Debian/m68k GNU/Linux Installation Instructions for Atari (v1.5) Michael Schmitz, February 8, 1999 (derived from Amiga install guide by Frank Neumann) _____________________________________________________________________ A hopefully always up-to-date version of this document should be online at the Debian/68k web site. Ok, so you think you want to try Debian, dive into the wonderful world of free software, world-wide programming collaboration and soon-to-come world domination? Fine. Your first test will be to install the Debian base system on your Atari, and I hope this document will help you in getting that step done. So, without any further ado, these are the absolutely vital steps you need to take: 0) Before even thinking of starting to install Debian on your Atari, you should make a BACKUP of your current system. It's not like Debian will erase all data on your harddisks immediately when it starts up, but you can damage a lot easily if you are new to Linux or Unix in general. If you have a DAT, MO or spare harddisk, this is the chance to use them for creating a backup. 0b) Check out if your system is suited for Linux/m68k - please read the Linux/m68k FAQ, available e.g. at http://www.linux-m68k.org. 1) Get all required files from one of Debian's FTP sites, like ftp.debian.org, ftp.de.debian.org etc. A list of mirror sites can be found at http://www.debian.org/distrib/ftplist. No matter what mirror site you use, the path should always be: /pub/debian/dists/slink/main/disks-m68k/current These are the files you need: * atari/install.lzh (around 2.8 MB), or * atari/resc1440.bin ('rescue' floppy image), * atari/drv1440.bin ('drivers' floppy image), and * common/base2_1.tgz If you chose to install from the resc1440.bin floppy image, you'll also need a program to dump the floppy image to a 1440k (HD) floppy in your A: drive. That program, rawwrite.ttp, is currently available from /pub/debian/dists/hamm/disks-m68k/1998-03-10/atari/ on the Debian mirror site you used. It should be eventually moved into the new Atari install dir. If you had to compress the floppy images for transport to your Atari, you might find the gzip.ttp uncompressor in that directory useful as well. Once you have installed the base system and want to continue installing other packages, you can find these under the directories /pub/debian/dists/slink/main/binary-m68k (core section), /pub/debian/dists/slink/contrib/binary-m68k (contributed packages) and /pub/debian/dists/slink/non-free/binary-m68k (software which does not meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG)). Alternatively, get the official Debian/68k 2.1 CD set. The install files are unpacked on disc 1 in /install/atari/, the LZH archive and base2_1.tgz are in /install/. 2) Unpack the install.lha file to your harddisk (a subdirectory named "debian" will be automatically created for you). I recommend to unpack the archive directly onto the main directory of a partition that has at least ~ 10 MB of free space. Move the base2_1.tgz, resc1440.bin and drv1440.bin files into this same directory ("debian"). Don't rename any files in that directory. When installing from CD, either unpack /install/atariinstall.lzh to your harddisk as described above, or try using the files in /install/atari/ directly. 3) Partition your harddisk (or rather prepare partitions for Linux): There is a partitioning tool for Linux/m68k called atari-fdisk, but for now I recommend you partition your disk using a TOS partition editor or some disk tool. If your partition editor doesn't have an option to edit the partition type, you can do this crucial step at a later stage (from the booted temporary install ramdisk). One of the partition editors supporting selection of arbitrary partition types is SCSITool (Hard&Soft). There will be others, select one to suit your need. You should have reserved at least two partitions for Linux: One for the "root filesystem" and one for a "swap partition". The size recommendations are: for the root partition: * absolute minimum should be 25 MB (this is just enough to install the base system, and nothing else - probably enough for testing it, but not for really using it) * a reasonable system starts at around 200 - 400 MB, no limits upwards. for the swap partition: about twice as large as your main memory, but rather more than that. Especially on systems with little main memory (like 8 MB RAM), don't go below 20 MB swap space. Naming conventions: This is important because under Linux your partitions have different names than under TOS. This is the naming scheme: * The first SCSI harddisk (address-wise) is named "sda". * The second SCSI harddisk (address-wise) is named "sdb", and so on. * The first IDE harddisk is named "hda", the second IDE harddisk is named "hdb", and so on. The partitions on each harddisk are represented by appending a decimal number to the harddisk name: sda1, sda2, sda3 represent the first, second and third partition of the first SCSI harddisk in your system. Here is a real-life example: Let's assume you have a system with 2 SCSI harddisks, one at SCSI address 2 and the other at SCSI address 4. The first disk (at address 2) is then named "sda", and the second "sdb". If the "sda" harddisk has 5 partitions on it, these will be named "sda1", "sda2", ..., "sda5". Analoguous for the "sdb" harddisk and its partitions. So, now that we know the partition names, you can actually change their type from within your partition editor so that the Linux installation program can detect them: Start the partition editor, select the disk you want to use, select the "Partition Drive" function and select/create the partition you want to use as the Debian root filesystem. If there is a partition ID option, select it and enter LNX as the partition ID. After having done this, select a partition that is to be used as a swap partition, and repeat the same steps as above, but set the identifier to SWP instead. The following example covers 'SCSITool': 1. Start SCSITool, select the disk you want to partition ('Disk' menu, item 'select'). 