Deploying Debian 5 GNU/Linux with Insight Control for Linux Version 6.0 and 6.1

4
total. If you cannot afford the time to download the media, purchasing physical media online is a
valid alternative, which you can update using a Jigsaw download session.
Another approach is to download only the ISO media images you need to get started — generally
only the first ISO image for installation and then discover which ISO images are required for
additional packages by using the Debian online search engine.
Finally, after installation and if you have realtime access to the Internet and trust the sources, you can
configure the dselect package library APT sources to download additional packages from an
online Mirror. This is not a workable option if you are on a secured network or in a datacenter
without Internet access and no local Mirror. Consequently, it is good to have a complete local copy of
the ISO media for your Debian version.
Prerequisites
There are a number of prerequisites to the installation of Debian GNU/Linux. After the prerequisites
are fulfilled, the only thing you need to change from one installation target to the next is the target
MAC address (media access controller hardware addresses): change it to match the MAC address of
the PXE enabled Ethernet port of the target server.
Modifying installation packages
The packages you want to install are specified in a preseed file. The install_config script,
which will be discussed later in this document, assists you in creating the preseed file for your target
server. You use the sample install_config script as a starting point for preparing your
automated Debian installation, but you will likely modify it to install the packages of your choice and
make any customizations.
The most likely thing you would change is to choose a different task for the target. A task
represents a group of packages to install and represents a familiar typical purpose for the target
server. You can choose from many possible tasks, such as:
#tasksel tasksel/first multiselect standard, desktop
#tasksel tasksel/first multiselect standard, gnome-desktop
#tasksel tasksel/first multiselect standard, kde-desktop
#tasksel tasksel/first multiselect standard, web-server
#tasksel tasksel/first multiselect standard, print-server
#tasksel tasksel/first multiselect standard, dns-server
#tasksel tasksel/first multiselect standard, file-server
#tasksel tasksel/first multiselect standard, mail-server
#tasksel tasksel/first multiselect standard, sql-database
#tasksel tasksel/first multiselect standard, laptop
After installation, your Debian system’s APT sources are automatically configured to use the
installation source as a source for installing additional packages. This means that running the
following command from a console installs any additional package that is an official part of the
Debian 5.0r3 distribution:
# apt-get install package-name
Some users might prefer to use the new aptitude package browsing, search, and installation tool
for picking individual or related groups of packages and resolving dependencies automatically.