There are a number of methods of obtaining and installing Debian GNU/Linux. The Debian distribution CDs will be the installation medium used in this document. The installation steps provided here are boiled down, fairly assuming on operating system installation common practices and have been written by an individual familiar with the Debian installation system. For additional details on common staging issues and further explanation of the installation steps please refer to the Official Debian en-i386 Installation Manual. It is important to note that a network installation can be performed extremely quickly with very little media requirement. (One can deploy OpenNMS on Debian with six blank floppies and a network capable PC) Anyone interested in other methods such as direct installation via the Internet (sometimes faster) or Jigdo CD image creation (faster and more efficient than normal http/ftp downloading) should visit the Getting Debian web site. Software RAID, VPN tunnels, SNMP ALG, QoS and the iptables firewall are not covered in this document, but may be desirable additions once the OpenNMS installation is complete. This section overlaps many existing documents but is included here to help shortcut the deployment of OpenNMS (obtain a workable system to learn on quickly while retaining interest) for anyone not familiar with Debian or Linux or as a quick reference for those familiar with the Debian installation process.
The simplest method to obtain the Debian GNU/Linux CDs is via
LinuxISO.org. Simply click on the Debian icon, and download the Disk 1 (Generic
boot US or NON-US) and Disk 5 (bf2.4 boot). These CDs can be created
using any popular cd-writing tool. Under Windows use Easy CD Creator,
Sony CD Extreme, Nero Burning ROM or CDRWin or any other cd tool
can be used to burn the disc (.iso) images. Linux users can use cdrecord
to burn the CDs. If there is an IDE cd burner with buffer underrun
protection running under the ide-scsi module as device 1,1,0 then
the following Linux command should work to burn v3.0r2 Disk 5 (bf2.4)
and v3.0r2 Disk 1. Linux 2.6 kernel users can specify the device
directly (/dev/hdd is secondary slave) as the ide-scsi module is
no longer required to access ide cd burners. The cdrecord package
is required for this burning process.
bash#cdrecord -v dev=1,0,0 speed=32 -data minbuf=50 -dao fs=16m ts=95k driveropts=burnfree /downloads/debian-30r2-i386-binary-5.iso bash#cdrecord -v dev=1,0,0 speed=32 -data minbuf=50 -dao fs=16m ts=95k driveropts=burnfree /downloads/debian-30r2-i386-binary-1.iso
bash#cdrecord -v dev=/dev/hdd speed=32 -data minbuf=50 -dao fs=16m ts=95k driveropts=burnfree /downloads/debian-30r2-i386-binary-5.iso bash#cdrecord -v dev=/dev/hdd speed=32 -data minbuf=50 -dao fs=16m ts=95k driveropts=burnfree /downloads/debian-30r2-i386-binary-1.iso
To start the installation process, set the CD-ROM drive as the
default boot device in the BIOS and power-on the computer with Debian
GNU/Linux Disk 5 (a.k.a. bf2.4) inserted in the drive. A welcome
screen will appear, simply press <Enter> at the boot: prompt
to begin the installation process.
The first blue screen will prompt for a default language and
variant. English (en / United States) was used for this document.
A Release Notes informational page will also be displayed in the
language specified.
The Debian GNU/Linux installation steps are listed vertically
in this main installation screen. At the top of the main list, three
steps are repeated and prefixed with Next:, Alternate: and Alternate1:.
These top three steps represent the suggested next step as well as
two suggested alternate steps in the installation process. The highlighted
option (default) always represents the suggested next step and will
lead towards a Vanilla installation. The user can navigate to alternative
installation steps (from the entire list) or to go back and modify
a previous installation step at any time. In certain circumstances
performing installation steps too-far-out-of-order can produce unexpected
results. A step-by-step procedure to a minimal Debian GNU/Linux installation
is outlined below with the specific steps represented by the subheadings
below.
Choose the default querty/us or an alternative if a non-standard
type is required.