2. From the 'Partition' menu, select either 'New' to add new partitions or change the existing partition sizes, or 'Change' to change one specific partition. Unless you have already created partitions with the right sizes and only want to change the partition ID, 'New' is probably the best choice. 3. For the 'New' choice, select 'existing' in the dialog box prompting the initial settings. The next window shows a list of existing partitions which you can adjust using the scroll buttons, or by clicking in the bar graphs. The first column in the partition list is the partition type, just click on the text field to edit. When you are finished changing partition settings, save the changes by leaving the window with the 'Ok' button. 4. For the 'Change' option, select the partition to change in the selection list, and select 'other systems' in the dialog box. The next window lists detailed information about the location of this partition, and lets you change the partition ID. Again, save the changes by leaving the window with the 'Ok' button. 5. Write down the Linux names for each of the partitions you created or changed for use with Linux - see section 4.2 for the naming scheme. 6. Quit SCSITool using the 'Quit' option from the 'File' menu, the computer will reboot to make sure the changed partition table is used by TOS. If you changed any TOS/GEM partitions, they will be invalidated and have to be reinitialized (we told you to back up everything on the disk, didn't we?). Please note: * Your root and swap partitions do not need to be on the same harddisk. * You can have more than one partition for files besides the root filesystem - this even makes sense very often, like when seperating the user's home directories from the system file area. If you want to use more partitions, prepare them just like the root partition. If you're only going to try Linux for a short time, it's enough to just have a single partition for files. * You can also have more than one swap partition, though that's not seen very often. * Write down the partition names (you know, the "sda1" etc. stuff) of all partitions that you are going to use for Linux. * At this point, please also write down the partition name (Linux-wise) of the partition on which you have unpacked the "install.lha" archive. You will need this later for installation of the kernel, modules and base system. When you have made all required changes, go back to the main window of the partition editor by "Save Changes to drive" or "Ok". Think twice before actually clicking on "Yes" to confirm the changes - have you chosen the correct partitions? No viable data that could get lost now? Then click OK. If required, the Atari will reboot after this. 5) When you're back at the GEM desktop, start the Linux installation process by double-clicking on the "BOOTSTRA.PRG" icon in the "debian" directory, or in the /install/atari/ directory on the CD. If installing from floppies, double-click on the "BOOTSTRA.TTP" icon, or the "BOOTSTRA.PRG" icon in the "AUTO" folder instead. BOOTSTRA.TTP will prompt for parameters, simply hit for now. You may have to press the key after the bootstrap program has output some debugging information. After this, the screen will go grey, a few seconds of delay, and after that a black screen with white text should come up, displaying all kinds of kernel debugging information. These scroll by far too fast for you to read, but that's not important right now. After a couple of seconds, the installation program should start automatically. If you get up to this point, you can be quite confident that you will be able to install Linux on your system. 6) So, now we're getting somewhere. The Debian installation program will lead you through the steps of preparing the partitions from the Linux side, unpacking and configuring the kernel modules and base system, and finally rebooting. Some of the presented steps are not really necessary (or even possible) on m68k platforms (the installation program is just the same as on the i386 version of Debian, and some of the i386 features are not (yet) available in the m68k version), so I'll tell you what you have to do at each step now. Select Color or Monochrome display If you use an SM124 or TT monitor, you might want to choose a monochrome display - otherwise select Color. Use the cursor keys to choose what you want, then press . Release notes This is just a screen with a few informations about Debian's goals, who built the rescue set etc. Now we come to the main installation screen which lists all possible actions you can take, with the next logical step always being highlit at the top of the list. I recommend to strictly follow the suggested way. Configure the keyboard Depending on whether you have a U.S. or german or other keyboard, select the one appropriate for you with the cursor keys and Space, then move with to the OK button and press . Initialize and Activate a Swap Partition When pressing , you will see a list of partitions that the installation program has found as being prepared by you for usage as a swap partition. Probably there is only one choice, and it should have the same partition name you wrote down under TOS while you were preparing that partition in your disk utility. If you have chosen to use several swap partitions, repeat the following step for all of them: * Press to accept the selected partition * When asked whether you want to do a bad-block scan, you can safely skip this step, so select "No" here using and then . * When