System Administration

Record all system modifications and other events

Diagnose any system problems

Make a note of system usage and any growth

Make a note of the security implementation and its success, remember not to keep these records in an unsafe place.

List your system hardware components and as suggested in the course material, check the hardware's compatibility with the operating system that you are installing.

For each hardware component record the following information:

Decide on your backup procedure whether full or incremental, daily, weekly etc. Then create a log that you can refer to especially at restore time or if handing over the system to someone else (see Chapter 4).

Check in the man or info pages if you do not know these commands:

For managing files we covered ls, mv, cp, rm, grep, file and find.

We displayed files with cat, more, pg, less, head and tail.

Managed directory files with cd, mkdir, rmdir, pwd and copy.

Used input/output redirection with >, <, >> and |

Download the vi-referance card from this page

In this course we are going to go through a complete installation of Debian Linux. You will require at least the first Debian installation CD to do a Debian installation.

Only the first CD is required to turn your computer into a fully working Linux system, although there are lots of useful packages on the other 7 (!) CDs.

You should consult the Debian web site^[1] for a list of places where you can get your hands on a copy.

This document covers Debian version 3.0r2, but is applicable to most other versions.

You will need to configure your system's CMOS to tell it that you wish to boot off the CD-ROM drive.

Before attempting the installation make an inventory of the hardware components of your machine. Although the Debian installation system will attempt to automatically detect your hardware, it may not always be successful. Probably the most important pieces of information to record are the IRQ and IO addresses for your ISA/EISA cards, if you have any.

If you're going to be doing the installation onto a machine, which already contains data, and you wish to preserve this data then make a backup!

Debian requires that there be some unused partition space on which it can be installed. Please note that this is not the same as having free space on your C: drive (assuming you're running DOS or Windows).

A typical desktop Debian installation requires about 600MB of disk space, but this can obviously change depending on what additional software you intend to install, as well as the amount of data that you are going to be storing.

It is highly recommended that you also review the installation documentation available on the Debian CDs, as this will cover specific configuration problems in depth, as well as last minute "gotchas" that might have crept into the release.

Debian Linux is a community driven operating system like most open source projects. A way to get the most out of using the software is to become involved with the community. If you're running a Debian system, it is definitely recommended that you subscribe to some of the Debian mailing lists, you can subscribe to these mailing lists on this page

As someone looking after a Debian system, you should at least subscribe to "announce" and "security announce" mailing lists. These are low volume, but they will keep you up to date with what's happening with the Debian project, and, very importantly, about any security related information that becomes available.

During an installation of any operating system, it's a good idea to note down what it is you've done and what choices you've made, and possibly even your reasons. This can prove invaluable when reviewing a system, and especially if you have to re-install it due to a system failure!

Some of the other obvious things that you should do prior to an installation are to make an inventory of the hardware that the system contains, and then to check up online whether or not that specific hardware combination is supported by the operating system and applications that you are going to be installing.

Once you've booted off the installation CD, your screen should appear as follows:

Note that it is important to read and note everything that is displayed during the installation. If you skim over something, you may miss a critical piece of information and end up having to start the installation from scratch again!

Once you've read what's on the screen, feel free to use the function keys to investigate the other screens. Once you're ready to begin press Enter.

You should notice a lot of text scroll off the screen. Don't worry if it goes past too quickly for you to read, we can come back to it later.

If all goes well while booting off the CD, you should be presented with the following screen:

The application that is now running is called "dbootstrap"; it is responsible for the installation and initial configuration of the system.

You can use the following keys to navigate in dbootstrap:

Now that you know how to find your way around, use the arrow keys to move the selection bar (the yellow text on a red background) down to your preferred language choice (probably "en"). Once your choice is highlighted, as in the screenshot, press the Enter key.

You may be prompted to further refine your choice, as below:

Once you've done that successfully, you will be presented with the "Release Notes" display:

Once you've read this, press Enter again to continue.

From here, you can jump to most parts of the installation. For the purposes of a standard installation though, you should simply concentrate on the top grouped choices; in this case Next, "Alternate" and "Alternate1".

The Next choice is the next logical step in the installation procedure, and is usually always the one you will want. The "Alternate" options allow you to chose an alternative installation path. This is sometimes useful if you want to skip a section which doesn't make sense for your particular installation.

Make sure that the highlight bar is on "Next: Configure the Keyboard", and then press the Enter key.

Select your keyboard type, and then press Enter. If you're not sure which keyboard you have, then go with the default "qwerty/us" selection.

