Great experience with debootstrap
I just thought I'd tell everyone about the great experience I've had
recently with debootstrap. My PC can't run off of a normal Debian
disc, as the X server refuses to boot, saying that no suitable screens
are found, and my wireless card (Edimax EW-7318USg) doesn't work as
thr the rt73usb wireless firmware drivers aren't installed. As my only
net connection is wireless, I can't download the rt73 firmware via
apt, and I never seem to get all the depndencies when downloading from
another PC. Because of these reasons, I've used Ubuntu for my main PC
as it comes with out of the box (or disc ;) ) support for my graphics
card and wireless adaptor, and Debian (Lenny) for my VPS (Virtual
Private Server) which provides my mail.
However, I recently decided to try installing Debian again, but chroot
into it from another distro with wifi support and get the neccesary
firmware. I noticed that I had a spare partition, which I origionally
intended to be used for a LFS (Linux From Scratch) install, until I
realised I wouldn't be able to get packaged security updates.
I mounted the partition, and installed a Sid base system using
debootstrap (thanks to the help of Appendix D of the Debian
Installation Guide). I then chrooted into it and setup fstab so that
my existing /home partition would be mounted correctly. I installed
and configured Grub, and I also setup my wireless networking by
installing the rt73 firmware and iwconfig. Then I installed Xorg and
openbox.
After rebooting I had a fresh Sid install, which had working Xorg and
more importantly wireless. My Firefox profile was even kept, as my
home directory stayed the same. Thank you to the debootstrap
developers for creating such an excellent tool, as without it I would
have had to manually download the packages needed for my wireless and
graphics and their hundreds of dependencies individually.
The one thing I have noticed is that no matter what theme I change
openbox to, the background of a window (the bit that is blank, or is a
menu) always stays an ugly shade of grey. Is there a way to somehow
change this to the nicer colour used in Ubuntu (and I think also a
GNOME or XFCE install of Debian)? I know in Ubuntu this was provided
by the ubuntu-artwork package. Thanks.
Many thanks
Harry Rickards (a.k.a l33tmyst)
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