Installing Debian Linux on a Dell Laptop

I recently bought (leased, actually) a Dell Latitude C800 Laptop. In my work as a software development consultant, I often need to have my own laptop at client sites. The Latitude C800 is one of Dell's high-end laptop models, and an impressive one at that. My laptop's hardware configuration is as follows:

In this article, I will discuss all the steps necessary to install the current stable release of Debian GNU/Linux (currently 2.2r3, also known as potato) on this laptop; upgrade from the stable release of Debian to the unstable branch (currently known as sid); and set up XFree86 4.1.0 to run at a resolution of 1600 x 1200 and at 24bpp color depth.

I will do a network install of Debian on this laptop since I have cable-modem internet access. Debian has an excellent network installer that I would recommend to anyone who has reasonably fast cable/DSL internet access.

For people new to Debian, it is strongly recommended that they (at least once) read over the Debian Installation Manual, which can be found in various formats at www.debian.org/releases/stable/#new-inst.

For the case discussed here, you'll want to read the Installation Manual for the Intel x86 architecture.

Various flavours of Debian boot floppies are available, each geared (i.e., having kernel configuration options) for specific target hardware types. For the Dell C800 laptop, it is sufficient to have a kernel configuration that supports 3Com Ethernet drivers, so that the built-in Ethernet Card can be detected automatically and the network set up at the same time. The compact boot floppy set is ideal for this, available as three 1.44MB floppy images from http.us.debian.org.

We will also need a floppy disk in order to create a bootable floppy, so that the Debian installation can be booted from it instead of the hard disk.

All in all, we will need three blank floppy disks, one for rescue.bin, one for root.bin and one for the boot disk (to be created later on in the install).

Once you have downloaded the rescue.bin and root.bin images, you have to write them to blank floppy disks (preferably brand new ones) using the instructions provided at www.debian.org.

Boot the laptop with the rescue floppy. (If your laptop does not search the floppy drive at bootup for a floppy disk, you will have to change the bootup sequence, located in the BIOS settings, so that the first boot device is the disk drive).

Press Enter at the Welcome screen.

As the kernel starts booting, you should notice that the internal miniPCI 10/100 NIC card has been detected as eth0. If your C800 laptop has the 3Com internal miniPCI combo (like mine), you will notice the kernel's 3c59x.c driver has been loaded for the NIC.

You will then be prompted for the root floppy disk, after which the console-based Debian installer appears.

The first step will be to Configure the keyboard. Choose qwerty/us: US English (QWERTY).

Since I am starting out with a blank, unpartitioned hard disk, the next step presented by the installer will be Partition a Hard Disk. If you already have an OS installed, your choice will be different.

Select the drive to partition; there will be only one choice, /dev/hda, after which you will enter into cfdisk.

I will also create the following partitions:

Modify your disk partition layout to suit your needs and the intended use of the laptop. In my case, since I intend to use Win2k on this laptop, I have left a 4GB primary partition for it. I want to try out the recently released FreeBSD 4.4 as well, so I have left a 5GB primary partition for it.

You also don't have to follow my disk partition layout. I prefer to have mountpoints like /tmp, /var, /usr and /usr/local on separate partitions. Keeping /tmp and /home on separate partitions allows me to share/reuse these disk partitions (as well as the swap partition, of course) with other Linux installs on the same disk.

Also, since I do install some software from source (XEmacs 21.4.4, Xine and mplayer, for example), I prefer to keep /usr/local as a separate partition for software not tracked by the package management system.

Minimally, you will need at least two partitions, a swap partition (usually 2 * PhysicalRam) and a root partition for the / mountpoint.

By default, cfdisk will give all newly created partitions the Linux type. To prepare for the next step of the installer, change the partition type of the intended swap partition, in my case /dev/hda5, to the Linux swap type (type 82) by selecting that partition with the cursor keys. Then choose the Type option from the cfdisk menu at the bottom of the screen.

Once you have completed disk partitioning and are satisfied with your layout, select the Write option from the cfdisk menu to write out the partition layout to disk, and then the Quit option to return to the Debian installer.

The installer will prompt you to Initialize and activate a swap partition. A Swap Partition Selection menu should appear with the intended swap partition listed in it (/dev/hda5). Press Enter to select that partition. You will be asked if you want to skip the bad-block scan on this partition. After that, select Yes to initialize that partition as the swap partition.

For all other partitions you choose to initialize as Linux partitions, the installer will ask 1) do you want to retain Linux kernel 2.0 compatibility, and 2) should the bad-block scan be skipped on dev/hdXYY?

You should answer No to the first question since you probably don't intend to run a 2.0.x kernel. It's up to you whether you want to run a bad-block scan on partitions. Just remember that the larger the partition is, the more time it will take to check for bad blocks.

At the next step, Initialize a Linux Partition, choose the partition that you intend to mount as /, or the root partition. In my case, this is /dev/hda1. When this partition has been initialized (formatted), answer Yes to Mount as the Root Filesystem.

The next step of the installer will be Install Operating System Kernel and Modules. Since I have chosen to have separate partitions for other mountpoints (/tmp, /var, /home, /usr, /usr/local), I will select the alternate installation task, Initialize a Linux Partition, from the installer menu and specify the remaining mountpoints:

/tmp, /var, /home, /usr, /usr/local

For each of these remaining partitions, when initialization is complete the installer will notice that the root (/) partition has already been initialized and mounted, and it assume that the user wants to specify a non-root mountpoint for this partition. It's at this step that I will specify the remaining mountpoints (/tmp, /var, /home, /usr, /usr/local).

Once that is (finally!) complete, select Install Operating System Kernel and Modules, choosing network as the installation medium.

Configure your network settings, including hostname. Since I have a DHCP server running on my internal network at home, I will choose DHCP to automatically configure eth0. If you have a static IP configuration, say No to DHCP/BOOTP configuration, and you will then be prompted for all the settings.

At the Select Installation Server step, accept the default for the Download URL. If you use a proxy server, make sure to enter that information.

Once the rescue.bin and drivers.tgz files have been downloaded and installed, the installer will present the next task, Configure Device Driver Modules. You can skip this installation task, as we intend to compile a custom kernel from source later on. You will notice the following alternate tasks listed:

        Alternate : Configure PCMCIA Support
        Alternate1: Edit Kernel Boot Parameters

Skip both and instead choose Install the Base System by scrolling down the list of installation tasks. Again, select network as the installation medium. Follow the same steps as above when prompted to Select Installation Server.

Once the base system has been downloaded and installed, the installer will again present you with the next task, Configure Device Driver Modules. Two alternate tasks will be listed:

    Alternate : Configure PCMCIA Support
    Alternate1: Edit Kernel Boot Parameters

As before, skip both and instead scroll down the list of installation tasks and select Configure the Base System.

Select your Timezone and also indicate if the hardware clock will be set to GMT (recommended).

In the next step, Make Linux Bootable Directly from Hard Disk, you will have to specify where you want to install LILO. Select the first option listed, which will be to install LILO in the MBR.

We are at the last step of this first phase of installation, creating a boot floppy. The second step will be to boot the system from the HD and perform additional post-boot, base configuration tasks.

Select the final step (of this phase of installation) and reboot the system, making sure that the boot floppy you created has been removed from the floppy drive.