Debian needs at least one partition in order to run. However, you can also create a swap partition.

Why create a swap partition?

A swap partition allows the operating system to treat some of the disk space as "virtual memory". If your system has less than 16MB of RAM, then you will have to create a swap partition in order for the system to work. If you have more RAM than that, then a swap partition is not required, but is still recommended.

Generally, the cost of RAM is a lot higher than the cost of disk space. For this reason, it is often useful to be able to use part of the hard disk as if it were memory. This is what a swap partition allows the operating system to do. The kernel will be able to "swap" current unneeded data out of RAM and write it to the swap partition on the disk. When the data is needed by the kernel again, it will be read off the disk, and placed back into RAM.

The benefit is that you get away with not having to have the full amount of physical RAM required to run a specific application. One important point to remember though is that accessing the hard drive is a lot slower than accessing RAM, and so you will incur a speed penalty.

A good rule of thumb is to have the amount of swap that you have equal to twice the amount of RAM that you have, but no more than 1GB. Obviously, this might vary depending on what you're wanting to use the system for.

In our example, we're going to create a 64MB swap partition.

Select "Partition hard disk" and then press Enter.

You will then be prompted to select which hard disk you wish to partition:

The Linux kernel assigns short names to the storage devices that it finds on your system. It's important to know what naming scheme it uses, so that you can correctly chose which disks to partition:

In our example, there is only one drive installed in the system; a primary master IDE drive (hda).

Press Enter to select this drive, and continue.

If you have a large HDD, but an old machine, you may encounter problems booting a Linux system. Please read the notes on this screen carefully. If your machine is from 1998 or later, then you shouldn't be affected by this problem. Press Enter to continue.

The dbootstrap application has now launched another application called "cfdisk". This is the actual tool that you will use to partition your hard drive. If you are installing onto a new disk, you will be presented with a prompt as above. Simply press "Y" and then Enter to continue.

You will then be presented with the cfdisk main screen, which should look like this:

You can use the following keys to navigate around cfdisk:

The first thing you should do is press Enter and read through the help section to familiarize yourself with its contents.

Once you have read the help section return to the main screen, press the right arrow key to highlight the "New" menu option, and then press Enter.

You will then be prompted to chose which type of partition you wish to create; either a primary one or a logical one. Unless you already have four primary partitions on your system, select "primary" and press Enter.

You will then be prompted for the size of the partition, given in MB.

We will create a 64MB sized one, so type "64" and press Enter.

Now you can choose whether you wish to add this partition to the beginning of your free space, or to the end. Select "Beginning" and press Enter.

You screen should now look something like this:

You'll see that the partition you've just created is now displayed. It's called "hda1". As mentioned previously "hda" is your primary master IDE drive; the "1" signifies that it is the first partition.

You'll see that it's also a "Primary" partition, that it's a "Linux" filesystem type and that it's 64MB in size.

You'll also see that we still have some free space left, 983.68MB worth in the screenshot.

However, we don't want this to be a "Linuxv" partition, we want it to be a "Linux swap" partition. Use the right arrow key to move the cursor all the way from "Bootable" over to "Type", and then press Enter.

You'll be presented with two pages worth of partition types, and their associated partition type numbers.

At the end of that, you'll be prompted to enter the number of the partition type that you want.

The two numbers that you'll be most interested in remembering are:

82 - Linux swap
83 - Linux

The rest might be useful if you're having to recover your partition table at some point in time, but they're not necessary for a standard Linux installation.

Enter the number "82" (for "Linux swap") and press Enter.

You should now see that the main screen has been updated to reflect your choice, and that the FS Type for hda1 is set to "Linux swap".

Now we want to create another partition out of the remaining free space. Press the down arrow key to move the highlight bar onto the "Free Space" section, and then press the right arrow key to select "New".

Press Enter, and you should be presented with the now familiar menu asking you to select between creating a Primary or a Logical partition. Just press Enter again to select Primary.

As before, you'll be prompted to select the size of the partition. Just hit Enter to select the default, which is to use all the available free space.

Since this is the partition you'll be wanting to boot from, press the Enter key again to toggle the partition's "Bootable" flag. This tells your computer than that partition can be booted from. The main screen should now look something like this:

You can see that you now have two partitions; "hda1" is the previously created Linux swap partition, while "hda2" is your newly created Linux partition. You'll note that the "hda2" partition has its "Boot" flag enabled.

Phew! Now we can finally write this partition table to the hard drive.

Use the right arrow key to move the highlight over to the Write option, and press Enter.

