Chapter 1. Before You Begin

Table of Contents

Preparing for Installation
Creating the installation media
Using Windows
Using Mac OS X
Using Linux or BSD

Welcome to the Adélie Linux 1.0 Installation Handbook. This Handbook describes the process of installing Adélie Linux on your computer.

If you are installing Adélie Linux on your main computer, you may use another device - such as a mobile phone or a friend's laptop, if available - to reference this Handbook. Additionally, most of the contents of this Handbook are available for reading during the installation process. Simply choose "Help", or press the F1 key, from any System Installation screen.

Please back up all of your data before beginning installation. While every effort has been made to ensure that the Adélie Linux installation system is safe and error-free, we cannot guarantee that your data will be preserved once you start the installation. If you intend on dual-booting your computer with another operating system, such as Mac OS X or Windows, ensure there is adequate disk space available to install Adélie Linux. You will need up to 2 GB for a standard desktop installation, or at least 300 MB for a server installation.

HiDPI (or "Retina") displays are supported only on the Desktop installation media. Please note that the server installation media may render incorrectly, or even not at all, when using HiDPI displays. You may install server packages using the Desktop installation media if you need to use a HiDPI display during server installation.

To install Adélie Linux to a server, you will need either a connected display or a supported serial line. If you are installing via serial line, be sure to have your server's serial line settings available. Most servers default to either 9600 or 115200 baud; Adélie Linux does not reconfigure the serial line, so you will need to know your firmware's default settings.

If you plan on connecting to the Internet directly from your Adélie Linux computer without using a router (not common), ensure you have your Internet access credentials (typically a username and password) available before starting installation. Adélie Linux supports connecting to most ADSL providers using PPPoE; and most other Internet providers using Ethernet or Wi-Fi. If you use a static IP address (not common), make sure you have your IP address, subnet, default gateway, and nameserver settings before starting installation.

If your computer came with recovery media, we recommend that you have it available in the very unlikely event you have an issue using the Adélie Linux system, or if your hardware is incompatible. Having your recovery media will allow you to quickly restore your computer to its original state.

You will need either:

  • a CD drive capable of writing (or "burning") a CD, and a blank CD; or

  • a blank USB flash drive.

Download the installation media file from https://wwww.adelielinux.org/download. Follow the instructions to choose the media file appropriate for your computer. Then, follow the steps below for your current operating environment.

TODO

TODO

On Linux or BSD systems, you can use either cdrecord or cdrskin to write the installation image to a CD via the command line. Both commands share a similar syntax.

For example, to burn the image onto a CD at a speed of 4x and with verbose command output, run cdrecord -v speed=4 [image] or cdrskin -v speed=4 [image], replacing [image] with the file name of the image you want to burn to the CD.

If there is only one optical disc drive on your system, it should be auto-detected. If you have more than one optical disc drive, find the device name using dmesg or lsblk, and specify it with the dev option. For example, if your optical device is named /dev/sr0, run cdrecord -v dev=/dev/sr0 speed=4 [image].

To write an installation image to a USB flash drive, you may use the dd command. You will need to identify the name of the target USB device. This can be done by examining the output of the dmesg command, or a program that lists available storage devices (such as lsblk on Linux), before and after connecting the drive to the computer.

You should always ensure that you have identified the correct USB device name. Ensure you are using the name of the whole drive (such as /dev/sde) and not a partition residing on it (such as /dev/sde1).

Ensure the device is not mounted before running the dd command. Please note that running the dd command may require superuser privileges.

Beware that this operation will destroy all data on the target device!

dd if=adelie.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M && sync

Replace adelie.iso with the file name of the image you want to write to the USB media, and /dev/sdX with the name of the target USB device. Running the sync command after the dd command ensures that all data has been written to the USB media.