asked whether you really want to initialize this partition as a swap partition, think twice, then, when being sure, press . At this point the swap partition will be "formatted" -- that is, some information is written to it to mark it as swap partition -- which only takes a second (you'll hardly be able to read the text that appears at the top of the screen - ignore that for now). Initialize a Linux partition This is very similar to the previous step, but this time it's not about swap partitions, but about "real" partitions which are supposed to carry files. Just as before, you'll be presented with a list of partitions that the installer found to be valid as Linux filesystem partitions. Again, for each of the partitions you have chosen to use, accept it by selecting it from the list and pressing , skip the "Bad-block scan" and (when you are sure) select "Yes" to format (initialize) the partition. After that, you will be asked whether you want to mount the currently active partition as root ("/") partition. Say "Yes" here at the first partition you use. Other partitions can be mounted somewhere under this mount point afterwards. Install Operating System Kernel and Modules As I assume that you are installing from files on a harddisk, you will have to select "Harddisk: Filesystem on the harddisk" here. Next you need to specify the (TOS) partition on which you unpacked the "install.lha" archive. After that you also need to enter the path to the directory containing the installation files - in the simplest case (that is, if you unpacked the .lha archive directly into the main directory of a partition), you just hit because "/debian" is already set as default for the directory name; otherwise you will have to type the path yourself. It has to begin with a "/", followed by the directory components leading to the files (e.g. "/tmp/newstuff/debian" if the files reside in the directory /tmp/newstuff/debian/ on that partition). If installing from CD, select "cdrom: CD-ROM drive" and change "/debian" to "/install/atari" at the path prompt. Next you are asked whether you want to select the files from a list or enter the path name manually; just press here twice as the installation program will find the correct and only available installation files itself. The harddisk LED will blink for a while as the kernel and modules are unpacked onto the root partition, and after that you get back to the main screen. If you are installing from floppy images you dumped on two blank floppies, select "/dev/fd0: First floppy drive", and the kernel will be copied to the root partition from the floppy you used to start up the install. After installation of the kernel, the installer will ask you to insert the drivers floppy (the one you created by dumping the drv1440.bin image). Change the floppies, press when ready and the installer will continue by extracting the device driver modules onto the root partition. Configure Device Driver Modules This step is only necessary if certain device drivers need to be loaded very early when Linux starts up later; like, an Ethernet driver has to be pre- loaded so that the networking can already be initialized at boot-time. For a stand-alone system you probably don't have to configure anything here, but you should still select this item so that the installer can build a list of available kernel modules. When you see the next screen, you can immediately go to "Exit: Finished with modules. Return to previous menu". If you do need to configure a device driver for your system, please follow the on-screen explanations for selecting modules to be pre-loaded (this section is a bit short right now, sorry). When done, select the "Exit" item. Once your Linux system is installed, you can get back to the configuration of modules at any time by starting the "modconf" program. Install the Base System Just as with the "Install Operating System Kernel and Modules" step, you need to specify where the base system archive is located. This file should be named "base2_1.tgz". If you have put it into the same directory as the other installation files, you already know what to do now: Select "harddisk: Filesystem on the harddisk", pick the correct partition and (if necessary) enter the path name to the directory containing those files. If you are installing from CD, select "cdrom: CD-ROM drive" and enter "/install" as path. Again, as everything should be in the place the installer expects to find it, press twice after this to accept the default options. At this point you've got a few minutes time (depending on the speed of your processor/harddisk) while the base archive is unpacked onto the Linux root partition. Configure the Base System In this step you just set the timezone that you're in - this should be pretty intuitive. For instance, for Germany the selection "CET - Europe" (first screen) and "Berlin" (second screen) should be fine. When asked whether your system clock is set to "GMT" (Greenwich Mean Time), you will likely answer with "No" as most Ataris will use the local time instead of GMT. Configure the Network We're almost done! This last step to do is to set up your networking if you are so lucky to be connected to a net. If you have no network, all you need to enter is your hostname (under Linux, every computer has a name!). Pick something you like - your girlfriend's name *sigh*, a famous artist/writer/ composer/character/actor/whatever. Just one word, please. If you are connected to a network, you need to enter: * Your network's name * The IP address of your computer * The netmask * Your broadcast address * Your gateway's IP address, if one is available * Your nameserver's IP address, if there is one available. * Your type of connection - Ethernet, PPP, Slip or whatever else. The help screen on this