Deploying Debian GNU/Linux with ICE-Linux

ISO media is by far the simpler and more efficient way to get what you want in the smallest amount of

time possible.

Note that a complete

set of ISO media entails the entire set of packages defined to be part of a

version and release; it can be quite large. At present, Debian 4.0r3 contains over 18,000 packages.

The CD-ROM ISO media is spread across 22 ISO images. The DVD ISO media is spread across 3

ISO images. The size of a complete set of ISO images is about 4.5 GB for each DVD, or 13.5 GB

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 install 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 viable 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 install 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 db403-agentless.cfg configuration file is formatted for self-help, meaning you should be

able to review it and comment or uncomment options to obtain the desired functionality easily at

install time.

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 will install any additional package that is an official part of the

Debian 4.0r3 distribution:

# apt-get install package-name