Installing DebianXBlueBuntu

Installing DebianXBlueBuntu

The DebianXBlueBuntu release contains an installer created by the Refracta Linux team and is included with thanks to Refracta.

The installer is provided without warranty and Theme-ix cannot guarantee against any loss to data as a result of use of Theme-ix including the Refracta installer.

---

The installer has 2 modes of use: simple and expert. Theme-ix recommends that you use the expert installation mode but only after reading these installation notes. Only the expert mode allows you to choose your system locale and keyboard map and allows you to install to more than 1 partition. Even though it is called an expert installation, with these notes it will be simple enough for anyone to perform. The standard/default choices will be shown in bold text.

1) Log into the Live CD using the account name "User" and the password "user".

2) Double-click on the “Install Theme-ix” desktop icon to start the installer:

The installer contains a number of screens. They are detailed in the following steps.

3) Select Expert installation:

4) An empty terminal window will appear behind the dialog boxes. This will mainly just show the output of some of the commands, but may require some input. Do not close it!

5) Now some options will appear:

You will need to have at least 1 partition (spare space) on your computer’s hard drive in order to install Theme-ix. The GParted partitioning tool can be selected to ease this process at the next step. Here is a table that explains different setups and which options to choose on the screen shown above. Read it carefully as more than 1 option may apply to your requirements.

For an easy/basic installation, you may leave the ticks in their existing positions.

Setup	Options to select now	Actions to take on the next step
Your hard disk is new or empty already.	Leave all options at their current positions.	Create 1 new partition.
You only want to install Theme-ix onto your computer.	Leave all options at their current positions. Optionally tick “Write zeros to all partitions.” (This may take a considerable time.)	Delete any existing partitions, then create 1 new partition.
You will be the only user and you do not want to secure your account by requiring a password to log on.	Un-tick “Disable automatic login to desktop.”	You can also choose to use sudo at a later step rather than using a separate root/administrator password.
Your computer has 1GB of RAM or less.	Tick “Use existing swap partition instead of swapfile.”	Create an additional 2GB swap partition. (this will provide disk based memory in case your system runs low on RAM).
You want to encrypt your data to keep it secure from theft.	Tick “Create a separate /boot partition”. Tick “Encrypt the root filesystem.” Optionally tick “Write random data to encrypted partitions.” (This may take a considerable time.)	Create an additional partition of 100MB for the boot files.
You want to make some room for Theme-ix on your computer, but continue to use Windows or some other operating system. (Typical home dual-boot set up).	Leave all options at their current positions/tick any of the above that may apply.	Resize one of your partitions and create a new partition of at least 5GB in the space created. Recommended minimum is 10GB.
You have a multi-boot system and want to add Theme-ix to it. Linux expert installation.	Tick any of the above that may apply. Optionally tick “Do not format filesystems” if you have already prepared your hard disk and/or used something other than ext2/3/4 filesystems. Optionally tick “Do not install bootloader.” (The bootloader is Grub2.)	Make sure you have at least 1 x 5G partition available for installing Theme-ix onto. Any further customization of partitions can be done via fstab post-installation. There will be an option later to install the bootloader to a partition rather than the disc MBR.

Click OK when you have made your choice(s).

6) Unless you have already partitioned your drive, click on Run GParted on the next screen:

7) For detailed instructions on how to use GParted to partition your disks, click here:
http://gparted.org/display-doc.php?name=help-manual and
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/gparted.html

If you are installing to your internal hard drive, it will be shown as either hda (IDE hard drives) or sda (SCSI and SATA hard drives). Drives are allocated letters from a-z and partitions are numbered from 1-4 (for primary partitions) or 5+ (extended partitions) eg the first partition will be sda1 etc...

All sizes in GParted are shown in MiB (Mebibyte) which is exactly 1,048,576 bytes. For reference:

• 1024 MiB = 1GB
• 5120 MiB = 5GB
• 10240 MiB = 10GB
• 20480 MiB = 20GB

Note: if you are running Theme-ix from a USB drive rather than a CD/DVD, then your internal computer's hard drive might be the second drive - sdb as the USB device itself may be sda. You can usually determine which is which by the size of the device.

