KateOS III installation process

Where to get KateOS

You can download KateOS from www.kateos.org. ISO images are available in the "download" section. You can also find KateOS CDs on other servers, often belonging to internet providers. If you know any of the Kate Team members, just hand him an empty CD and ask for KateOS. He certainly won't refuse :)

What to do with the downloaded ISO image?

You can burn it on a CD using your favourite burning application. In Linux, "cdrecord" (with a graphical frontend, such as "k3b") is recommended; in Windows you probably have "Nero" or something similar already installed (if not, you can grab burnatonce for free noncommercial use from the burnatonce website).

If you decide to use plain cdrecord, type in the terminal

cdrecord dev=0,0,0 driveropts=burnfree -v $foo/$bar.iso

where $foo and $bar are the path to the ISO image.

Make sure that you have checked the MD5 sums before burning!

Hardware requirements

KateOS only has minimal hardware requirements. Even an i486 with 32 MB RAM and 300 MB disk space will do. However, 300 MB is only enough for the minimal installation and a bit of swap space, so you should add some space for your programs other than those in the "A" section. You will also need a CD-ROM drive (preferably a bootable one) and a VGA graphics card (compliant with the VESA standard). For any multimedia purposes, you should have at least an i686 or newer (Pentium 2-class or higher).

Before the installation

Before you start your installation, make sure that you have at least one Linux partition and some swap space. If you do not you will need to prepare them first. You can use fdisk or cfdisk (cfdisk is more comfortable) for this purpose; they are available on the first install CD. Here is how to do it in cfdisk: First, type cfdisk /dev/hdX or cfdisk /dev/sdX (if you have SATA drive) where "hdX" / "sdX" is the name of the disk to be partitioned.

 /dev/hda - primary master
 /dev/hdb - primary slave
 /dev/hdc - secondary master
 /dev/hdd - secondary slave
 /dev/sda - first SATA drive
 /dev/sdb - second SATA drive
 etc...

You will see a screen similar to this one:

As you can see, there are 4293 MB of free space. Highlight it (use up & down arrows) and choose NEW (use left & right arrows).

Now choose the partition type depending on your needs (here, Primary) and define partition size.

Enter the partition size and press ENTER. The partition has been created. Repeat all the above steps to create all the partitions required. Once you are done and happy with the result, choose WRITE. It will write/update the partition table. Remember that after you will have answered "yes", you will not be able to undo your changes. Quit cfdisk. You have just taken the first step.

If you do not have a bootable CDROM, you will have to prepare an appropriate floppy disk to let you boot the installation program from the first CD. You will need to use the floppy image available on the first CD at /boot/sbmngr. Insert the floppy and type (in Linux or any other UNIX):

dd if=$foobar/boot/sbmngr/sbmngr.img of=/dev/fd0

$foobar is the path to where CDROM has been mounted; probably "/mnt/cdrom". In Windows or DOS, you can use RAWRITE or RAWRITEWIN which can be found on the first CD in /dosutils. Their documentation is there, too, so there is no need to reproduce it here.

Finally, make sure that your BIOS is set up correctly. The booting sequence has to list CDROM before the hard disk. Otherwise, you will not be able to boot from the CD.

Installation

To begin the installation process, you have to boot the first install CD. You will see the logo of KateOS, and a prompt saying "boot:". Here you can enter additional booting options. If you have an old CDROM which is connected via the printer port, you should type "oldcd". Apart from booting options, you can also enter some kernel options here. "acpi=off" disables ACPI (surprise!) which can save you trouble on some machines/BIOSes. "ide=nodma" can, too, spare you trouble in case you had some. A full list of kernel options can be found in its sources documentation. In this example, we are going to choose: boot: default sata acpi=off and press ENTER.

You will be asked to choose your keyboard. If you are using the "regular, standard" PC keyboard, just press ENTER. Instalator will ask you to choose your hard disk type.

In a moment, you will see the prompt. Log in as "root". Since your partitions are now ready (they are, aren't they? it is the last chance do it, now), you can continue with the installation. Run the installer by typing "setup". You will see a blue and grey screen.

To begin the installation, choose KEYMAP, then the appropriate keyboard mapping:

Confirm your choice and you will be moved to the SWAP configuration section. If you do not want to use SWAP, choose NO to get back to the main menu where you can move on to the next step, i.e. TARGET, to manually set up your partitions. Otherwise, prepare your swap partition:

Confirm (or reject) the swap partition inclusion:

The swap partition is now set up and active. It is time to pick the root partition:

Now format the root partition. If you are sure that your drive is OK and will cause no problems, you can choose FORMAT. Otherwise, CHECK is strongly recommended.

