I should also just say here that I do not mean in any way to say that mb has not done excellent work with the bbq spins -- I only want to present another learning opportunity to those of us how do this as a hobby and/or like to try new things.
Please don't do this on a production machine, on your girlfriend's machine, or anywhere you can't bork. Breaking a netinstall is not bad -- it will teach you lots of things just installing a pre-built spin will not, but you don't want to break your main install today.
Getting started
Download the "mini iso" from here for 32-bit or here for 64-bit. Copy it to a USB stick or CD as usual.
Prepare a partition on a test machine; you will only need a single root partition of around 6G max, unless you plan to really pimp it out with a bunch of bloat (and if that's your plan, stop reading now and go install a pre-made bbq spin). Also create a swap partition if you want to use one and there is not one on the disk already.
Netinstall!
Boot the USB or CD, and select "Advanced options" then "Expert install" -- there are a lot of steps, but most of them should be intiuitive, if not obvious. For most of the first few screens you can simply accept the defaults -- Choose language (accept the defaults if you want English) do not select any additional locales unless you know you need them, Configure the keyboard (accept the default again unless you know what you are doing) Detect network hardware, Auto configure networking (again the defaults should be fine on a wired machine), enter your hostname, accept the default domain name, http protocol for the mirror, select your country, accept the default mirror, leave the proxy blank unless you know you need to enter something.
"Debian version to install" select "sid" then let the installer download installer components. Do not select any additional installer components to load, just "Continue" and let the installer load what it needs.
"Set up users and passwords" -- Yes enable shadow passwords. Do not allow login as root (you will install a user with sudo privileges and can enable the root account later -- this is easier than allowing root login and adding a user later). Enter your user name and username for your account, then enter your new user's password.
"Configure the clock" -- set the clock using ntp, accept the default ntp server, and select your time zone.
"Detect disks" -- allow the installer to detect your hardware. "Partition disks" select "Manual" -- select the partition where you want to install, then "use as" select ext4, "format the partition" select "yes", "mount point" select "/ - the root file system". Select "Done setting up the partition" Here you can select other partitions for boot and home if you like, but it's simpler to just use one partition for everything.
In the right column of the screen you should now see which partitions will be used for root (and swap, if you have one). Select "Finish partitioning and write changes to disk". Make sure the partitions are set up the way you want them on the next screen (if you made a mistake you can go back and fix it) and then "Yes" for "Write changes to disk".
"Install the base system" -- let the installer do its work. It's downloading everything from the mirror, so it will take a while. At some point you will be asked which kernel you want. On a 32-bit box, select "linux-image-686-pae"; on 64-bit select "linux-image-amd64" (if you have a machine that requires a 486 kernel select "linux-image-486").
"Drivers to include in the initrd" -- select "targeted..."
"Configure the package manager" -- "use non-free software 'yes'" unless you are rms. If you say "no" here you can always enable it later.
"Select and install software" -- the installer does some preconfiguration, then you decide whether to participate in the usage survey.
"Choose software to install" -- use the arrow and space keys to unselect everything except "Standard system utilities" -- this is important -- you can install everything else later. The installer will go do its work. Again it is pulling things from the mirror, so be patient. This takes a little longer than installing the base system.
"Install the GRUB bootloader on a hard disk" -- do this if your netinstall is the only thing on the disk, or if you want your netinstall to control GRUB. Tell the installer where it should install GRUB. You can skip this step if you have another install already controlling GRUB (you will need to update-grub there later) -- if this is the case, select "Continue without bootloader".
"Finish the installation" -- almost done! -- "Yes" the system clock is set to UTC (it is, right?) -- "Installation complete" !!
Your machine should now reboot, either into GRUB for your netinstall, or GRUB for your other install if you did not install GRUB during the netinstall. Run "sudo update-grub" in your other install to find the new install, and reboot. You will boot to a console login -- login as the user you created, and enable the root account with "sudo passwd root".
Next step (maybe tomorrow) we will install some handy console tools, X (with a terminal emulator and a window manager), systemd, and some siduction and bbq sources. (see this post).
Screenshot or it didn't happen :)