You will be prompted as to whether you do indeed wish to perform this operation:

Type out the full word "yes" if you are sure that you are happy with this.

Once the partition table has been written out successfully, you can move the highlight over to Quit using the arrow keys, and then press Enter.

You have now completed the hardest part of the installation and the rest is relatively easy from here.

As the display tells you, you've created a swap partition, but you haven't initialized and activated it yet. Press Enter to opt to do this now.

As explained in the write-up on dbootstrap, you can skip this step if you have a relatively modern HDD, as it is able to handle bad blocks on its own.

Select No and press Enter to continue.

Last chance! Are you sure that this is the correct partition (hda1 in our example)? Once you select Yes and press Enter, any information stored on that part of the disk will now be overwritten.

Now your system has that disk space available as virtual memory. This is very useful if you're installing on a machine with a small amount of RAM, as dbootstrap can now make use of this resource.

Now we need to Initialize ("format" in DOS parlance) your Linux partition, and then mount it so that we can access it to install Debian onto it.

Press Enter to begin this process now.

Depending on the size of your partition, and the speed of your system and drive, this may take a few moments.

The root ("/") is the base of your filesystem; for our example installation, we will only have this single partition. You may wish to make use of a more complicated layout if you have special needs.

For example, if you have a Samba file server sharing user's home directories, you might well want to have the system ("/", /usr, etc.) on a separate disk to your data (/home). This will allow you to upgrade your system without interfering with the user data, and, likewise, allow you to expand the amount of data storage space easily, without having to re-install the system from scratch.

However, a single filesystem is usually sufficient for a workstation or similar installation.

Select Yes to mount the root filesystem onto our hda2 device.

Now that you have mounted your root filesystem, you may choose to mount additional filesystems, or continue on and install the Linux kernel and driver modules.

For our example, as we only have one partition, we chose to do the later.

You might want to mount additional filesystems to install additional software, or if you are attempting to use the installation program to rescue or upgrade your system.

Press Enter.

The installation program has detected your Debian CD-ROM and is asking whether or not you wish to install the packages from it.

Alternatives would be to install packages from another source, such as over the network or from another hard disk in the system.

We want to use the CD though, so just select Yes and press Enter.

This section lets you configure which Linux kernel modules, or device drivers, you wish to use. This is useful if you have a network card which is not automatically detected, or, if you're installing on a laptop, if you have any ACACIA devices which you wish to use.

Select Next and press Enter.

If you have a supported PCI network card, support for it will already exist in the Linux kernel, so you won't have to select a kernel module for it. However, if you have one of the older ISA/EISA network cards, (e.g. an NE2000 compatible one), then you may well have to select a driver for it.

	Tip
	One handy way of doing this is seeing what settings the hardware is detected as having by other operating systems.

If Linux has detected a network card, or if you have selected a network card module, you will be presented with the option of configuring it.

If you don't have a network card, or if you do but don't wish to configure it, you can skip ahead to the next section, otherwise press Enter to begin the configuration.

You'll be prompted for a name for your machine; you can call it whatever you like, as long as the name conforms to the rules mentioned on the screen. The default name is "debian", so we'll just stick with that.

Press Enter to continue.

Here you'll have to know a little bit about your network. If you're putting your machine on a live network, and you know that your network has a DHCP server, then you can tell Debian to behave as a DHCP client. This is useful as it will automatically configure your network settings for you.

However, if your machine isn't on a network, or your network doesn't support DHCP, then you'll have to do it manually. For this example, we'll do it manually.

Use the arrow keys to select No, and then press Enter.

You'll need to provide an IP address here; the default is "192.168.1.1", which is a private IP address. We'll use this one for our example, but you may need to specify a real one depending on your own network configuration.

This step will install the "base system", or, put another way, just enough to get your system up and functioning.

Press Enter to continue.

This step will take awhile, as it will have to copy a large number of files off the CD-ROM, extract them and install them on your Linux partition.

Once the installation has finished, you'll be asked whether you wish to make the system bootable.

Press Enter to continue with this step.

For our example installation, we'll install the LILO boot loader in the MBR (Master Boot Record) of the hard drive. If you were installing onto a disk which already had a boot loader, you might opt to instead install LILO in the root partition (hda2, remember?) instead.

Note

The space on your hard disk can be partitioned into a maximum of four (4) "primary partitions". Sometimes, your configuration requires that you have more than 4 partitions available. To address this problem, you can convert one of the 4 primary partitions into an "extended partition", within which you can create "logical partitions", which allows you to have more than 4 partitions on a single disk. Each partition can hold a different operating system, or your operating system may be spread over several partitions, each acting as a different drive letter (Windows) or mount point (Linux).

