The Debian Administrator's Handbook

The second step consists in choosing your country. Associated with the language, this information enables the program to offer the most appropriate keyboard layout. This will also influence the configuration of the time zone. In the United States, a standard QWERTY keyboard is suggested, and a choice of appropriate time zones is offered.

Figure 4.3. Selecting the country

4.2.4. Selecting the keyboard layout

The proposed “American English” keyboard corresponds to the usual QWERTY layout.

Figure 4.4. Choice of keyboard

4.2.5. Detecting Hardware

This step is completely automatic in the vast majority of cases. The installer detects your hardware, and tries to identify the CD-ROM drive used in order to access its content. It loads the modules corresponding to the various hardware components detected, and then “mounts” the CD-ROM in order to read it. The previous steps were completely contained in the boot image included on the CD, a file of limited size and loaded into memory by the BIOS when booting from the CD.

The installer can work with the vast majority of drives, especially standard ATAPI peripherals (sometimes called IDE and EIDE). However, if detection of the CD-ROM reader fails, the installer offers the choice to load a kernel module (for instance from a USB key) corresponding to the CD-ROM driver.

4.2.6. Loading Components

With the contents of the CD now available, the installer downloads all the files necessary to continue with its work. This includes additional drivers for the remaining hardware (especially the network card), as well as all the components of the installation program.

4.2.7. Detecting Network Hardware

This automatic step tries to identify the network card and load the corresponding module. If automatic detection fails, you can manually select the module to load. If no module works, it is possible to load a specific module from a removable peripheral. This last solution is usually only needed if the appropriate driver is not included in the standard Linux kernel, but available elsewhere, such as the manufacturer's website.

This step must absolutely be successful for netinst or businesscard installations, since the Debian packages must be loaded from the network.

4.2.8. Configuring the Network

Eager to automate the process as much as possible, the installer attempts an automatic DHCP network configuration. If this fails, it offers more choices: try again with a normal DHCP configuration, attempt DHCP configuration by declaring the name of the machine, or set up a static network configuration.

This last option requires an IP address, a subnet mask, an IP address for a potential gateway, a machine name, and a domain name.

TIP Configuration without DHCP

If the local network is equipped with a DHCP server that you do not wish to use because you prefer to define a static IP address for the machine during installation, you can add the netcfg/use_dhcp=false option when booting from the CD-ROM. You just need to go to the desired menu entry by pressing the TAB key and add the desired option before pressing the Enter key.

BEWARE Do not improvise

Many local area networks are based on an implicit assumption that all machines can be trusted, and inadequate configuration of a single computer will often perturb the whole network. As a result, do not connect your machine to a network without first agreeing with its administrator on the appropriate settings (for example, the IP address, netmask, and broadcast address).

4.2.9. Configuring the Clock

If the network is available, the system's internal clock is updated (in a one-shot way) from an NTP server. This way the timestamps on logs will be correct from the first boot. For them to remain consistently precise over time, an NTP daemon needs to be set up after initial installation (see Section 8.9.2, “Time Synchronization”).

4.2.10. Administrator Password

The super-user root account, reserved for the machine's administrator, is automatically created during installation; this is why a password is requested. A confirmation (or two identical entries) will prevent any entry error which would later be difficult to amend.

Figure 4.5. Administrator Password

SECURITY Administrator password