This option will bring up the cfdisk interface. If there are
some old Linux partitions, the installer will default to Initialize
and Activate a Swap Partition in which case the user should navigate
to Partition a Hard Disk. The following prompt will ask to Select
Disk Drive. SCSI drives will appear as /dev/sdX and IDE drives will
appear as /dev/hdX. Select the appropriate drive and continue with
the partitioning process.
The hard disk used in this document is
a 20GB IDE drive. It is the master drive on the primary IDE controller
(pm) and as such appears as hda. Other IDE disks can appear as hdb(ps),
hdc(sm), hdd(ss), etc. SCSI disks would appear as sda, sdb, etc.
The very simplest partition layout would have only two partitions;
a swap partition and an operating system partition. Although this
does work, it is recommended to partition the file system further
in order to separate the different types and uses of files on the
system.
If the disk is new or no partition table exists, the user
will be asked to start with a zero table. Type y to continue with
the new disk and a zero table.
Linux can operate on both primary
and logical partitions. Logical partitions have been used here only
out of preference and always begin numbering at 5. (i.e hda5 is always
the first logical partition on any IDE drive). For this example we
have divided the IDE disk hda into the following partitions.
Name Flags Part Type FS Type Size -------------------------------------------------- hda5 Boot Logical Linux 98.68* hda6 Logical Linux 4096.19 hda7 Logical Linux 2048.10 hda8 Logical Linux 13267.38 hda9 Logical Linux swap 509.97
The mount points for each partition is planned to be as follows.
In the following steps we will mount the swap partition and then
assign each of the partitions to the appropriate mount point, beginning
with the root partition (hda6)
Part. Mount Description ----------------------------------------- hda5 /boot Kernel images for booting hda6 / Root file system containing system files, libraries and binaries. hda7 /home User home directories, user downloads and docs hda8 /var Variable data. All OpenNMS database entries, log files, cache, etc
Remember to change the partition FS Type for the swap partition
to Linux swap([ Type ] 82). The boot flag is optional with
the LILO boot loader and only affects non-Linux partitions. If no
boot partition is set, cfdisk will warn that DOS MBR partitions may
have trouble booting. This warning has no impact on Linux systems.
Once partitioning is complete, select[ Write ] [ Quit
] to exit. cfdisk will warn to reboot the system, however this
message can be ignored as it is intended for users running cfdisk
once the system has been fully installed.
In this document example /dev/hda9 is automatically selected
as it is the only partition with the [ Type ] set to Linux
swap. Whatever partition is set to Linux swap (Type 82) will automatically
be selected at this point in the installation.
When prompted for the file system type, select Ext3 to enable
the journalling file system. Choose the partition /dev/hda6 (root
partition) first. Next there will be a prompt to mount /dev/hda6
as the root(/) partition.
Choose /dev/hda5 and mount it to the /boot location, select Ext3
as the file system.
Choose /dev/hda7 and mount it to the /home location, select Ext3
as the file system.
Choose /dev/hda8 and mount it to the /var location, select Ext3
as the file system.
Select cdrom as the installation medium and insert Debian CD-ROM
Disk 1 when prompted. When prompted, accept the default Archive path
from the list of all likely directories on the CD-ROM.
This step allows specifies which kernel modules to load into the system. For OpenNMS we are interested in only network related modules in addition to the standard kernel. Sound cards, special input devices and support for other file systems can also be selected here. Users familiar with the Linux kernel will likely want to build their own custom kernel once the installation is complete. Some prefer the robustness, stability and blind upgradability of the kernel packages.
