I prefer to partition the harddisks before installation. This can easily be done using Knoppix or Toms Root/Boot Disk.
Partition the 2 disks as follows (here the output of
fdisk -l /dev/hda /dev/hdc):
Disk /dev/hda: 82.3 GB, 82348277760 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10011 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 * 1 6 48163+ fd Linux raid autodetect /dev/hda2 7 1281 10241437+ 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/hda3 * 1282 1919 5124735 83 Linux /dev/hda4 1920 10011 64998990 fd Linux raid autodetect Disk /dev/hdc: 82.3 GB, 82348277760 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10011 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hdc1 1 6 48163+ fd Linux raid autodetect /dev/hdc2 7 1281 10241437+ b Win95 FAT32 /dev/hdc3 1282 1919 5124735 82 Linux swap /dev/hdc4 1920 10011 64998990 fd Linux raid autodetect
hd{a,c}1 and hd{a,c}4 are intended for RAID1 (/boot and LVM respectively). hda2, hda3, hc2, and hdc4 are partitions to be freely used for other varying purposes, e.g., dual boot into Windows, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD or another Linux distribution.
The basic Debian GNU/Linux installation is done on /dev/hda3 as the root file system and /dev/hdc3 as the swap partition. I am using the Woody Netinst CD, a minimal ISO image that allows the installation over the network. I follow the typical installation and use http://debian.ethz.ch/mirror/debian/ as my distribution mirror. It is best at this stage to choose no extra packages beyond the basic installation (i.e., quit dselect and tasksel without choosing packages). I choose to install LILO on /dev/hda3 and MBR on /dev/hda.
Now I can install a more complete /etc/apt/sources.list file along with
setting the default release to testing in /etc/apt/apt.conf. With this I can specify if I
specifically want to have a newer release of a certain software
package (apt
pinning). After this run apt-get update and
apt-get dist-upgrade to upgrade to testing.
While I'm at it I can also install a new crontab entry to update the apt package database regularly:
15 6 * * * /usr/bin/apt-get update >/dev/null 2>&1
Now that I have the basic system set up I can move on to configure kernel followed by RAID-1 and Root-on-LVM-on-RAID.