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I’m feeling particularly motivated today. I’m preparing a box to test my final year project on. It was running Dead Rat… umm I mean Red Hat 9.

First task, unplug peripherals from desktop box, plug them into other box.

Step two, Debian Sarge net install CD. I think I’ll go for the 2.6 kernel.

Next step. Partitioning. 5GB /, 1GB /var, 305MB swap. I’m using XFS as the filesystem instead of ext3 to see if it makes any difference.

Configuration. A few simple questions; timezone, keyboard layout, stuff like that.

The router was being a pain, because of my paranoia I have MAC address locked the router so the net install disk can’t use the connection. So I boot up my laptop and change the settings so anyone can connect. Once it has connected the router shows the MAC address and I can add it to the authorised MAC list (then promptly lock the router down the MAC addresses again).

Package selection. I used the simple mode and went for “Web Server” and “Database Server”.

Now I sit back and watch the install.

It’s done now. Final task – Reboot. Linux boxes don’t need rebooting often (only for kernel changes) but is a good idea to check that it works on it’s own before I disconnect the keyboard, monitor and mouse (I don’t know why I bothered plugging that in).

I do “df” and I am surprised by the results only 389MB used on the / partition. Plenty of space for anything else that I want.