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Raspbian Installer

The files used to perform the install described below can be obtained from the zip file at this link: rpi_installer_08-19-12.zip.

This installer is a hacked up version of the debian installer, it was created by jerry.tk who no longer appears to be active (last forum post in january 2013, last forum visit in april 2013). To run on recently manufactured Pis with hynix or samsung memory it is likely you will need to replace the kernel and bootload included with the installer with more recent versions from the raspberry pi foundation. This installer should currently be considered abandonware. Currently we reccomend using hifi's raspbian-ua-netinst instead if you want to use an installer rather than a pre-installed image.

A thread on this installer can be found on the raspberry pi foundation's forum at Raspbian Forum thread. The notes below document the use of the installer as it was configured on August 20th, 2012.

Important Note: the SD card media that installer works with to install Raspbian has very slow performance. Particularly with the many 10,000's of small files the installer writes to various locations on the root file system. Because of this, a minimal install of Raspbian to an SD card can take 90 minutes or longer. An install that includes the Debian desktop environment which includes 800 additional packages can take up to 8 to 9 hours to complete. Time to complete an install will vary greatly based on the speed of the SD card. Also, installation onto other media such as an attached USB hard drive should be much faster. See notes for external drive installation here.

Install Notes - 08/20/12

Format an SD card with a single FAT32 (MS-DOS or Windows formatted) partition and copy the installer files from this zip file onto the top level directory. On a Raspberry Pi with an attached monitor and keyboard boot with the SD card to start the installer software. The partition and files on this card will be overwritten during the installation process.

This installer is a "network" installer. This means installer requires ethernet network connectivity to the Internet and Raspbian packages will be pulled down from remote servers. When the installer first starts the DHCP server on the local LAN will be queried to provide an IP address, default route and name server required for network connectivity.

For best results please use mirror hostname mirrordirector.raspbian.org, mirror directory /raspbian or select Raspbian mirror geographically closest to you. See full Raspbian mirror list.

The notes below represent a typical installation process. Your specific responses to certain questions may vary, particularly those relating to language, time zone, system name, etc...

Select a language

Choose a language to be used for the installation process. The selected language will also be the default language for the installed system.

English

Select your location

The selected location will be used to set your time zone and also for example to help select the system locale. Normally this should be the country where you live.

United States

Configure the keyboard

Keymap to use:

American English

Detecting network hardware

[no input]

Configure the network

Please enter the hostname for this system.

pisces

Configure the network

The domain name is the part of your Internet address to the right of your hostname.

Domain name:

home.lan

Choose a mirror of the Debian archive

Debian archive mirror country:

<enter information manually>

Choose a mirror of the Debian archive

Please enter the hostname of the mirror from which Debian will be downloaded.

mirrordirector.raspbian.org

<Continue>

Choosing mirrordirector.raspbian.org will automatically select a mirror of Raspbian that is appropriate for your geographic location.

Choose a mirror of the Debian archive

Please enter the directory in which the mirror of the Debian archive is located.

/raspbian/

<Continue>

Choose a mirror of the Debian archive

If you need to use a HTTP proxy to access the outside world, enter the proxy information here. Otherwise lave this blank.

HTTP proxy information (blank for none):

[leave blank]

<Continue>

Download installer components

No kernel modules were found. This probably is due to a mismatch between the kernel used by this version of the installer and the kernel version available in the archive.

Continue the install without loading kernel modules?

<Yes>

The modules being complained about here are less used filesystems, crypto, etc. Currently some of this stuff is compiled straight into the installer kernel and some modules are really missing. It shouldn't give you much problems though, only maybe if you choose to install to encrypted partition - that will probably fail.

Currently there is no standard Raspberry Pi kernel installer package. This issue is worked around by including the current kernel.img into installer initramfs and copying it to the Raspberry Pi boot partition directly after the installer is done. This way your Raspberry Pi will boot after installation.

Loading additional components

[no input]

Set up users and passwords

Root password:

raspbian [or whatever root password you want]

<Continue>

Set up users and passwords

Re-enter password to verify:

raspbian [or whatever root password you want]

Set up users and passwords

A user account will be created for you to use instead of the root account for non-administrative activities.

Full name for the new user:

Raspbian User [or whatever full name you want]

<Continue>

Set up users and passwords

Username for your account:

raspbian [or whatever username you want]

<Continue>

Set up users and passwords

Choose a password for the new user:

raspbian [or whatever user password you want]

<Continue>

Set up users and passwords

Re-enter password to verify:

raspbian [or whatever user password you want]

<Continue>

Configure the clock

Select your time zone:

<Pacific>

Partition disks

MMC/SD card #1 (mmcblk0) - 3.9 GB SD SA04G

Note: the details above will vary by the specifics of your SD card. If you do not use automatic partitioning please keep in mind that FAT32 boot partition has to be mounted as /rpiboot.

<Finish partitioning and write changes to disk>

Partition disks

The partition tables of the following devices are changed:

The following partitions are going to be formatted:

Note: the details above will vary by the specifics of your SD card.

Write the changes to disks?

<Yes>

Partitions formatting

This takes a while depending on the size of the SD card. Be patient.

[no input]

Installing the base system

This takes a while. Be patient.

[no input]

Configuring apt

[no input]

Install the base system

No installable kernel was found in the defined APT sources.

Continue without installing a kernel?

<Yes>

Configure the package manager

The repository on security.debian.org couldn't be accessed, so its updates will not be made available to you at this time. You should investigate this later.

<Continue>

Configuring popularity-contest

This system may anonymously supply the distribution developers with statistics about the most used packages on this system. This information influences decisions such as which packages should go on the first distribution CD.

Participate in the package usage survey?

<No>

At the moment, only the core of the system is installed. To tune the system to your needs, you can choose to install one or more of the following predefined collections of software.

Choose software to install:

Note: Selecting 'Debian desktop environment' will install more than 800 additional packages which could take 6 hours more to setup.

Select and install software

This takes a while. Be patient.

Continue without boot loader

No boot loader has been installed, either because you chose not to or because your specific architecture doesn't support a boot loader yet.

<Continue>

Finishing the installation

The Raspberry Pi should now reboot into the fresh Raspbian install.

Installing to USB disk

It is also possible to use the installer to install Raspbian to external USB flash/hard drive. The external drive should be detected correctly by installer, but in this case you will have to prepare partitions manually. It is absolutely neccessary to keep RasPi boot partition on SD card, it has to be the first partition there, primary, bootable, FAT32 format. The installer will not allow you to mount this partition as /boot, though. Mount the FAT32 partition as /rpiboot instead, post-install script will rename it to /boot after installation automatically. Any other partitions can be placed to external drive. Remember the name of the root partition block device, you will need to edit cmdline.txt kernel options to point rootfs to this device after installation.

Troubleshooting

If anything goes wrong during installation, there are several ways to learn what is the problem. You can switch to another console by pressing Alt+F2 or Alt+F3. Current installation log is available at Alt+F4. Anytime installer waits for user input or keypress, you can also press Shift+F5. This will bring you to advanced installer menu.

When installer fails to install Raspbian and displays an error message, it is possible to save installation log for later examination. Go to advanced installer menu (Shift+F5), run shell and mount FAT32 partition: mount -t vfat /dev/mmcblk0p1 /mnt  Leave shell and save installer logs to /mnt directory.

If installer finishes successfully, logs are stored to /var/log/installer.