"True Debian net-install" from knoppix?

[VolcomPimp]

Sorry if this has been addressed before but I couldn't find
it by searching or in any docs anywhere.

I want to do a net-install of debian from knoppix w/ out
using knoppix's installer. I'm a little adventureous
and I wanna do things the hard way for the most part.
Basicly, I've done a few gentoo stage 1 installs from
within knoppix, which are a piece of cake for me now
(I can get em done in under a few hours on my barton 2500+)
and I'm lookin for a similar route of installing debian
on my laptop.

The only thing that really concerns me in a distro
is it's package management system.
I HATE RPM's and I love Gentoo portage.
I've heard good things about apt, although it looks like
I'm gonna run into problems once I want to create a custom
package for whatever reason, but I have no room to talk
until I try it out so I can decide which system is right for me.

(Did I mention portage rocks! :p )

[Icarus]

I've built entire Debian systems from within Gentoo (on the same disks even) as I was making ISOs to use on a USB key.

It's fairly simple, once you chroot to a directory and set the environment up, your basicly in the new system (even if it's just running in an Eterm ;))

It gets really confusing when you get 3 Eterms linking into the same environment all for different tasks :)

I still want to find the time to play with Gentoo's new custom LiveCD installer/builder to run off a USB.

[mrBen]

Why do a net install from Knoppix rather than just from Debian? If you want a Debian install rather than a Knoppix install, just boot from the Debian CD and do a net install from there.

I can't see any particular benefit in booting into Knoppix if you want a normal Debian install, as you will not get the benefit of any of the Knoppix stuff.

[Icarus]

I think the idea would be for it to use the hardware detection from Knoppix as opposed to Debian. The Knoppix guys have really gotten hardware detection down to a science and there are very few systems that I've had Knoppix fail on.

Debians hardware detection, by itself, is not great at all and leaves you guessing most of it (the pain! The painful nightmare of memories!! Thanks Ben!)

[VolcomPimp]

part of the reason would be hardware detection
for the install, which is why I must
use it when installing gentoo.
I'm not trying to do a debian install
from knoppix's installer.
What I want to do is download whatever
files I need for debian (whoa little tangent
here but as I'm typing this I'm watching the
crow and this guys gettin a debian logo
tatoo'd on his head... crazy)
and install them from a console but I'm not
sure where to get the files.

The other reason is I don't want to burn a
cd for debian especially if I don't ever use
it again. It's a real waste when you download
lots of ISO's and burn them just to throw them
out after when you can skip the whole burning
process...

[SuperNu]

I would have to say that I sort of agree with you argument about not wanting to burn an iso to a cd and never using it again, but with the price for blank cds being so low, I really think that it is a non-issue. Also, you could always go for the net install using floppy disks (http://www.debian.org/distrib/floppyinst). I would rather use a cd since it would be faster. Plus, when I installed Debian to my Dell laptop, it wasn't hard once I figured out the Debian way of doing things.

Also, if you are having problems with hardware detection, you can download a script (http://amlug.net/new-projects/hwd/hwd.html) based off of the Knoppix v3.3 hardware detection. I found this from Arch Linux's webpage (http://www.archlinux.org/). Good luck with Debian.

--SN

[knute]

Hey VP,

You don't need anything more than like 5 or 6 files in order to do a net-install of debian.

There's also a minimal cd image that can be burned.

You can find the details here. (http://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst)

HTH

[random]

Heres 2 good howtos on how to do whats called a debian chroot install. You can do it from a knoppix cd or any cd that has debootstrap installed. It only installs the most lean of components, but you can configure everything else from there.

http://www.wh-og.hs-niederrhein.de/~docx/docs/Linux/HOWTO_-_Install_Debian_Onto_a_Remote_Linux_System/#debootstrap

http://www.burgettsys.com/stories/59455/

Good Luck :)

[VolcomPimp]

Ive been using debian on my laptop now for a few weeks
and Im impressed w/ it...
w/ Knoppix debootstrap was already included but
on knoppix 3.3 I'd get errors when using it.
I d/l knoppix 3.4 and it worked great...
I love synaptic and aptitude, although aptitude
doesn't have a search feature but it does
give you a little more functionality when
installing dependencies and suggestions.
Only problem Im havin so far is dealing w/
fluxbox's menu... tryin to get fluxconf workin
right but it always just says it cant write
to the menu file though its setup like its supposed
to and the permissions are correct.

[knute]

Originally posted by VolcomPimp
I love synaptic and aptitude, although aptitude
doesn't have a search feature but it does
give you a little more functionality when
installing dependencies and suggestions.

In aptitude use h for help and /<search term> for your search. You'll even get a nice nifty little box to type in as well! :D

Oh yeah, forward slash is used for searching in alot of apps, including firefox! Most cli apps use the same syntax.

HTH

For the fluxbox thing, you don't have permissions as a normal user to write to /usr/share/fluxbox. You need to edit your ~/.fluxbox/init file and change the session.menufile from /usr/share/fluxbox/whatever to ~/.fluxbox/menu.

If you want to copy /usr/share/fluxbox/menu (or where-ever it is) to ~/.fluxbox/menu it's a nice place to start.

[VolcomPimp]

thanx for the tip! :D

as for the fluxbox question, as root I can't edit my menu
file from fluxconf which is ~/.fluxbox/fluxbox-menu .
I heard theres a fix using fluxbox-generate_menu
which wasnt included w/ fluxbox in the .deb
I used from fluxbox.org's link, but I d/l it off the
cvs and it hasnt changed anything.