operating system, and the other will be used for Debian. During the installation of Debian, you will be given the opportunity to use the Debian portion of the disk as you see fit, i.e., as swap or as a filesystem.
The idea is to move all the data on the partition to the beginning before changing the partition information, so that nothing will be lost. It is important that you do as little as possible between the data movement and repartitioning to minimize the chance of a file being written near the end of the partition as this will decrease the amount of space you can take from the partition.
The first thing you need is a copy of FIPS, which is available in the tools directory on your Debian CD-ROM. This disk must be bootable. Under DOS, a bootable floppy can be created using the command sys a: for a previously formatted floppy or format a: /s for an unformatted floppy. Unzip the archive and copy the files RESTORRB.EXE, FIPS.EXE and ERRORS.TXT to the bootable floppy. FIPS comes with very good documentation that you may want to read. You should definitely read the documentation if you use a disk compression driver or a disk manager. Create the disk and read the documentation before you continue.
The next thing to be done is to move all the data to the beginning of the partition. DEFRAG, which comes standard with DOS 6.0 and later, can easily do the job. See the FIPS documentation for a list of other software that may also work. Note that if you have Windows 95 or higher, you must run DEFRAG from there, because DOS doesn't understand VFAT, which is used to support long filenames in Windows 95 and higher.
After running the defragmenter (which can take a while on a large disk), reboot with the FIPS floppy disk you created. Simply type a:\ fips and follow the directions.
Note that there are many other other partition managers out there, in case FIPS doesn't work for you.
Debian Installation Steps
As you initially install Debian, you will proceed through several different steps:
1. Boot the installation system 2. Initial system configuration 3. Install the base system 4. Boot the newly installed base system 5. Install the rest of the system Booting the Debian installation system, the first step, is generally done with the Rescue Floppy or from the CD-ROM.
Once you've booted into Linux, the dbootstrap program will launch and guide you through the second step, the initial system configuration. This step is described in detail in section 3 on page [*].
The ``Debian base system'' is a core set of packages that are required to run Debian in a minimal, stand-alone fashion. dbootstrap will install it from your CD-ROM, as described in section 3.12 on page [*]. Once you have configured and installed the base system, your machine can ``stand on its own.''
The final step is the installation of the remainder of the Debian system. This would include the applications and documents that you actually use on your computer, such as the X Window system, editors, shells, and development environments. The rest of the Debian system can be installed from CD-ROM. At this point, you'll be using the standard Debian package management tools, such as dselect. This step is described in section 3.20 on page [*].
Choosing Your Installation Media
First, choose the boot media for the installation system. Next, choose the method you will use to install the base system.
To boot the installation system, you have the following choices: bootable CD-ROM, floppies, or a non-Linux boot loader.
CD-ROM booting is one of the easiest ways to install. Not all machines can boot directly from the CD-ROM so you may still need to use floppies. Booting from floppies is supported for most platforms. Floppy booting is described in section 2.4.2 on page [*].
Installing from a CD-ROM
If your system supports booting from a CD-ROM, you don't need any floppies. Put the CD-ROM into the drive, turn your computer off, and then turn it back on. You should see a Welcome screen with a boot prompt at the bottom. Now you can skip down to section 2.5.
If your computer didn't ``see'' the Debian CD-ROM, the easiest option is to make two floppies for booting (described in section 2.4.2) and then use them to start Debian. Don't worry; after Debian is finished with those two floppies, it will find your CD-ROM with no trouble.
Booting from Floppies
It's not hard at all to boot from floppies. In fact, your CD-ROM contains all the information necessary to create boot disks for you. For these instructions, you will need to get two disks. Label the first one ``Debian 2.1 Install/Rescue Disk'' and the second ``Debian 2.1 Modules/Drivers Disk.''
Creating Floppies from Disk Images
Disk images are files containing the complete contents of a floppy disk in raw
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