where the full notice is found.

one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.
Copyright (C) year  name of author

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301, USA.

Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.

If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this when it
starts in an interactive mode:

Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) year name of author
Gnomovision comes with absolutely no warranty; for details
type `show w'. This is free software, and you are welcome
to redistribute it under certain conditions; type `show c'
for details.

The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should show the appropriate
parts of the General Public License. Of course, the commands you use may be
called something other than `show w' and `show c'; they could even be
mouse-clicks or menu items -- whatever suits your program.

You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your school,
if any, to sign a "copyright disclaimer" for the program, if necessary. Here is
a sample; alter the names:

Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the
program `Gnomovision' (which makes passes at compilers) written
by James Hacker.

signature of Ty Coon, 1 April 1989
Ty Coon, President of Vice

This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into
proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider
it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If
this is what you want to do, use the GNU Lesser General Public License instead
of this License.

