Appendix A. Installation Howto

Appendix A. Installation Howto

A.1. Booting the installer

The easiest way is probably to download the (CDROM) image because the files most people need are there on the image.

The subsections below will give the details about which image(s) you should get for each possible means of installation.

A.1.1. Booting from CDROM

First of all download, the image for your architecture and burn it to a CD/DVD.

To boot the CD, you may need to change your BIOS configuration.

A.1.2. USB memory stick

It's also possible to install from removable USB storage devices. For example, a USB keychain can make a handy atomeOS install medium that you can take with you anywhere.

The easiest way to prepare your USB memory stick is to download an atomeOS CD or DVD image that will fit on it and write the CD image directly to the memory stick. Of course, this will destroy anything already on the memory stick. This works because atomeOS CD images are "isohybrid" images that can boot both from CD and from USB drives.

There are other, more flexible ways to set up a memory stick to use the atomeOS installer.

Some BIOSes can boot USB storage directly, and some cannot. You may need to configure your BIOS to boot from a “removable drive” or even a “USB-ZIP” to get it to boot from the USB device.

A.1.3. Booting from network

It's also possible to boot the atomeOS installer completely from the net. The various methods to netboot depend on your architecture and netboot setup. The files in netboot/ can be used to netboot the atomeOS installer.

The easiest thing to set up is probably PXE netbooting. Untar the file netboot/pxeboot.tar.gz into /srv/tftp or wherever is appropriate for your tftp server. Set up your DHCP server to pass filename pxelinux.0 to clients, and with luck, everything will just work.

A.2. Installation

Once the installer starts, you will be greeted with an initial screen. Press Enter to boot, or read the instructions for other boot methods and parameters.

After a while, you will be asked to select your language. Use the arrow keys to pick a language and press Enter to continue. Next, you'll be asked to select your country, with the choices including countries where your language is spoken. If it's not on the shortlist, a list of all the countries in the world is available.

You may be asked to confirm your keyboard layout. Choose the default unless you know better.

Now sit back while the installer detects some of your hardware, and loads the rest of itself from CD, USB, floppy, etc.

Next, the installer will try to detect your network hardware and set up networking by DHCP. If you are not on a network or do not have DHCP, you will be given the opportunity to configure the network manually.

The next step is setting up your clock and time zone. The installer will try to contact a time server on the Internet to ensure the clock is set correctly. The time zone is based on the country selected earlier and the installer will only ask to select one if a country has multiple zones.

Setting up your clock and time zone is followed by the creation of user accounts. By default, you are asked to provide a password for the “root” (administrator) account and information necessary to create one regular user account. If you choose “No” on the Allow login as root? question or if you do not specify a password for the “root” user this account will be disabled, but the sudo package will be installed later to enable administrative tasks to be carried out on the new system.

Now it is time to partition your disks. First, you will be given the opportunity to automatically partition either an entire drive or available free space on a drive. This is recommended for new users or anyone in a hurry. If you do not want to auto partition, choose Manual from the menu.

If you have an existing DOS or Windows partition that you want to preserve, be very careful with automatic partitioning. If you choose manual partitioning, you can use the installer to resize existing FAT or NTFS partitions to create room for the Ubuntu install: simply select the partition and specify its new size.

If you want to customize the partition layout, choose Manually edit partition table from the menu, and the next screen will show you your partition table, how the partitions will be formatted, and where they will be mounted. Select a partition to modify or delete it. Remember that since 1.0 a swap file is the default, rather than a swap partition. But you are still able to assign a partition for swap space. Remember to mount one partition on / (root).

Now the installer formats your partitions and starts to install the base system, which can take a while. That is followed by installing a kernel.

The base system that was installed earlier is a working, but very minimal installation. To make the system more functional the next step allows you to install additional packages by selecting tasks. Before packages can be installed apt needs to be configured as that defines from where the packages will be retrieved. The “Standard system” task will be selected by default and should normally be installed. Select the “Desktop environment” task if you would like to have a graphical desktop after the installation.

The last step is to install a boot loader. If the installer detects other operating systems on your computer, it will add them to the boot menu and let you know. By default, GRUB will be installed to the master boot record of the first hard drive, which is generally a good choice.

The installer will now tell you that the first stage of installation has finished. Remove the CD (if needed) and hit Enter to reboot your machine. It should boot up into the newly installed system and allow you to log in.

A.3. And finally…

We hope that your atomeOS installation is pleasant and that you find atomeOS useful. You might want to read Chapter 4, Next Steps and Where to Go From Here.