For a standard installation, you only need to choose “Install” or “Graphical install” (with the arrow keys), then press the Enter key to initiate the remainder of the installation process. If the DVD-ROM is a “Multi-arch” disk, and the machine has an Intel or AMD 64 bit processor, the menu options “64 bit install” and “64 bit graphical install” enable the installation of the 64 bit variant ( amd64) instead of the default 32 bit variant ( i386).
In practice, the 64 bit version can almost always be used: most recent processors are 64 bit processors and the 64 bit version deals better with the large amount of RAM that new computers tend to have. The fundamental difference between 32 and 64 bit systems is the size of memory addresses. In theory, a 32 bit system can not work with more than 4 GB of RAM (2 32 bytes). In practice, it is possible to work around this limitation by using the 686-pae kernel variant, so long as the processor handles the PAE (Physical Address Extension) functionality.
Using it does have a notable influence on system performance, however. This is why it is useful to use the 64 bit mode on a server with a large amount of RAM. Once booted, the installation program guides you step by step throughout the process. This section presents each of these steps in detail. Here we follow the process of an installation from a Multi-Arch DVD-ROM (more specifically, the beta4 version of the installer for Jessie); netinst installations, as well as the final release of the installer, may look slightly different. We will also address installation in graphical mode, but the only difference from “classic” (text-mode) installation is in the visual appearance. The root user's password should be long (8 characters or more) and impossible to guess.
How can I understand which hardware detected by Linux and which not? Can Linux have something like Device Manager in Windows OS? I use Debian Jessie.
Indeed, any computer (and a fortiori any server) connected to the Internet is regularly targeted by automated connection attempts with the most obvious passwords. Sometimes it may even be subject to dictionary attacks, in which many combinations of words and numbers are tested as password. Avoid using the names of children or parents, dates of birth, etc.: many of your co-workers might know them, and you rarely want to give them free access to the computer in question. The first screen in the partitioning tool offers the choice of using an entire hard drive to create various partitions. For a (new) computer which will solely use Linux, this option is clearly the simplest, and you can choose the option “Guided - use entire disk”.
If the computer has two hard drives for two operating systems, setting one drive for each is also a solution that can facilitate partitioning. In both of these cases, the next screen offers to choose the disk where Linux will be installed by selecting the corresponding entry (for example, “SCSI1 (0,0,0) (sda) - 12.9 GB ATA VBOX HARDDISK”). You then start guided partitioning. The last partitioning method, called “Separate /home, /var, and /tmp partitions”, is appropriate for servers and multi-user systems. It divides the file tree into many partitions: in addition to the root ( /) and user accounts ( /home/) partitions, it also has partitions for server software data ( /var/), and temporary files ( /tmp/). These divisions have several advantages.
Users can not lock up the server by consuming all available hard drive space (they can only fill up /tmp/ and /home/). The daemon data (especially logs) can no longer clog up the rest of the system. A filesystem defines the way in which data is organized on the hard drive. Each existing filesystem has its merits and limitations.
Some are more robust, others more effective: if you know your needs well, choosing the most appropriate filesystem is possible. Various comparisons have already been made; it seems that ReiserFS is particularly efficient for reading many small files; XFS, in turn, works faster with large files. Ext4, the default filesystem for Debian, is a good compromise, based on the three previous versions of filesystems historically used in Linux ( ext, ext2 and ext3). Ext4 overcomes certain limitations of ext3 and is particularly appropriate for very large capacity hard drives. Another option would be to experiment with the very promising btrfs, which includes numerous features that require, to this day, the use of LVM and/or RAID. A journalized filesystem (such as ext3, ext4, btrfs, reiserfs, or xfs) takes special measures to make it possible to return to a prior consistent state after an abrupt interruption without completely analyzing the entire disk (as was the case with the ext2 system).
