many users have/had macbooks.

what was/still is great: OSX can be reinstalled over internet! (no more searching for licence keys or setup sticks/DVDs/CDs/)

‘power up or reboot your Mac then quickly hold down Command-Option-R until see the “Spinning World Logo”‘ (creditz)

given the fact – that once installed – GNU Linux Debian can boot (almost) anywhere, the fastest and easiest way to “install” it is to simply 1:1 copy it on whatever the user wants to boot from (harddisk or usb stick (some sticks can not be made bootable, try at least 3 different vendors)).

So… this install script 1:1 copy installs Debian 11 (non-free) on any laptop/desktop/server (depending on internet speed) very fast & easy.

The process can be automated (on similar hardware or on hardware where /dev/sda is always the device the user wants to 1:1 overwrite).

This script install process is almost like OSX 🙂 but “semi-automatic” to double ask, not to overwrite the wrong (USB attached?) disk.

it comes with a full MATE Desktop and everything to get working (LibreOffice and Firefox and Thunderbird)
it has the “cosmos” slideshow (love it!) background enabled per default
the terminal comes with green on black for better readability
it does not have a swap partition enabled, so the user can easily with gparted 1) extend the harddisk to it’s full capacity 2) create a swap partition
English, Spanish, Chinese and German keyboard layout are active, should be possible to switch between them in the top right corner

todo: what is still missing

what is still missing is:
- automatically calc (based on RAM size, would do as much swap as RAM) how much swap should be created
- extend the /root partition to full harddisk capacity minus the swap space
- create the swap partition and edit config files /etc/fstab and /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume for proper (as intended) functionality of the system
apply this
display a dancing penguin during first successfull boot and encourage user to do at least 5min of dancing to this funky music 🙂

WARNING!

make sure to disconnect all devices (external harddisks, usb sticks, sdcards)
- less devices = less trouble and less accidentally overwriting a external harddisk or usb stick
if the target device /dev/sdX contains important data, backup it up !first! (all data will be overwritten)

WHY NON FREE?

it’s based on the non-free version, because it is intended to allow new users that never tested GNU Linux Debian (with a MATE Desktop) a “it just works” turnkey experience.

Is the Free version better?

If the user has concerns about surveillance/spying and needs maximum privacy than it is probably better to start with the defautl GNU Linux Debian free version and usually all network-cards/NICs work out of the box (free drivers available 🙂 (but maybe not the wifi cards)

new users: workaround for this pitfall:

https://dwaves.de/2022/01/21/gnu-linux-debian-11-2-network-stops-working-networking-stops-during-setup-bad-archive-mirror-how-every-os-setup-should-be/

Problems might arise with the free version and wifi: (notebooks)

because then the user will probably have to install the appropriate closed source (#evil!) drivers from the the non-free repository with all the spying backdoors that a intel wifi driver might have (after all a network card, is like a small computer, inside a computer, ideal! but then if the BIOS is not LibreBooted… the Intel ME can not be disabled… (some OS allow to permanently disable Intel ME!!!).

… the fight for more privacy and security – seems never ending and goes on.

requirements:

the laptop/desktop/server root harddisk/the target harddisk (/dev/sdX) should have at least 100GBytes of harddisk space
ideally boot from GNU Linux live usb stick with at least 3GBytes of free space
or alternatively: boot from read-only live DVD or image and when booted up, connect a ext4 or ext3 or fat32 or ntfs formatted USB stick or drive with at least 3GBytes of free space
- there are many other desktop live flavours available (great! 🙂 : https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/
- when booted from live, cd into the external usb stick-drive
- create the below script (copy content into a text file, name it name-of-script.sh)
- chmod +x name-of-script.sh; # mark it runnable - su - root; # become root
- /name-of-script.sh /dev/sdX; # run it, passing the device Debian 11 should be installed on - will download ~2.5Gbytes image.gz to current directory (the usb-stick-drive and store it there permanently for later re-use) - curl can resume interrupted downloads

usage:

# sdX is the device the user wants to install Debian 11 on
<span style="color: #00ffff;">/scripts/install_debian_from_image.sh /dev/sdX
</span>

process complete? reboot & “it just works”?

congratz! do 1min of wiggle dance!

