Bug#703246: A review of http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/amd64/apds03.html.en

[Enrico Zini <enrico@debian.org>]

Package: installation-guide-amd64
Severity: normal

Hello,

I just followed these[1] instructions to install the current
testing/wheezy on top of an old ubuntu system, and this is my feedback.
[1] http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/amd64/apds03.html.en

 * D.3.1. Getting Started

To create the filesystem:

 # mke2fs -j /dev/hda6

does that create an ext4 filesystem by default? I used mkfs.ext4 just to
be sure.

 * D.3.1. Getting Started

 # mkswap /dev/hda5
 # sync; sync; sync
 # swapon /dev/hda5

Are three syncs still needed?

 * D.3.3. Run debootstrap

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

Shame there isn't any mention on how to use an apt keyring to validate
packages. --keyring=/etc/apt/trusted.gpg works on Ubuntu systems, for
example, provided a recent debian-archive-keyring package is installed.
See: http://www.enricozini.org/2006/tips/trusted-pbuilder/

 * D.3.4.3. Setting Timezone

 # editor /etc/adjtime

 adjtime wasn't installed in my system

 * D.3.4.6. Configure Locales and Keyboard

In both these cases:

 # aptitude install locales
 # dpkg-reconfigure locales

 # aptitude install console-setup
 # dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration 

dpkg-reconfigure is actually run automatically at package installation.

 * D.3.5. Install a Kernel

 # aptitude install linux-image-2.6.32-arch-etc

I actually found a more convenient linux-image-amd64, and the default
kernel for wheezy seems to be 3.2.0

 * D.3.6. Set up the Boot Loader

 "just add an entry for the Debian install to your existing grub2
 grub.cfgor lilo.conf."

 misses a space after grub.cfg

 * * *

The only hiccup I had with the guide is that I'm installing on lvm and I
didn't run "apt-get install lvm2" before rebooting, so although grub2
properly loaded the lvm module and found both the kernel and the initrd,
the initrd was lacking lvm support.


Thanks for the good work!

Enrico


-- System Information:
Debian Release: 7.0
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash