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.
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.
The partitioning of the drives depends on many factors:
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
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.
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:
~# dpkg -l|awk '/^ii/{ print $2 }'|grep -v -e ^lib -e -dev -e $(uname -r) >/home/username/installed.txt
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)
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.
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.
Next, you can set up the 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
At the end, we get the possibility to reboot into the newly installed system.
Remove the CD from the drive before rebooting!
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.
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.
In the next step, the function “Encrypt” is selectable now.
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.
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.
To remove a user, enter:
~# deluser <username>
More information:
man adduser
man deluser