[video width=”306″ height=”194″ mp4=”https://dwaves.de/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/happyness-drum-and-bass-dance-of-success.mp4″\]\[/video\]

post processing:

want to use the complete harddisk not just the 100GBytes? two possibilities:

use gparted to create new /home partition with the rest of the harddisk (maybe together with a swap partition)
or: if live cd/usb stick comes with gparted as this usb stick does start again from live-cd/live-usb stick and start gparetd to extend the /root partition to it’s maximum (leave some space for swap partition)

what the script will do:

download a pre-installed Debian 11 image.gz and it’s sha512check-sum
sha512 check the image (check the image is unaltered and intact)
on the fly unpack and 1:1 write the image to /dev/sdX while showing a progress bar

<span style="color: #00ffff;">vim /scripts/install_debian_from_image.sh</span>

<span style="color: #ff6600;">#!/bin/bash

DEBIAN_IMAGE=debian11_amd64_non_free_drivers_mate_libre_firefox.img.gz
DOWNLOAD=https://dwaves.de/downloads/$DEBIAN_IMAGE

# define colors
RED='\033[0;31m'
WHITE='\033[0;37m'
YELLOW='\033[0;33m'
COLOR_OFF='\033[0m' # reset color to default

echo -e "${WHITE}=== download and 1:1 copy debian.img.gz to $1 ===${COLOR_OFF}\n"

if [ -z "$1" ]
  then
    echo "please pass device like this: /dev/sdx
          TARGET THE WHOLE DEVICE (sdb)
          NOT A PARTITION! (sdb1)"
  else


echo -e "${RED}this script is meant to be run from an live-cd or usb stick (so $1 should be an OFFLINE filesystem (not currently running)"
    echo "please read carefully, a mistake could overwrite critical data!!!"
    echo -e "physically disconnect all critical data-drives before procedure!!!${COLOR_OFF}\n"
    echo ""

    echo "========== do you want to copy the $DEBIAN_IMAGE image on device $1 ?"

    echo -e "${YELLOW}~3GBytes of disk space is needed in the current directory${COLOR_OFF}\n"
    pwd
    echo "=========== harddisk overview";
    echo "==== where is what";
    lsblk -o 'NAME,MAJ:MIN,RM,SIZE,RO,FSTYPE,MOUNTPOINT,UUID'
    smartctl -i $1;
    echo ""


echo -e "${YELLOW}"
read -p "CONTINUE? (y/n)" choice
case "$choice" in 
  y|Y ) echo "yes";;
  n|N ) echo "no";;
  * ) echo "invalid";;
esac

    echo "installing required software for fast multi threaded decompression of image (pigz)"
    echo "and showing progress during dd (pv)"

echo -e "${COLOR_OFF}\n"

    apt update
    apt install pv pigz curl

echo -e "${YELLOW}starting download of $DOWNLOAD... please stand by${COLOR_OFF}\n"
    curl -L -O -C - $DOWNLOAD;

echo -e "${YELLOW}starting download of checksum $DOWNLOAD.sha512sum.txt ... please stand by${COLOR_OFF}\n"

    curl -L -O -C - $DOWNLOAD.sha512sum.txt;

    echo "verify sha512sum..."

cat "./$DEBIAN_IMAGE.sha512sum.txt" | sha512sum -c

if [ $? != 0 ]; then
echo -e "${RED}Checksum failed. aborting script. maybe $DEBIAN_IMAGE corrupted during download. please try to re-run the script." >&2
echo -e "${COLOR_OFF}\n"
  exit 1
fi

echo -e "${YELLOW}starting write process...${COLOR_OFF}\n"
    umount $1*;

    dd if=./$DEBIAN_IMAGE of=$1 status=progress; sync;

    pigz -dc $DEBIAN_IMAGE | pv | dd bs=1M of=$1; sync;
    ## single core
    ### gunzip -c /path/to/image.img.gz | pv | dd of=$1; # write image to usb stick

echo -e "${YELLOW}the image $DEBIAN_IMAGE was written to stick $1. process finished. try booting it now :)${COLOR_OFF}\n"
fi

</span>

#linux #gnu #gnulinux #opensource #administration #sysops #gnu-linux #debian #osx #setup #installation #breeze #easy #fast #debian11 #bullseye

Originally posted at: https://dwaves.de/2022/01/28/gnu-linux-debian-very-fast-and-easy-semi-automatic-online-install-debian-11-non-free/