step suggests that you don't answer "Yes" to the question whether your computer is connected to a network if this connection is PPP, i.e. a temporary one (makes sense, as PPP is often assigned dynamic network addresses). I strongly recommend to follow this suggestion and complete the network configuration after booting the disk based system. The 'pppconfig' utility is included in the base system to this purpose. In case you complete the network configuration here, this step doesn't completely set up PPP or SLIP for you, just stores some configuration data for you. For these configurations, you'll see error messages about 'network device not available' now (and on the later boot from disk), ignore them, and configure PPP or SLIP later. Well, that's it! Ignore the next suggested step ("Make Linux bootable directly from harddisk") and instead select alternative 2: "Reboot the System". After a few seconds, the Atari should reboot automatically into TOS/GEM. So, one last step is required from you before you can boot your freshly installed Linux: Go to the directory containing the installation files and start up a texteditor into which you need to enter just one line: -k linux root=/dev/yyyy video=keep In this line, replace the yyyy with the Linux partition name of the root partition onto which you installed the system - like sda1, hdb3, whatever it was, you figure. The 'video=keep' is my recommendation especially for Falcon users with screen extenders and the like; please keep in mind that high screen resolution and high color seriously impairs SCSI performance on these machines. External graphics cards need a special 'video=external' option, refer to the kernel options documentation for details. Save that file, naming it "bootargs". If you installed from floppy disks, copy "bootstra.prg" and "linux" to a folder on your harddrive, and create the "bootargs" file as above. Now you can just double click on the "bootstra.prg" icon in that folder to actually start the system, booting from the just installed harddisk instead of the ramdisk filesystem. The boot sequence will take quite a bit longer than when you installed the system because a database of filenames has to be built ("Locate" database). After that, you are automatically logged in, and need to take these steps: * Set a password for the root user (the administrator account) * Create another (unprivileged) user account * Activate (or not) the "Shadow passwords" (recommendation: Yes, use it!) * Determine whether you want to continue installing the system via a PPP line or not, and configuration of the PPP connection scripts. * Set an "installation profile" of packages you want to install. After these steps, you are automatically thrown into the "dselect" program which is the interface-driven package installation manager. My personal preference is to quit that program as soon as possible and rather install packages manually via the "apt-get" or "dpkg" program, but your mileage may vary. You should at least set the access method and update the packages list here; I have so far used disk based and HTTP/FTP based installation methods with success. Selection of packages has already been performed if you didn't skip the "installation profile" above, so there should be no need to select packages by hand using dselect. When you quit this program, you get logged out and can log in as root or as an unprivileged user if you created one before. At this point you have a running basic Debian installation on your Atari, and if this all worked out (more or less) well for you, I'd definitely love to hear about it! :-) A few tasks are still left to do, such as configuring PPP or SLIP (if that's your network option and you didn't run the pppconfig step earlier). For PPP, edit /etc/ppp/peers/provider (replace /dev/modem with your serial line here, i.e. /dev/ttyS1 for the first SCC port; there's no /dev/modem anymore) and /etc/chatscripts/provider (enter your username and password for your ISP account, plus change the 'name' and 'word' to whatever the prompt at login is. Some configurations require you to send the string 'ppp' to start up PPP after login, just add another expect/send pair after the password for that. "pon" and "poff" start and stop the connection, respectively. SLIP is more hassle; look at the "/etc/init.d/network" startup script where the "ifconfig" command has already been inserted for you, and add a "slattach" command before this, if you use static SLIP. Dynamic SLIP should be set up using "dip", so you'll need to install this package. One more hint: To cleanly shut down a running Linux system, you must not just reboot with the reset switch on the back of your Atari, or turn off the computer - instead, press the key combination Ctrl-Alt-Del (yeah, just like on a PC :-) to shut down the system in a controlled manner. That's Ctrl + LeftAlt + Delete_right_of_Return. Or log in as root and type shutdown -h now if you don't like the key combo. ______________________________________________________________________ More information: * The The Debian GNU/Linux homepage (http://www.debian.org/) * The Linux/m68k domain's homepage (http://www.linux-m68k.org/) * Visit m68k people on IRC, channel #linux68k, server irc.lame.org (or connected servers). ..and maybe hundreds of other Linux- or Debian-related Web sites around the world. Good luck in the wonderful world of Debian/m68k! History of this installation guide: v0.1 July 20th, 1998 First version, only ASCII text v1.0 August 3rd, 1998 Pushed to HTML, small additions & typo corrections Atari version: v1.0 August 9th, 1998 First version, based on Frank Neumanns Amiga version v1.4 January 29th, 1999 Update for Debian 2.1 V1.5 February 8th, 1999 Add CD install option Michael Schmitz, Last change: February 8, 1999