You will need to choose your desired filesystem. This is a very important decision, as the efficiency of the system and the security level of your data depends on it.

Choose:

You will now be asked if you want the system to automatically detect all available drives and partitions, and mount them in appropriate folders in /mnt. For example, /dev/hda1 will get mounted in /mnt/hda1.

Now, that all the preparations are done, we can move on to the SOURCE section. Search for a system CD or DVD:

The installer will ask you if you want it to find the CD automatically, or manually enter the device symbol. If you know it, you can choose the latter to save the time required otherwise to detect which device contains the system CD. Next, you can move on to the SELECT section.

Here you can choose package sections to be installed:

In the README on the first CD you can find information about the space required by various sections. After you will have selected what you need, you can move on to choose how you want the packages to be installed.

Your choice is:

Here, FULL is chosen as there is plenty of room on the disk. The installer will ask as if we want the dependencies to be tracked and installed. This option is especially recommended for new users who do not yet have much experience with Linux. In a moment, the packages will begin to be installed.

Introductory system configuration during Setup

After the packages are installed, you will be offered an option to perform an introductory system configuration. The installer will automatically create a library database, a module dependencies file, and a FreeType fonts index. The first thing you will need to do is configure the initrd. It must contain all modules necessary for mounting partitions, i.e. a disk driver and a filesystem module. In most cases choosing SIMPLE will be enough but SCSI users should choose EXPERT, and provide the name of the module they want to use. In general, if you are not sure what to do, choose SIMPLE.

The next step is installing the GRUB bootloader. It will let you choose which one of the installed operating systems will be booted at computer startup (the installer will try to locate other installed operating systems and add them to the GRUB configuration). Installing GRUB is recommended even if KateOS is to be the only system on the machine. MBR of the first hard drive is the most appropriate target for installation (works well in most cases).

Now, just point to the drive where you want GRUB installed. As usual, the default answer is recommended.

Next the installer will ask which SWAP partition should be used for suspending the system using Suspend2.

Now you are moving on to the next step of configuration where the installer will want to create a symbolic link in /dev/mouse to the real-world device. Depending on your choice, the installer will configure the GPM mouse server, letting you use it in the console.

Try to fit your mouse into one of the descriptions. Most people use ps2 mice (connected via a PS/2 port). However, mice with wheels (including those using PS/2 connection) should be described as imps2.

And the last mouse question: do you want gpm to be started at boot? Gpm allows for using mouse in the standard terminal (clicking, copying and pasting).

Time has come for the network configuration of the chosen network interface. In the first step you will need to enter the host name, and in the second one - domain name. They are both freeform unless you want to use ones provided by the DNS server.

In the next step you will choose how your IP will be assigned.

When you are done, confirm the settings.

Later, you will have to choose which daemons you want to be started at boot. Use the spacebar to tick them on and off. If you are not sure what you are doing, do not change anything here.

Now, you are moving on to the time zone configuration.

If your clock is set to UTC/GMT, choose YES. If it is set to local time (most users) choose NO and pick your time zone:

Now choose your default window manager. XFCE is probably the best choice for beginners.

If you want the installer to automatically detect your monitor settings, you can do it now. However, there is a very small chance that your computer may freeze during this step.

If your mouse has a wheel choose YES. Otherwise choose - surprise - NO.

Now it is time to decide which runlevel you want your system to boot into. Three starts the system but not the graphical environment. You log in in the terminal, and type "startx" to launch the X server. Four starts the graphics server automatically. Four seems to be more comfortable because you will not need to type anything except for the logging information (which can be disabled later on).

Next step is to choose the system language.

The final steps of installation. For security reasons it is recommended to work on as a normal user rather than as root. You can create a user account now. By default, the user is added to all groups connected with desktop work. If you are configuring a server, you should turn most of the groups off.

Confirm the user name and type the password twice.

Now on to the last and very important step: the root password. Do as you did with user password, but it's recommended you use a different password!

The root password should be well picked. The security of the entire system might depend on it. A good password should be at least 8 digits long (5 digits long passwords are reasonably easy to crack; 8 digits long ones are already quite secure), should not be a proper name, the name of your child, a loved one, a team name, a car brand, a footbal team or anything of the sort. In fact, it should not be a real word at all, it should consist of numbers, small and capital letters and special signs (prevents from being cracked with the dictionary method). For example: P#z8>lK0&umAa193. When you are done with that, the time has come to get really happy:

INSTALLATION COMPLETED!!!

Categories: Installation