Press Enter to install LILO in the MBR.

If you're interested in keeping your machine secure from physical access, you should read this notice carefully.

It's recommended that you make a boot floppy, it is a very useful troubleshooting tool; you could use the floppy disk to boot your Debian system if it has problems booting from the hard drive as an example.

Press Enter.

Now insert a blank floppy disk, and hit Enter again.

Once you've made a boot floppy, you're ready to reboot the system and see if it works. Make sure that you remove the floppy that you have made as well as the installation CD.

Once that's all done, press Enter to reboot.

Your system should then reboot, and you will hopefully be presented with a screen which looks like this:

Congratulations!

If you aren't presented with the "Congratulations" screen when you reboot, then something unfortunately must have gone wrong. The first thing I would suggest is attempting to boot off the boot floppy that you made earlier.

Some systems have problems with the LILO boot loader on the hard disk.

You will be asked whether you wish to set your hardware clock to GMT. As noted on the screen, if you are only running one operating system on your machine, then this setting is usually fine. However, if you are using a multi-boot system, you may wish to leave the hardware clock set at local time.

You will then be asked to select your time zone.

You can use the "arrow keys" and the Enter key to make your selections.

You will be prompted about whether or not to enable MD5 passwords. If this is going to be a stand-alone system, then MD5 passwords should work fine. If you are going to be integrating this system into an already existing network of Unix machines, you may wish to use the older DES encryption method. Again, make your selection with the "arrow keys" and then the Enter key.

The differences between MD5 and DES password encryption is covered in the Fundamentals section.

You should always enable shadow passwords unless you have a very good reason for doing otherwise. Not using shadow passwords leaves your system very vulnerable to local attacks.

You need to set a password for the "root" or administrator account. Read the instructions on the screen carefully and chose a password.

You'll be prompted to enter the password twice to verify that you didn't make any typos.

	Note
	Choose a really good password for the root user? Remember that a person having access to the root account would have full permissions on the system.

It's usually always a good idea to create a normal user account. For our example, we'll create one called "student", but you can choose whatever your preferred username is.

Again, choose a good password for your normal user account.

If you're not installing on a laptop, Debian will detect this and ask if you wish to remove the ACACIA packages. This is safe to do, unless you know you'll be wanting ACACIA support for something.

If you have a modem connected to your machine, and want to enable your Debian system to use it to connect to the Internet, then select Yes.

If you don't have a modem, or don't wish to connect to the Internet via PPP (perhaps you have a network card), then you can select No.

If you selected Yes, you'll be taken through the PPP Configuration Utility. You'll need to know your dial-up number, username and password. Your ISP should be able to provide you with these.

APT is part of the Debian package management system.

You need to tell APT where it can obtain Debian packages from. If you have a permanent Internet connection, then it's usually a good idea to select a local Debian mirror to obtain packages from. If you don't have an Internet connection, then you can tell Debian to obtain its packages from CD-ROM instead.

APT is clever enough to be able to handle multiple CDs, so you could load all 7 official CD images into its database if necessary.

Since we've just installed off CD-ROM, this is probably the easiest way to continue, so insert the CD and then just select "cdrom" and press Enter.

APT will then prompt you for further CDs. If you have them, then feel free to load them in. Otherwise, select No and press Enter.

APT will then prompt you to select any additional package sources.

Select No and press Enter.

You'll also be asked if you wish to track security updates from the official Debian security site. If you have a connection to the Internet, this option is definitely recommended.

You can get back to this section after you've finished your installation by running the apt-setup command.

You'll be asked if you wish to use "tasksel" (task select), which will allow you to tailor your system to perform specific tasks by installing the correct packages.

Select Yes and press Enter.

You can use the Up/Down arrow keys to scroll through the list of "tasks" in tasksel, and you can use the left/right arrow keys to select either the selection screen, the Finish, Task info or Help buttons.

While the selection screen is active, you can use either the Spacebar or Enter key to toggle which options you wish to install.

For a first time desktop installation, it is recommended that you select the "X window system" and "desktop environment" options.

Once you've toggle what you want, you can select the Finish button and hit Enter.

You'll now be prompted about whether you wish to use dselect. This is similar tool to "tasksel", but allows your more control over what software packages you're going to install. You can safely skip this step for now though.

Select No and press Enter.

You will then be presented with a long list of packages that are now going to be installed, as well as the summary on the disk space that will be required to perform this operation. You can select Y and Enter to continue, or N and Enter if you wish to abort the installation.

