# Installation Howto

This document describes how to install &debian-gnu; &releasename; for the &arch-title; (&architecture;) with the new &d-i;. 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.

## Preliminaries

The debian-installer is still in a beta state. If you encounter bugs during your install, please refer to submit-bug for instructions on how to report them. If you have questions which cannot be answered by this document, please direct them to the debian-boot mailing list (&email-debian-boot-list;) or ask on IRC (#debian-boot on the OFTC network).

## Booting the installer

For some quick links to installation images, check out the &d-i; home page. The debian-cd team provides builds of installation images using &d-i; on the Debian CD/DVD page. For more information on where to get installation images, see official-cdrom.

Some installation methods require other images than those for optical media. The &d-i; home page has links to other images. where-files explains how to find images on &debian; mirrors.

The subsections below will give the details about which images you should get for each possible means of installation.

### Optical disc

The netinst CD image is a popular image which can be used to install &releasename; with the &d-i;. This installation method is intended to boot from the image and install additional packages over a network; hence the name netinst. The image has the software components needed to run the installer and the base packages to provide a minimal &releasename; system. If you'd rather, you can get a full size CD/DVD image which will not need the network to install. You only need the first image of such set.

Download whichever type you prefer and burn it to an optical disc. To boot the disc, you may need to change your BIOS/UEFI configuration, as explained in bios-setup. To boot a PowerMac from CD, press the c key while booting. See boot-cd for other ways to boot from CD.

### USB memory stick

It's also possible to install from removable USB storage devices. For example a USB keychain can make a handy &debian; install medium that you can take with you anywhere.

The easiest way to prepare your USB memory stick is to download any Debian CD or DVD image that will fit on it, and write the image directly to the memory stick. Of course this will destroy anything already on the stick. This works because Debian CD/DVD images are isohybrid images that can boot both from optical and USB drives.

The easiest way to prepare your USB memory stick is to download `hd-media/boot.img.gz`, and use gunzip to extract the 1 GB image from that file. Write this image directly to your memory stick, which must be at least 1 GB in size. Of course this will destroy anything already on the memory stick. Then mount the memory stick, which will now have a FAT filesystem on it. Next, download a &debian; netinst CD image, and copy that file to the memory stick; any filename is ok as long as it ends in `.iso`.

There are other, more flexible ways to set up a memory stick to use the debian-installer, and it's possible to get it to work with smaller memory sticks. For details, see boot-usb-files.

While booting from USB storage is quite common on UEFI systems, this is somewhat different in the older BIOS world. Some BIOSes can boot USB storage directly, and some cannot. You may need to configure your BIOS/UEFI to enable USB legacy support or Legacy support. The boot device selection menu should show removable drive or USB-HDD to get it to boot from the USB device. For helpful hints and details, see usb-boot-x86.

### Booting from network

It's also possible to boot &d-i; 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 &d-i;.

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 install-tftp.

### Booting from hard disk

It's possible to boot the installer using no removable media, but just an existing hard disk, which can have a different OS on it. Download `hd-media/initrd.gz`, `hd-media/vmlinuz`, and a &debian; CD/DVD image to the top-level directory of the hard disk. Make sure that the image has a filename ending in `.iso`. Now it's just a matter of booting linux with the initrd. boot-initrd explains one way to do it.

## Installation

Once the installer starts, you will be greeted with an initial screen. Press &enterkey; to boot, or read the instructions for other boot methods and parameters (see boot-parms).

After a while you will be asked to select your language. Use the arrow keys to pick a language and press &enterkey; 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 debian-installer detects some of your hardware, and loads the rest of the installation image.

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.

Setting up the network 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. By default, the first user created on the system will be allowed to use the `sudo` command to become root.

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.

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 partman-auto). 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 &debian; install: simply select the partition and specify its new size.

On the next screen you will see your partition table, how the partitions will be formatted, and where they will be mounted. Select a partition to modify or delete it. If you did automatic partitioning, you should just be able to choose Finish partitioning and write changes to disk from the menu to use what it set up. 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 di-partition; the appendix partitioning has more general information about partitioning.

Now &d-i; 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 pkgsel 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 UEFI partition/boot record of the primary drive, which is generally a good choice. You'll be given the opportunity to override that choice and install it elsewhere.

&d-i; will now tell you that the installation has finished. Remove the cdrom or other boot media and hit &enterkey; to reboot your machine. It should boot up into the newly installed system and allow you to log in. This is explained in boot-new.

If you need more information on the install process, see d-i-intro.

## Send us an installation report

If you successfully managed an installation with &d-i;, please take time to provide us with a report. The simplest way to do so is to install the reportbug package (`apt install reportbug`), configure `reportbug` as explained in mail-outgoing, and run `reportbug installation-reports`.

If you did not complete the install, you probably found a bug in debian-installer. To improve the installer it is necessary that we know about them, so please take the time to report them. You can use an installation report to report problems; if the install completely fails, see problem-report.

## And finally…

We hope that your &debian; installation is pleasant and that you find &debian; useful. You might want to read post-install.