Completing the install process

Now it's time to begin inserting each one of the CDs you have. They will be scanned for available packages for install. There is a maximum of 8 in the set. Insert each one and wait until you are asked for another.

When you have completed the scanning process, you will be asked to choose another 'apt' source. With Debian, you can download and update packages automatically right off this Internet with the 'apt' system. We will configure this later, right now it's best not to choose another apt source besides the CDs.

At this point, if you are connected to the Internet by way of broadband for example and the install program can make a connection to Debian's security site, it will now start searching that site for security updates. From the time the ISO images are released to the point where you are installing, security flaws may have been found in certain programs included with Debian. For this reason a check is made and any programs with flaws are marked and updated copies downloaded and installed.

After the security updates are finished, you will be presented with the possibility of doing a simple install with The Debian Task Installer. This will install programs after you have indicated your general preferences from a menu.

If you are more adventurous, you may choose the more advanced install process by way of dselect. Here you will choose packages "by hand" from a list of hundreds. Though the dselect interface is not visually appealing and may appear daunting to newcomers, it is fairly straight forward and is actually quite user friendly in the sense that it is almost impossible to run into trouble with the packages you want to install. If you were to choose a package that conflicted with something else, you are notified. That way, you can either choose to keep the package that Debian recommends or "un-select" the package so your own choice can be installed.

At the fork(s) in the road

Here we reach the end of the install section. You will have to do some more work in this department, but due to the fact that the packages each person might choose and the hardware in his/her machine, we can't really document accurately what's going to go on from here. Our install road has reached a plethora of forks in it. Some simple advice: just answer the questions as accurately as you can and you should be fine.

Post Install

We'll assume that you've got a working Debian system now. If you've got a broadband or better connection to the Internet, you should now configure the apt-get system which will allow you to update your system quickly and painlessly. It will also allow you to get new programs by downloading and installing them automatically.

If you have a basic knowledge of Unix commands already, You should go to the directory /etc/apt/ and do the following (as root). (Even if you don't, you may want to try it!)

mv sources.list sources.list.old

This renames the file sources.list to sources.list.old. sources.list is what told the 'dselect' and 'apt' programs where to get the packages to be installed. Now we're going to change things a bit. We'll tell them to get packages off the Internet directly. We need to create a new sources.list file and add our new package sources to it. Do this first:

vi sources.list

This brings up the text editor 'vi'. There are people who love this program so much, they will challenge you to a pistol duel at 20 paces if you tell them you think it's lousy. If you have zero experience with Linux or Unix, 'vi' is probably *not* the text editor for you at this point, but with a few simple strokes of the keyboard, we can do what we want for now.

Hit the escape (ESC) key and the letter 'i' and your ready to insert the following.

deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US stable/non-US main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org stable/updates main contrib non-free

You may want to go to Debian's homepage and look up suitable mirror sites nearer to you. I'm sure the people who maintain the Debian website would appreciate it too!

Now, to save the file, hit ESC again and ':' the type 'wq' (meaning write-quit) and your file is saved.

Now you're ready to keep your Debian system in shape. We'll give you a refresher later on in the course, but you will probably be making use of these commands while you use Debian.

apt-get update - will update your system with the latest security enhances packages. Use: apt-get upgrade --show-upgraded to get a little more verbose report of what's going on.

apt-get --purge remove [program/package name] removes any trace of a program from your system.

apt-get install [program/package name] - installs a new program.

Now, let's see what we can do with that Debian system!

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