The GParted window will open as shown. This is a typical Windows 7 setup:

• If you see a partition described as below, then it will be the USB
  device containing the Live Theme-ix system:

  

• Change the selected drive to sdb using the icon in the top-right
  corner:

  -->

• To delete existing partitions (and data) right-click on each
  partition (shaded bar) and select delete:

  

• To reduce the size of a partition (to make room for Theme-ix),
  right-click on your largest partition (which might be labeled
  Windows) and select Resize/Move. The partition is shown as a coloured
  bar. Click and drag from the right edge to reduce the size. You need
  to free up a minimum of 5GB but preferably at least 10GB or more:

  

• To create a new partition, right-click in the empty space and select
  New. Change the filesystem type to ext4 (Reiserfs, XFS, BTRFS may be
  used but are not supported). Do not choose FAT16, FAT32 or NTFS as
  these are Windows formats. Either drag the right edge of the
  partition box to your desired size, or type in the size box. The
  Label is optional:

  

• To create a swap partition, simply change the File system to
  linux-swap:

  

• If your hard drive is new and has no existing partitions, you will
  have to create a partition table first. Click on the Device
  menu-->Create partition table. Select msdos as the partition table
  type and click Apply:

  

• When you have prepared your hard drive, click on the green Tick icon
  to apply the changes:

  
  

8) When you have created your partitions, close GParted and the installation will continue.

9) Next you must choose where to install the Grub2 bootloader (this is a small program that actually loads Theme-ix and any other operating systems you have on your computer eg Windows):

The default and suggested choice is MBR. This means it will take over booting all operating systems on your computer. If you are multi-booting and which to chainload, select Partition. Select No Bootloader if you already have a bootloader you want to keep and are prepared to edit it manually (The Windows bootloader can’t be used to boot Theme-ix).

10) Choose the hard drive to install the bootloader to:

This is the hard drive you have partitioned above. Remember, if you have booted from a CD/DVD then the default is /dev/sda or /dev/hda. If you have used a USB to boot the Live Theme-ix system it is likely to be /dev/sdb. Select one and click on OK.

11) An information window will appear listing all the detected partitions on your computer, including external USB devices. This is useful if you are multi-booting or if you need to verify which partitions you want to use for swap, /home, /boot etc… This window can be closed.

In the main window, you need to select the partition to install Theme-ix onto. For a simple installation onto one partition on the internal hard drive, the default will be /dev/sda1 or /dev/sdb1:

12) Select a filesystem to format the partition as. The default is ext4:

13) The final screen before installation occurs will be shown so that you can check you choices. However, if you have deleted or created partitions using GParted, those changes will have already taken place:

Click on Proceed to continue the installation.

14) You will now be prompted to choose your system locale (regional settings). The Live CD is set to US English, Eastern Time. You can leave the settings intact if you want to retain these settings, otherwise change the settings across the remaining dialogs:

a) Select your Geographic area (continent):

b) Select your timezone by choosing your closest city that shares your timezone:

c) Choose your system locale. This will affect your keyboard layout and time/date format. This is basically your country code followed by UTF8. See this for a full list of locales (http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Table_of_locales). You can select more than 1 if you need to work in more than 1 language:

d) Change from en_US.UTF-8 to set your chosen locale here as the default:

e) Select the keyboard model. If you are not sure, leave it on the existing entry:

f) On this screen, select “Other” if you do not want a US English keyboard:

g) Then choose the country you do want:

h) Choose the layout on this screen. Stick with a standard layout for your country unless you know otherwise:

i) Make final adjustments eg the use of the Alt-Gr key. If unsure, select “The default for my keyboard layout”:

15) The terminal window may now need interaction if you have a partition to format. Type a letter “y” and press enter:

16) Installation will now proceed and the terminal window will show the progress of files being copied. Do not close this window.

17) After the files have been copied, you will be asked to set the hostname (computer name) and your username. At this point you can decide on the type of password security you want to use - sudo or root. If you choose “Permit sudo for new user”, your own password doubles as the root password and will be asked by the system in the event of it requiring administrative access (eg installing software). Also tick “Use sudo as default for new user” .

The default is not to permit sudo, which means that you need to choose a separate password for administrative tasks (the root password) as well as your own password (for logging on).

18) Then set the root (administrative) password. (You might have to do this even if you selected sudo, so just use the password your own password). Strong passwords should be over 8 characters and include capitals, numbers and symbols. A very strong password would be 14 characters with a mix of the above.

19) Now enter your password which will be required for logging onto Theme-ix with. This should be different to the root password.

20) Congratulations! You have completed the installation:

You can continue to use the live environment, or to use your newly installed system, shutdown and remove your Live media before booting back up again.

Although there were quite a few screens to negotiate, the whole process shouldn’t take longer than 15-20 minutes on a modern laptop computer.

Copyright (c) RichJack 2014
Written with StackEdit.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.