/kernel/drivers/net/tulip:tulip - Tulip Based (DEC 2114X, Macronix MX98X) /kernel/drivers/net:3c59x - Common 3COM (3c905X) /kernel/drivers/net:tlan - Thunderlan (Older Compaqs) /kernel/drivers/net:via-rhine - Many VIA motherboards /kernel/drivers/net:eepro100 - Intel 8255X chips (Newer Compaq/HP)
/kernel/fs/smbfs:smbfs - Mount windows (SMB) file shares remotely /kernel/drivers/md:raid1 - Software RAID Mirroring /kernel/net/ipv4/netfilter:ip_conntrack - For NAT capabilities /kernel/net/ipv4/netfilter:ip_conntrack_ftp - For passive FTP /kernel/net/ipv4/netfilter:ip_nat_ftp - For FTP over NAT /kernel/net/ipv4/netfilter:ip_nat_snmp_basic - For SNMP ALG NAT /kernel/net/ipv4/netfilter:ip_tables - For firewall capabilities /kernel/net/ipv4/netfilter:iptable_filter - For firewall capabilities /kernel/net/ipv4/netfilter:ipt_REJECT - For firewall capabilities /kernel/net/ipv4/netfilter:ipt_mulitport - For firewall capabilities /kernel/net/ipv4/netfilter:ipt_state - For firewall capabilities /kernel/net/ipv4/netfilter:iptable_mangle - For advanced nmap tool use /kernel/net/ipv4/netfilter:ipt_LOG - For logging traffic /kernel/net/ipv4/netfilter:ipt_unclean - For advanced nmap tool use
Enter the hostname, ip address, netmask, domain name and DNS servers.
Accept the current CD-ROM (Disk 1) as a package source.
Set LILO to install into the MBR. For primary master IDE drives,
this is /dev/hda. For SCSI systems with a single disk this is /dev/sda
This will create a boot floppy that understands where the root
partition is located. i.e. if there is a problem booting the new
Debian installation (other Boot Loaders, Dual-Boot scenarios) this
will allow to boot the OS using a floppy initially that passes the
boot over to the hard disk. This can also be used to boot other Linux
systems with damaged boot loaders using the followingboot: prompt
command with the proper location of the root (/) partition.
boot:rescue root=/dev/hda6
Remove all CD-ROMs and floppies.
The system will restart with a welcome screen.
Hardware clock set to GMT (Default). Select the appropriate time zone.
Enable MD5 and shadow(Default) passwords. Enter a root password, and setup a normal user account.
Remove the PCMCIA (Default) packages.
Do not use a PPP connection (Default).
If the Debian CD was left in the drive it will automatically
be added as an apt source, and there will be prompts for any additional
cds. Additional cds can be added, however all packages can be downloaded
from the Internet. Internet access is needed to install OpenNMS on
Debian woody as the packages are not part of the official stable
distribution. After adding cds (if this is preferred) add another
apt source and select http as the method apt should use to access
the Debian archive. Select the non-US, non-free and contrib package
groups to make all Debian packages available (not necessarily installed).
Choose the country and mirror closest to the staging site. (also any proxy information if it is required). Add a second source if required. (Normally one is fine)
Use the security updates from security.debian.org when asked.
When prompted to run tasksel select <No>.
When prompted to run dselect select <No>.
It is important to note that using dselect will introduce suggested
and recommended dependencies that can lead to a level of package
entropy that defeats the ease of management that apt provides.
At this point the required packages are queued for download,
and the pcmcia packages will be removed. Accepting yes to the apt
prompt Do you want to continue? will begin the download and configuration
of any security updates.
Have man and mandb setuid man for performance and dynamic updates.
The system will ask to erase the .deb (package files) for the
programs installed. Accepting the default is fine, otherwise the
installed packages are preserved locally in the /var/cache/apt.
Select option (1) if the system is capable of connecting to other
mail servers directly using port 25. To pass outgoing mail thru another
server select option (2). We will assume a direct Internet connection
with no restrictions on port 25 use for the example in this documentation.
Like all packages, the reconfiguration can take place later if the
settings are initially incorrect. The mail configuration questions
are quite verbose, so the following are a typical series of answers.
That's it. Enjoy a minimal Debian server configuration. For ssh,
just apt-get install ssh. Other utilities and common packages to
consider for a system to compliment the OpenNMS server are listed
in the
Debian Network Tools section.