![Driver Driver](/uploads/1/2/5/3/125393018/140683566.png)
This functionality is carried out by filling in a journal that describes the operations to conduct prior to actually executing them. If an operation is interrupted, it will be possible to “replay” it from the journal. Conversely, if an interruption occurs during an update of the journal, the last requested change is simply ignored; the data being written could be lost, but since the data on the disk has not changed, they have remained coherent. This is nothing more nor less than a transactional mechanism applied to the filesystem. You must then choose “Configure software RAID” in the partitioning tool to combine these two partitions into a new virtual disk and select “Create MD device” in the configuration screen.
You then need to answer a series of questions about this new device. The first question asks about the RAID level to use, which in our case will be “RAID1”. The second question asks about the number of active devices — two in our case, which is the number of partitions that need to be included in this MD device. The third question is about the number of spare devices — 0; we have not planned any additional disk to take over for a possible defective disk. The last question requires you to choose the partitions for the RAID device — these would be the two that we have set aside for this purpose (make sure you only select the partitions that explicitly mention “raid”). The partitioning tool configures LVM in several steps. First you must create on the existing disks the partitions that will be “physical volumes for LVM”.
To activate LVM, you need to choose “Configure the Logical Volume Manager (LVM)”, then on the same configuration screen “Create a volume group”, to which you will associate the existing physical volumes. Finally, you can create logical volumes within this volume group. Note that the automatic partitioning system can perform all these steps automatically. To guarantee the confidentiality of your data, for instance in the event of the loss or theft of your computer or a hard drive, it is possible to encrypt the data on some partitions. This feature can be added underneath any filesystem, since, as for LVM, Linux (and more particularly the dm-crypt driver) uses the Device Mapper to create a virtual partition (whose content is protected) based on an underlying partition that will store the data in an encrypted form (thanks to LUKS, Linux Unified Key Setup, a standard format that enables the storage of encrypted data as well as meta-information that indicates the encryption algorithms used).
When an encrypted partition is used, the encryption key is stored in memory (RAM). Since retrieving this key allows the decryption of the data, it is of utmost importance to avoid leaving a copy of this key that would be accessible to the possible thief of the computer or hard drive, or to a maintenance technician. This is however something that can easily occur with a laptop, since when hibernating the contents of RAM is stored on the swap partition. If this partition isn't encrypted, the thief may access the key and use it to decrypt the data from the encrypted partitions. This is why, when you use encrypted partitions, it is imperative to also encrypt the swap partition!
To create an encrypted partition, you must first assign an available partition for this purpose. To do so, select a partition and indicate that it is to be used as a “physical volume for encryption”. After partitioning the disk containing the physical volume to be made, choose “Configure encrypted volumes”. The software will then propose to initialize the physical volume with random data (making the localization of the real data more difficult), and will ask you to enter an “encryption passphrase”, which you will have to enter every time you boot your computer in order to access the content of the encrypted partition.
Once this step has been completed, and you have returned to the partitioning tool menu, a new partition will be available in an “encrypted volume”, which you can then configure just like any other partition. In most cases, this partition is used as a physical volume for LVM so as to protect several partitions (LVM logical volumes) with the same encryption key, including the swap partition (see sidebar ). The Debian system contains a package called popularity-contest, whose purpose is to compile package usage statistics. Each week, this program collects information on the packages installed and those used recently, and anonymously sends this information to the Debian project servers. The project can then use this information to determine the relative importance of each package, which influences the priority that will be granted to them. In particular, the most “popular” packages will be included in the installation CD-ROM, which will facilitate their access for users who do not wish to download them or to purchase a complete set. GRUB is the default bootloader installed by Debian thanks to its technical superiority: it works with most filesystems and therefore doesn't require an update after each installation of a new kernel, since it reads its configuration during boot and finds the exact position of the new kernel.
Version 1 of GRUB (now known as “Grub Legacy”) couldn't handle all combinations of LVM and software RAID; version 2, installed by default, is more complete. There may still be situations where it is more recommendable to install LILO (another bootloader); the installer will suggest it automatically.