Debian on VMWare - the first impressions

sven · 2006-08-22 10:27:57

I have had troubles with Linux-vserver after the grand testing move (archbootstrap doesn't work anymore) - and decided that I need more slow pace on upgrading.

So I wanted to try out an alternative for my server. I finally decided to give Debian a try because I don't like the bloat of RH and Fedora, then there are desktop distros or those distros who's package management is not too good. The goal was to avoid X11.

I downloaded the minimum cd image and started up VMWare. Then I typed linux26 at prompt. At the first sight I got creeps of Debian's installer. It seemed too graphical to me I like more the Arch way of doing partitioning with cfdisk and following the printed out wiki guide. Too many backs and forths in Debian installer and sometimes I even did not know in which step I was situtated.

On to the partitioning...I partitioned so that 20 MB for /boot and then for the rest of my 1.1 GB I set the filetype to lvm. Then on to configuring the lvm.... I modified volume groups, created them and then selected the parition I created in the last step. Then created logical volumes - root(300M), home(100M), swap(100M) and usr(500M). After a couple of 'leaves' I got back to partitioning main screen and there I had those lvm1 partitions - ready to have the file systems on them...or as I thought. I created reisers on them but had to reboot to get the lvm volumes re-read. After reboot I selected LVM option again and then LVM found them automatically. Then created reisers again and the installation of the files started.

Lilo got installed automatically (got no option to install the Grub) and it was time for the final reboot... Lilo loaded Debian successfully and the lvm volumes were made active. Then I got into ncurses screens with root password generation and also new user generation. The next important step was to select source for apt. I said "Yes" when got asked if I would like to add another apt source besides CD-ROM and then I got into the selection of the closest mirror. apt started to download the newest package files. After that I got to select the software I wanted to have. I select the manual option and got into aptitude.

Aptitude is like ncurses-jackman - but harder to use for an Archer. I didn't even know how to 'select' packages and how to move around... So typed '?' and I got

'+','-' to add/remove packages
'f10' could be used to check all the important commands in menus
'g' to install and update packages.
'f6','f7' to navigate between different views, 'q' to quit from one of them. aptitude tends to open new window when you select something for installation - so 'q' needs to be used there.

Great - like a window manager in ncurses. I am starting to like aptitude already...

sven · 2006-08-22 10:39:46

I started to wander around in /etc and it seemed really messy when compared with Arch - like where is the rc.d with all the daemons?! There are rcx.d - folders with soft links to init.d. And there is not equivalent to rc.conf, just environment where are the LANG and LANGUAGE defintions...

Checked the output of netstat -natp and saw that exim4 was started on startup. So where is the daemons array hidden in Debian... Found an article with info about rcconf tool. Installed it with apt-get and seemed fine - I could select the daemons I wanted to use.

Then there is also /etc/default - and this seems to be the location for daemons...or only their configurations. Daemons can be started from /etc/init.d.

As default Bash history was not working and .bashrc did not have any history-related settings. I made .bash-history and then added HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth and HISTSIZE=5000 - lines to .bashrc.

sven · 2006-08-22 17:39:48

Things went smoothly from that on, too. I made a new harddisk to Vmware and used lvm's commands like these:

pvcreate /dev/sdb
vgextend lvm1 /dev/sdb
lvextend -L+490M /dev/lvm1/usr
resize_reiserfs -f /dev/mapper/lvm1-usr

to add it to the array where the first one was - and everything worked just like it should. Then followed the instructions on a guide page to compile and install a new kernel the "Debian way". It went fine, too, except I guess I removed too much stuff from it to see if the method in the guide works. This vmware is way too slow to compile a full kernel with all the modules in it. Even this quite slim one compiled for over 2 hours on 2GHz Celeron that has 512MB memory and 160MB reserved for Debian.

I am happy with Debian this far after this brief tryout and I'll put it on my server. I'll be back with some comments again when I have it running.

cactus · 2006-08-23 17:40:06

I really like debian for servers myself too.

Arch Linux

#1 2006-08-22 10:27:57

Debian on VMWare - the first impressions

#2 2006-08-22 10:39:46

Re: Debian on VMWare - the first impressions

#3 2006-08-22 17:39:48

Re: Debian on VMWare - the first impressions

#4 2006-08-23 17:40:06

Re: Debian on VMWare - the first impressions

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