Expert Installation

This article discusses the “Expert Installation”, which is almost totally manual and should only be considered, if you are an advanced GNU/Linux User or adventurous.

The “Expert Installation method” is very flexible, there are many ways to do it, so we can give only some hints and examples here.

• First start the installation CDROM as usual.
• Then select “Exit Install”. At this point nothing has been done yet.
• If you want to load a special keyboard layout (other then US) start the km helper program or load the desired keyboard layout with loadkeys
• Then partition the hard disk to your needs. Three programs are available to do this: fdisk(command line), parted (command line) and cfdisk (TUI). For novice users cfdisk is the easiest to use. To find out what drives are available (and which partitions already exist) use the command fdisk -l. Create one swap partition (type 82) and at least one Linux partition (type 83).
• After partitioning you must create file systems. For the swap partition use mkswap, for the OS file system(s) use mkfs.ext2, mkfs.ext3 or mkfs.ext4. For reasonable fast computers ext4 is recommended. If you have a very slow hard disk in an very old computer (e. g. P I) you may want to try ext2.
• Activate swap with swapon
• mount the OS partition to /tmp/install. For a ext4 partition use the -t ext4 option. E. g. mount -t ext4 /dev/sda2 /tmp/install
• mount the CD to /mnt, e. g. mount -t iso9660 /dev/scd0 /mnt
• cd /tmp/install
• Extract the root filesystem from the tarball, e. g. tar xvzpf /mnt/os/connos.tar.gz
• After that it is time to prepare to switch to the installed system via chroot. First make some bind mounts for the chroot so required directories and devices will be available for the system. Then chroot into the system:

mount --bind /dev /tmp/install/dev
mount --bind /proc /tmp/install/proc
mount --bind /sys /tmp/install/sys
chroot /tmp/install /bin/bash -l

* Now that you are actually on the installed system we must do some configuring. First create a temporary /etc/mtab:

cat /proc/mounts >/etc/mtab

• Then edit /etc/fstab and add an entry for the file system and the swap partition. You can use the output of

grep ^/dev /proc/mounts

as template. The entries should look like this:

/dev/sda1 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/sda2 / ext4 defaults 0 1

• create a device.map for GRUB:

grub --no-floppy --device-map /boot/grub/device.map
quit

• check /boot/grub/device.map
• copy necessary files for GRUB

cp -a /usr/lib/grub/i386-pc/* /boot/grub/

• edit /boot/grub/menu.lst, see template below. Important is the location of the kernel, the initrd and the root parameter. (hd0,1) means the second partition on the first hard disk.

timeout   5
default   0
color light-blue/black light-cyan/blue
# (0) ConnochaetOS
title  ConnochaetOS
root   (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26-libre-lts root=/dev/sda2 rootflags= rootfstype=ext4 ro
initrd /boot/kernel26-libre-lts.img

# (1) ConnochaetOS-Fallback
title  ConnochaetOS Fallback
root   (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26-libre-lts root=/dev/sda2 rootflags= rootfstype=ext4 ro
initrd /boot/kernel26-libre-lts-fallback.img

• Install GRUB to the MBR with grub-install hd0
• Now it is time to create a appropriate initrd.

mkinitcpio -p kernel26-libre-lts

• Set the root password with passwd
• Create an unprivileged user with adduser
• Edit /etc/rc.conf and adapt the parameters as you wish. (TODO: add rc.conf wiki page)
• Edit /etc/resolv.conf and add a nameserver
• Edit /etc/locale.gen and remove comments from locales which you want to use. After that execute locale-gen
• exit from the chroot

umount /tmp/install/dev
umount /tmp/install/proc
umount /tmp/install/sys
umount /tmp/install

• reboot
• After reboot the graphical login screen appears. You may want to set the keyboard layout for the X window system first by clicking at Keyboard layout at the lower right corner.
• After login IceWM starts. Have fun.