APT will then proceed to load the packages that it requires from the various sources that you'd told it about previously. If you told it to load packages off the CD-ROM, it will prompt you to make sure that the relevant CD is inserted, and to then press Enter.

Do this now.

Now you should be ready to finally log in! You should make your initial login with the normal user account that you created earlier.

Once you've logged in under your normal user account, you can then use the "su" (substitute user) command to become the super user, also called the "root user", if you are going to be performing any administration tasks.

Linux baloo.zoo.org.za 2.2.20-idepci #1 Sat Apr 20 12:45:19 EST 2002 i686 unknown

Most of the programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are
freely redistributable; the exact distribution terms for each program
are described in the individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright

Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
permitted by applicable law.

student@debian:~$ su 
Password: 
debian:/home/student#
                

Figure 2.1. The Bootup sequence

This chapter will describe the steps that your machine takes from the time that it is turned on up until your operating system is fully loaded.

	Note
	This only covers the sequence of events on x86 (Intel 80x86 or compatible). If you are using a Sparc or Alpha architecture machine, the process will be similar, but not identical.

debian:~# ls /etc/rc2.d/
S10sysklogd  S19nfs-common  S20lpd    
S20ssh  S89cron S99rmnologin
S11klogd     S20exim        S20makedev
S20xfs  S99gdm S99xdm
S14ppp       S20inetd       S20nfs-kernel-server
S89atd  S99kdm
                    

debian:~# cat /etc/fstab 
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>	 <dump>  <pass>
/dev/hdb2       /               ext2    errors=remount-ro       0       1
/dev/hdb1       none            swap    sw                      0       0
proc            /proc           proc    defaults                0       0
/dev/fd0        /floppy         auto    user,noauto             0       0
/dev/cdrom      /cdrom          iso9660 ro,user,noauto          0       0
                    

debian:~# ls -la /etc/rc2.d
total 8
drwxr-xr-x    2 root  root  4096 Mar 12 08:46 .
drwxr-xr-x   59 root  root  4096 Mar 12 09:08 ..
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root  root  18 Mar 12  2004 
	S10sysklogd -> ../init.d/sysklogd
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root  root  15 Mar 12  2004 
	S11klogd -> ../init.d/klogd
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root  root  13 Mar 12  2004 
	S14ppp -> ../init.d/ppp
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root  root  20 Mar 12 08:44
	S19nfs-common -> ../init.d/nfs-common
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root  root  14 Mar 12  2004
	S20exim -> ../init.d/exim
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root  root  15 Mar 12  2004
	S20inetd -> ../init.d/inetd
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root  root  13 Mar 12 08:44 
	S20lpd -> ../init.d/lpd
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root  root  17 Mar 12  2004
	S20makedev -> ../init.d/makedev
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root  root  27 Mar 12 08:44 
	S20nfs-kernel-server -> ../init.d/nfs-kernel-server
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root  root  13 Mar 12 08:44 
	S20ssh -> ../init.d/ssh
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root  root  13 Mar 12 08:46 
	S20xfs -> ../init.d/xfs
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root  root  13 Mar 12  2004 
	S89atd -> ../init.d/atd
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root  root  14 Mar 12  2004 
	S89cron -> ../init.d/cron
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root  root  13 Mar 12 08:45
	S99gdm -> ../init.d/gdm
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root  root  13 Mar 12 08:46 
	S99kdm -> ../init.d/kdm
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root  root  19 Mar 12  2004
	S99rmnologin -> ../init.d/rmnologin
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root  root  13 Mar 12 08:46
	S99xdm -> ../init.d/xdm
                    

Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 baloo.zoo.org.za
baloo.zoo.org.za login: root
                    

Password:
Last login: Wed Mar 24 10:02:19 2004 on tty2
Linux baloo.zoo.org.za 2.2.20-idepci #1 Sat Apr 20 12:45:19 EST 2002 i686 
unknown

Most of the programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are
freely redistributable; the exact distribution terms for each program
are described in the individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright

Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
permitted by applicable law.
                    

debian:~# pstree
init-+-atd
���� |-bash---pstree
���� |-cron
���� |-5*[getty]
���� |-inetd
���� |-keventd
���� |-kflushd
���� |-klogd
���� |-kswapd
���� |-kupdate
���� |-lpd
���� |-sshd---sshd---bash---top
���� `-syslogd 
                    

SYNTAX:
shutdown [ -r | -h ] time [ message ]
                    

debian:~# shutdown -r now

Broadcast message from root (pts/0) (Sat Mar 20 03:34:37 2004):

The system is going down for reboot NOW!
                    

