IMPORTANT: ALWAYS CREATE A DATA BACKUP! If the
installation target is already home to an operating system or data is to
be preserved, please always create a backup before installing siduction.
Installation preparations
First, change the boot order so that the medium to be booted (DVD,
flashcard, or USB stick) is at the top of the list. On most computers,
pressing the F2 or
Del key during the boot process takes you
to the UEFI or BIOS setup. Alternatively, pressing
F12, F11,
F7, or F8
(depending on the hardware manufacturer’s specifications) during the
boot process will take you directly to the boot menu where you can
select the live media as the boot drive.
siduction usually starts without problems now. If this is not the
case, boot options (cheat codes), which can be passed to the boot
manager, are helpful. The manual page Cheatcodes
explains the possible options.
At the start screen, use the arrow keys to navigate to “From
CD/DVD/ISO: …” or “From Stick/HDD: …” (according to the
used live medium) and press e. This takes
you to the kernel command line where you can add the cheatcodes.
Pressing F10 will continue the boot
process.
Before the installation, please remove all USB sticks,
cameras, etc.
If siduction is not to be installed from, but to a USB
medium, a different procedure is necessary. See the manual page
Installation
to a USB medium.
HDD, RAM, and Swap
The minimum requirements for installing the siduction variants are
described on the manual page Live ISO
content.
With 15 GB hard disk space and 2 GB RAM you are currently on the safe
side. When installing on a partition formatted with Btrfs, we advise 50
GBytes of disk space.
A swap partition should be created on PCs with 1 GByte RAM or less. More
than 2 GByte swap is rarely required and only useful for suspend to disk
and server systems.
Partitioning
The partitioning of the drives depends on many factors:
the chosen siduction variant
size of the available drives and RAM
single-boot or dual-boot with an already installed system (Windows,
Linux, MAC)
sharing of data for the installed systems
Examples and sizes for different installation situations are
described on the manual page Partitioning.
We recommend leaving the /home directory on the root
partition. The /home directory should be the place where
individual configurations are stored, and only those. For all other
private data, including .ssh, .gnupg, and the
mail archives, a separate data partition should be created and linked to
the /home directory if necessary. The advantages for data
stability, data backup, and also in case of data recovery are almost
immeasurable.
The partitioning can be done during installation or already in
advance during the live session with the following programs: Gparted,
a graphical user interface program for GTK desktops
KDE Partition Manager, another graphical user interface program for Qt
desktops gdisk,
recommended for UEFI hardware with GTP partition tables cfdisk, only
for older hardware with traditional BIOS and MBR partition tables
File systems
We recommend the ext4 file system, which is used as
the default file system on siduction. This applies to all partitions if
only Linux operating systems are used.
For a dual-boot installation with Windows, a separate data
partition with the NTFS file system makes sense. Linux
can read and write to it; on Windows it is the default file system.
For a dual-boot installation with MAC, it also makes sense
to have a separate data partition, but with the HFS or
HFS+ file system. Linux and MAC can have read and write
access to it.
Duplication to another
computer
The following console command creates a list of installed software
packages. This list can be used to install an identical software
selection on another computer or in the event of a new installation:
We recommend to copy this text file to a USB drive or a disk of your
choice.
The text file can then be copied to the target systems
$HOME directory and be used as a reference to install the
required program packages. You can install the complete package list
via
~# apt install $(/home/username/installed.txt)
The Calamares installer
During the installation, the computer should preferably be connected
to the Internet because Calamares uses the GeoIP service to determine
default settings for localization and time.
The installation program can be started comfortably via the
icon on the desktop or in the menu: “System” > “Install
system”.
After a double click on the icon, Calamares starts and we see the
“Welcome” window.
calamares welcome
If an internet connection is provided, the correct language should
already be set here.
In the next window (“Location”), you have the
possibility to make changes to region, timezone, and
system language, as well as the date and number
format.
calamares location
Next, you can set up the keyboard.
calamares keyboard
In the upper section, the keyboard is displayed graphically and the
changes are visible immediately. At the bottom, there is an input line
to test the keyboard layout.
Then we reach the already mentioned partitioning, which
determines the parts of the harddisk(s) siduction uses.
calamares partitions
In our example, we use “Manual partitioning” because the
partitions have already been created in advance and we only need to
select the correct installation target. After clicking “Next”,
the following window appears where we can select and edit the individual
partitions.
calamares work on partitions
We use the partitions:
sda7 for / (root)
sda6 for /data together with the Linux system already
present on sda3 and sda4
After selecting the partition in question and pressing the
“Change” button, a window opens where we enter the above
mountpoint and also format sda7 with the ext4 file
system. The partition sda6 is not formatted because we want to use the
data already stored there together with the existing Linux system.
We do not need to edit the swap partition (sda5) since it will be
automatically detected and integrated during the installation.
We can see the result of our efforts in the next image.
calamares partitions finish
Next, we set username, login name, computer name, user password,
and root password (remember them well!). The passwords should not be too
simple for security reasons. Additional users can be added after
installation in a terminal with adduser.
calamares users
We explicitly recommend not to use the options
“Log in automatically without password prompt” and
“Use the same password for the administrator account”.
They both represent a security risk on their own (see also sudo). If both options
are enabled, entering passwords is just a farce!
After pressing the “Next” button, a summary of all
previously made entries appears. Now you still have the possibility to
make changes via “Back”. If you are satisfied with the result,
a click on “Install” opens the small warning window in which
you have to confirm the installation.
calamares summary
Now the installation starts. This takes some time depending on
the hardware. The progress will be displayed respectively. Even if it
takes a little longer, please do not abort the installation, but give
the process time.
calamares install
At the end, we get the possibility to reboot into the newly
installed system.
calamares reboot
Remove the CD from the drive before rebooting!
Encrypt system
Since siduction 2021.2 Farewell, the installer provides the
possibility to install the complete system onto an encrypted partition
or hard disk. Only the first stage of the boot manager Grub is
located (without encryption) on the “BIOS-boot” partition. Grub
asks for the encrypted installations password at the beginning of every
boot process before the boot menu appears.
The partitioning described in step 5 above is now slightly different.
When selecting one of the first three options, the function “Encrypt
system” appears in addition, where we also enter the password at
the same time.
calamares encrypt system
If we use “Manual partitioning”, we need an empty, unused
area on the hard disk. In case this is not available, we first delete
one or more partitions that are no longer needed. Then we create the new
partition.
calamares, manual partitioning encrypt
1
In the next step, the function “Encrypt” is selectable
now.
calamares, manual partitioning encrypt
2
We enter our password and then select the root directory
/ as mount point.
After finishing the partitioning, we continue the installation with the
menu item “User” as described above in step 6.
Add user
To add new users with automatic takeover of group permissions, run
the following command as root:
~# adduser <username>
Pressing the Enter key will bring up
more options that allow additional settings. Finally, a prompt appears,
asking to enter the password twice.
siduction specific desktop icons (for the manual and IRC) must be
added yourself.
icon on the desktop or in the menu: “System” > “Install
system”.
