Browsing Occitan (post 1500) translation

98.

If you install in a language other than English, <command>tasksel</command> may automatically install a <firstterm>localization task</firstterm>, if one is available for your language. Space requirements differ per language; you should allow up to 350MB in total for download and installation.

100.

This section explains how to install &debian; from an existing Unix or Linux system, without using the menu-driven installer as explained in the rest of the manual. This <quote>cross-install</quote> HOWTO has been requested by users switching to &debian; from Red Hat, Mandrake, and SUSE. In this section some familiarity with entering *nix commands and navigating the file system is assumed. In this section, <prompt>$</prompt> symbolizes a command to be entered in the user's current system, while <prompt>#</prompt> refers to a command entered in the Debian chroot.

101.

Once you've got the new Debian system configured to your preference, you can migrate your existing user data (if any) to it, and keep on rolling. This is therefore a <quote>zero downtime</quote> &debian; install. It's also a clever way for dealing with hardware that otherwise doesn't play friendly with various boot or installation media.

102.

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 Debian 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.

104.

With your current *nix partitioning tools, repartition the hard drive as needed, creating at least one filesystem plus swap. You need around 350MB of space available for a console only install, or about 1GB if you plan to install X (more if you intend to install desktop environments like GNOME or KDE).

105.

Next, create file systems on the partitions. For example, to create an ext3 file system on partition <filename>/dev/hda6</filename> (that's our example root partition): <informalexample><screen>
# mke2fs -j /dev/<replaceable>hda6</replaceable>
</screen></informalexample> To create an ext2 file system instead, omit <userinput>-j</userinput>.

106.

Initialize and activate swap (substitute the partition number for your intended Debian swap partition): <informalexample><screen>
# mkswap /dev/<replaceable>hda5</replaceable>
# sync; sync; sync
# swapon /dev/<replaceable>hda5</replaceable>
</screen></informalexample> Mount one partition as <filename>/mnt/debinst</filename> (the installation point, to be the root (<filename>/</filename>) filesystem on your new system). The mount point name is strictly arbitrary, it is referenced later below.

108.

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.

110.

The utility used by the Debian installer, and recognized as the official way to install a Debian base system, is <command>debootstrap</command>. It uses <command>wget</command> and <command>ar</command>, but otherwise depends only on <classname>/bin/sh</classname> and basic Unix/Linux tools<footnote> <para> These include the GNU core utilities and commands like <command>sed</command>, <command>grep</command>, <command>tar</command> and <command>gzip</command>. </para> </footnote>. Install <command>wget</command> and <command>ar</command> if they aren't already on your current system, then download and install <command>debootstrap</command>.

111.

Or, you can use the following procedure to install it manually. Make a work folder for extracting the .deb into: <informalexample><screen>
# mkdir work
# cd work
</screen></informalexample> The <command>debootstrap</command> binary is located in the Debian archive (be sure to select the proper file for your architecture). Download the <command>debootstrap</command> .deb from the <ulink url="http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/d/debootstrap/"> pool</ulink>, copy the package to the work folder, and extract the files from it. You will need to have root privileges to install the files.