The standard graphical user interface (GUI) that comes with Debian is called XFree86. This is a free implementation of the X Windows System (X11R6), written for the x86 architecture.

The X Windows System uses the client/server architecture. The server runs on the machine which has the video display hardware, while the clients run can run on the same machine, or on a remote system.

Figure 2.2. XWindow client/server model

This means that your X Windows server must know how to handle your video display hardware.

Your X Windows clients are your graphical applications; examples include "xterm", "mozilla" and "openoffice".

In addition, you usually need a system to manage to each of the "windows" that your applications generate. This system is called your "window manager". It is responsible for putting borders around your application windows, and allowing you to perform actions such altering the size (know as "geometry" in X11 parlance) and location of the window on the screen.

Some of the popular window managers include "fluxbox", "fvwm" and "afterstep".

In addition to window managers, you also get "integrated desktop environments". These are a collection of applications, usually including a menu system, a window manager and a graphical file manager that supports drag'drop between the various desktop elements.

Examples of popular desktop environments include KDE, Gnome and XFCE.

You can find a good summary of available window managers and desktop environments here

There are two ways of allowing access to your X Windows system.

You can make use of the startx command from a local console, after you've logged in.

Alternatively, you can configure an X Windows Display Manager. The default display manager that comes with XFree86 is called plain "XDM".

There is a KDE specific one called "KDM" and a Gnome specific one called "GDM"; the KDE and GNOME Display Managers, respectively.

All three of these applications provide a graphical login screen, and can be accessed either via the local console, or via the network by means of the XDMCP protocol.

You can use the following command under Debian to configure XFree86 (as root):

dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86

This will take you through the same configuration procedure as when you first installed it earlier (see the section called “Configuring X Windows”).

The default Debian installation uses the Linux Boot Loader (LILO), and it performs perfectly for simple boot configurations. However, a lot of people find the GRand Unified Bootloader (GRUB) easier to use and more powerful and thus better suited for their needs.

Switching from LILO to GRUB on Debian is a relatively easy process.

First, you'll need to install the GRUB package:

debian:~# apt-get install grub
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  grub 
0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 2  not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/247kB of archives. After unpacking 504Kb will be used.
Media Change: Please insert the disc labeled 'Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 r2 _Woody_ 
- Official i386 Binary-1 (20031201)' in the drive '/cdrom/' 
and press enter

Selecting previously deselected package grub.
(Reading database ... 9857 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking grub (from .../g/grub/grub_0.91-2_i386.deb) ...
Setting up grub (0.91-2) ...
                

Once that's done, you'll need to install the boot loader code on the device that you boot from.

In our example system, that's the second IDE drive on the system ("/dev/hdb"), so the command you would issue would be:

debian:~# grub-install /dev/hdb
Installation finished. No error reported.
This is the contents of the device map /boot/grub/device.map.
Check if this is correct or not. If any of the lines is incorrect,
fix it and re-run the script `grub-install'.

(fd0)   /dev/fd0
(hd0)   /dev/hda
(hd1)   /dev/hdb
                

Once that's done, you'll need to run the update-grub command, which is Debian specific, and which will generate a GRUB menu configuration file for you, called /boot/grub/menu.lst.

debian:~# update-grub
Searching for GRUB installation directory ... found: /boot/grub .
Testing for an existing GRUB menu.list file... 

Could not find /boot/grub/menu.lst file. Would you like one generated 
for you? (y/N) y
Updating /boot/grub/menu.lst ... done


Please note that configuration parameters for GRUB are stored in
/boot/grub/menu.lst . You must edit this file in order to set the 
options which GRUB passes to the kernel, as well as the drive which 
GRUB looks in to for the kernel.

Everything on the line after "kopt=" is passed to the kernel
as parameters, and "groot=" must be set to the partition
(in GRUB terms, such as "(hd0,0)") which GRUB will load the 
kernel from.

After you have edited /boot/grub/menu.lst , please re-run 
'update-grub'.
                

As the instructions tell you, you will need to edit the "kopt" and "groot" parameters in that file. You should use "vi" to do this:

debian:~# vi /boot/grub/menu.lst
                

(hd0,0) refers to the first hard disk's first partition
(hd1,0) refers to the second hard disk's first partition
(hd1,1) refers to the second hard disk's second partition
etc.
                

