Debian: installation from chroot

See also: Installing Debian GNU/Linux from a Unix/Linux System

Partitioning

Use fdisk to create partitions on the device, then create filesystems / swap space / ...

Example:

fdisk /dev/sdx

And create the following partitions:

• /dev/sdx1 -> the root directory
• /dev/sdx2 -> the swaps space
• /dev/sdx3 -> the /home directory

Create filesystems

mke2fs /dev/sdx1      #--> for ext2 filesystems
mke2fs -j /dev/sdx1   #--> for ext3 filesystems
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdx1   #--> for ext4 filesystems
mkswap /dev/sdx2      #--> for swap space

Activate swap

It is recommended to sync before activating swap:

sync ; sync ; sync
swapon /dev/sdx2

Mount the root filesystem

mkdir /mnt/debinst
mount /dev/sdx1 /mnt/debinst

Install the system using debootstrap

Installing debootstrap

The utility used by the Debian installer, and recognized as the official way to install a Debian base system, is debootstrap. It uses wget and ar, but otherwise depends only on /bin/sh and basic Unix/Linux tools. Install wget and ar if they aren’t already on your current system, then download and install debootstrap.

Or, you can use the following procedure to install it manually. Make a work folder for extracting the .deb into:

mkdir work
cd work

The debootstrap binary is located in the Debian archive (be sure to select the proper file for your architecture). Download the debootstrap .deb from the pool, copy the package to the work folder, and extract the files from it. You will need to have root privileges to install the files.

ar -x debootstrap_0.X.X_all.deb
cd /
zcat /full-path-to-work/work/data.tar.gz | tar xv

Running debootstrap

debootstrap can download the needed files directly from the archive when you run it. You can substitute any Debian archive mirror for http.us.debian.org/debian in the command example below, preferably a mirror close to you network-wise. Mirrors are listed at http://www.debian.org/mirror/list.

If you have a squeeze Debian GNU/Linux CD mounted at /cdrom, you could substitute a file URL instead of the http URL: file:/cdrom/debian/

Substitute one of the following for ‘’ARCH’’ in the debootstrap command: alpha, amd64, arm, armel, hppa, i386, ia64, m68k, mips, mipsel, powerpc, s390, or sparc.

/usr/sbin/debootstrap --arch ARCH squeeze /mnt/debinst http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian

TODO: Finish this guide

TODO: Add information on how to install on UsbKey (how did I do that, btw?)

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