On 2017-08-19 21:49 -0600 Arjun Krishnan <arjunkc@gmail.com> wrote:
>Once I get to the boot screen and try to run the graphical installer, it
>fails after loading the kernel. But the live cd does boot. However, the
>live cd that I booted above (cinnamon+nonfree) does not have a way to run
>the debian installer after it has booted.
The installer needs to find its own ISO image. The non-live installer will
only search by default in the root directories of your file-systems, but
not in the subdirectories. Maybe this is the case with the live installer
as well. Try putting the ISO image in the root directory (“/”).
I always do a new install rather than an in-place upgrade, to get rid of
the garbage, especially packages that I install and configuration files
that I write which I forget about and no longer need.
I have installed the latest 3 Debian releases (or maybe more) using the
“hd-image”
<https://www.debian.org/releases/stretch/amd64/ >ch05s01.html.en#boot-initrd
vmlinuz and initrd.gz whose purpose is to look for the ISO image in an
existing file-system and load it. Note that these are non-live installers.
The only obstacle I have found is that the procedure to verify the vmlinuz
and initrd.gz is *not* documented, so I will describe it below. You
*should* verify your initrd.gz and vmlinuz if you follow this procedure. It
is done in several steps. Change the URIs to the mirror of your choice. I
assume that you download all files to the same working directory.
Verify that the hash of
(1): Download <http://ftp.mx.debian.org/debian/dists/stretch/Release >
and <http://ftp.mx.debian.org/debian/dists/stretch/Release. >. Installgpg
the package “debian-archive-keyring” in your current system. Verify the
signature with “gpg --no-default-keyring
--keyring /usr/share/keyrings/debian-archive-keyring.gpg --verify
Release.gpg”.
(2): Download
<http://ftp.mx.debian.org/debian/dists/stretch/main/ >.installer-amd64/20170615+ deb9u1/images/SHA256SUMS
Verify with “grep "^ $(sha256sum SHA256SUMS | cut -b
1-66).*main/installer-amd64/20170615+deb9u1/images/ SHA256SUMS$" Release”.
The verification is successful if it displays a line of text from the file
“Release” and the exit status is 0.
(3): Download
<http://ftp.mx.debian.org/debian/dists/stretch/main/ >installer-amd64/20170615+ deb9u1/images/hd-media/gtk/ initrd.gz
and
<http://ftp.mx.debian.org/debian/dists/stretch/main/ >.installer-amd64/20170615+ deb9u1/images/hd-media/gtk/ vmlinuz
Verify with “sed -nE
'/hd-media\/gtk\/(initrd.gz|vmlinuz)$/{s/^([[:xdigit:]]*). *\/([^/]*)$/\1
\2/;p}' SHA256SUMS | sha256sum --strict -c”. The verification is
successful if sha256sum exits with 0 status and prints output reporting
that the hash matches for these 2 files. This is for the graphical
installer. Remove the “/gtk” part in the URL and the sed script if you
want the text installer.
Also, I DISCOURAGE USING NON-FREE SOFTWARE BECAUSE YOU GIVE UP MUCH OF
YOUR COMPUTING AUTONOMY AND ENCOURAGE THE UNETHICAL PRACTICE OF WRITING
PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE.
Regards.