Once you've edited the menu.lst file to your satisfaction, you will need to re-run the update-grub command:

debian:~# update-grub
Searching for GRUB installation directory ... found: /boot/grub .
Testing for an existing GRUB menu.list file... found: /boot/grub/menu.lst .
Updating /boot/grub/menu.lst ... done
                

Now reboot, and see if it has worked!

debian:~# shutdown -r now
                

Unlike the RPM package management system which RedHat Linux uses, Debian's packages files have a .deb extension.

Debian uses three different, but related, sets of tools to manage its packages: dpkg, dselect and apt.

debian:~# dpkg --list
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name           Version        Description
+++-======================================
ii  aalib1         1.4p5-13       ascii art library
ii  abiword        1.0.2+cvs.2002 Dummy package providing abiword
ii  abiword-common 1.0.2+cvs.2002 WYSIWYG word processor
ii  abiword-gtk    1.0.2+cvs.2002 WYSIWYG word processor based on GTK
ii  adduser        3.47           Add and remove users and groups
ii  apt            0.5.4          Advanced front-end for dpkg
ii  apt-utils      0.5.4          APT utility programs
ii  ark            2.2.2-9        An archiver for KDE
ii  asclock-themes 2.0.12-5       Theme files for ASclock, a clock applet
ii  at             3.1.8-11       Delayed job execution and batch processing
ii  base-config    1.33.18        Debian base configuration package
ii  base-files     3.0.2          Debian base system miscellaneous files
ii  base-passwd    3.4.1          Debian Base System Password/Group Files
[ ... ]
ii  xlibs          4.1.0-16woody1 X Window System client libraries
ii  xnest          4.1.0-16woody1 nested X server
ii  xprt           4.1.0-16woody1 X print server
ii  xserver-common 4.1.0-16woody1 files and utilities common to all X servers
ii  xserver-xfree8 4.1.0-16woody1 the XFree86 X server
ii  xspecs         4.1.0-16woody1 X protocol, extension, and library technical
ii  xterm          4.1.0-16woody1 X terminal emulator
ii  xutils         4.1.0-16woody1 X Window System utility programs
ii  xvfb           4.1.0-16woody1 virtual framebuffer X server
ii  zlib1g         1.1.4-1.0woody compression library - runtime
                        

debian:~# mount /cdrom
debian:~# dpkg --info /cdrom/pool/main/b/bsdgames/bsdgames_2.13-7_i386.deb
 new debian package, version 2.0.
 size 791782 bytes: control archive= 6220 bytes.
     841 bytes,    20 lines      control              
   10117 bytes,   158 lines      md5sums              
    1791 bytes,    56 lines   *  postinst             #!/bin/sh
     969 bytes,    32 lines   *  postrm               #!/bin/sh
    1580 bytes,    55 lines   *  preinst              #!/bin/sh
     198 bytes,     7 lines   *  prerm                #!/bin/sh
 Package: bsdgames
 Version: 2.13-7
 Section: games
 Priority: optional
 Architecture: i386
 Depends: libc6 (>= 2.2.4-4), libncurses5 (>= 5.2.20020112a-1),
 wenglish | wordlist
 Suggests: wenglish
 Conflicts: bsdgames-nonfree (<< 2.5), suidmanager (<< 0.50)
 Replaces: bsdgames-nonfree (<< 2.5)
 Installed-Size: 2064
 Maintainer: Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>
 Description: collection of text games from BSD systems
  This is a collection of some of the text-based games and amusements that have
  been enjoyed for decades on unix systems.
  .
  Includes these programs: adventure, arithmetic, atc, backgammon, battlestar,
  bcd, boggle, caesar, canfield, countmail, cribbage, fish, gomoku, hangman,
  hunt, mille, monop, morse, number, pig, phantasia, pom, ppt, primes, quiz,
  random, rain, robots, sail, snake, tetris, trek, wargames, worm, worms,
  wump, wtf
debian:~# dpkg --install /cdrom/pool/main/b/bsdgames/bsdgames_2.13-7_i386.deb 
Selecting previously deselected package bsdgames.
(Reading database ... 36337 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking bsdgames (from .../bsdgames_2.13-7_i386.deb) ...
Setting up bsdgames (2.13-7) ...

debian:~# _
                        

debian:~# dpkg --listfiles bsdgames
/.
/usr
/usr/share
/usr/share/doc
/usr/share/doc/bsdgames
/usr/share/doc/bsdgames/BUGS.atc
/usr/share/doc/bsdgames/ChangeLog.gz
/usr/share/doc/bsdgames/README.linux.hunt
/usr/share/doc/bsdgames/README.phantasia
/usr/share/doc/bsdgames/README.boggle
/usr/share/doc/bsdgames/README.linux.boggle
/usr/share/doc/bsdgames/TODO.gz
/usr/share/doc/bsdgames/ChangeLog.0
/usr/share/doc/bsdgames/trek.me.gz
[ ... ]
/var/games
/var/games/bsdgames
/var/games/bsdgames/phantasia
/var/games/bsdgames/sail
/usr/share/doc/bsdgames/NEWS.gz
/usr/share/man/man6/teachgammon.6.gz
/usr/share/man/man6/rot13.6.gz
/usr/share/man/man6/morse.6.gz
/usr/share/man/man6/ppt.
                        

debian:~# dpkg --search /usr/games/wtf
bsdgames: /usr/games/wtf
                        

debian:~# dpkg --purge bsdgames
(Reading database ... 36513 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing bsdgames ...
dpkg - warning: while removing bsdgames, directory 
`/var/games/bsdgames/phantasia' not empty so not removed.
dpkg - warning: while removing bsdgames, directory 
`/var/games/bsdgames' not empty so not removed.
dpkg - warning: while removing bsdgames, directory 
`/var/games' not empty so not removed.
Purging configuration files for bsdgames ...
                        

debian:~# ls /var/games
ls: /var/games: No such file or directory
                        

debian:~# apt-cdrom add
Using CD-ROM mount point /cdrom/
Unmounting CD-ROM
Please insert a Disc in the drive and press enter 
Mounting CD-ROM
Identifying.. [580650a473d808bc27074b25dff224f7-2]
Scanning Disc for index files..  Found 4 package indexes and 0 source
indexes.
This Disc is called:
 'Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 r2 _Woody_ - Official i386 Binary-1 (20031201)'
Reading Package Indexes... Done
Wrote 1167 records.
Writing new source list
Source List entries for this Disc are:
deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 r2 _Woody_ - Official i386 Binary-1 (20031201)]
/ unstable contrib main non-US/contrib non-US/main
Repeat this process for the rest of the CDs in your set.
debian:~# 
                    

debian:~# apt-get install bsdgames
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  bsdgames 
0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/792kB of archives. After unpacking 2114Kb will be used.
Media Change: Please insert the disc labeled 'Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 
r2 _Woody_ - Official i386 Binary-1 (20031201)' in the drive
'/cdrom/' and press enter

Selecting previously deselected package bsdgames.
(Reading database ... 36340 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking bsdgames (from .../bsdgames_2.13-7_i386.deb) ...
Setting up bsdgames (2.13-7) ...

debian:~# _
                    

RPM, a cyclic acronym for RPM Package Management, forms the base of the RedHat Linux package management system, as well as several other distributions. Although it is not used for the base package management system in Debian Linux, you can still make use of it if required.

RPM packages are given a ".rpm" extension, but otherwise follow a naming scheme very similar to .deb packages. Although the package files are in a different format, the same basic operations are common to the different package management systems:

List installed packages:

rpm -qa

Information about a .rpm file:

rpm -qi package.rpm

Install a .rpm file:

rpm -U package.rpm

List files installed by a specific package:

rpm -ql package

Find out which package a specific file belongs to:

rpm -qf filename

Uninstall an installed package:

rpm -e package

Debian makes it very easy to upgrade your kernel by using kernel packages.

We're going to attempt something more challenging though, and try to build a kernel of our own.

We are currently running Linux 2.2.20:

debian:~# uname -a
Linux debian 2.2.20-idepci #1 Sat Apr 20 12:45:19 EST 2002 i686 unknown
                

We're going to upgrade to Linux 2.4.18, so we need to install the following packages:

debian:~# apt-get install kernel-package kernel-source-2.4.18 ncurses-dev
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  kernel-package kernel-source-2.4.18 
0 packages upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0  not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/24.1MB of archives. After unpacking 24.9MB will be used.
Media Change: Please insert the disc labeled 'Debian GNU/Linux
3.0 r2 _Woody_ - Official i386 Binary-1 (20031201)' in the drive
'/cdrom/' and press enter

Selecting previously deselected package kernel-package.
(Reading database ... 36515 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking kernel-package (from .../kernel-package_7.107_all.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package kernel-source-2.4.18.
Unpacking kernel-source-2.4.18 
(from .../kernel-source-2.4.18_2.4.18-13_all.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package libncurses5-dev.
Unpacking libncurses5-dev 
(from .../libncurses5-dev_5.2.20020112a-7_i386.deb)