Debian Etch Installation Report
From GLUG-BOM
Contents |
Starting Up
I installed Etch a couple of days ago using Vihan's DVDs. Installation was smooth and nearly painless. I'll try to upload all the screenshots, but here's the text for the time being.
Note that I won't be commenting about the time it took me to complete the installation. Firstly, nearly all the distributions get installed pretty quickly these days - at least the non-interactive part of the installation. Secondly, it would be wrong to count the time taken for installation here because of the choices I made. Debian certainly requires quite a lot of clicks to get installed, but that's the cost of the flexibility it offers I guess. I wouldn't want to lose out on that. Anyway..
Hardware
- AMD Sempron64 2500+ Processor. Note that I installed the i386 version of Etch.
- MSI K8M800 motherboard.
- 1GB RAM
- NVIDIA GeForce FX5200 graphics card.
- LG DVD Writer (HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-4163B)
Initial Impressions
I booted up with the first DVD. As is my habit, I checked all the different boot options available and decided to go with `expertgui vga=791'. It started up the X server on 5th console. 1st wasn't useable. 2 and 3 had the shell access and 4 was for syslog (or so it seemed to me).
The very first thing I noticed was a button labelled `Screenshot'. Ok, awesome. I clicked it and it popped up a message saying something like `Screenshot saved as /var/log/debian-installer_main-menu_0.png'. Cool! Another thing I noticed was the very pleasant theme in use. It wasn't Blue, which was a big relief. A nice magenta theme. Minimalistic, but quite a useable GUI. Very pleasant.
I was presented with the exact options the normal ncurses based expert installation mode would offer me, which I loved. I like control. I'd like to add something here though. A couple of years ago, as a newbie, this structure had scared me. The problem was that it allowed me to jump to any of the steps and it would get too confusing to know what I had done away with and what I had missed. So, here I just decided to go with the flow. It went smoothly enough.
Now, rather than provide details about each and every screen I encountered, I'll just add a few comments that came to my mind at a certain stage. You can see all the stages in the screenshots anyway.
Annoyances
The first issue I encountered was at the network configuration part. At one stage, I clicked the `Go Back' button and bam! It dropped me to the 1st virtual console. A couple of seconds later I'm back into X, at the main menu and had to redo all the network configuration. Isn't it suppose to allow me to go back one step at a time?
Secondly, I think during the package manager configuration part, I chose to configure the network mirrors. It started querying the mirrors I guess. I hadn't realised that the internet would be inaccessible because I hadn't dialled in (Sify crap). Anyway, so while it was querying, only the Screenshot button was active. I pressed it and the thing crashed and put me back at the main menu.
I was a bit surprised with the lack of options presented at the package management screen. It basically presented me with a few categories and just went on installing whatever it liked. I would certainly have liked a detailed package selection the way SuSE's YaST or even Mandrake's installer offers(ed). I hope I didn't miss something, but the lack of flexibility here was quite disappointing.
An interesting screen came up about package management. Quoting it.. ``Some non-free software has been made to work with Debian. Though this software is not at all a part of Debian, standard Debian tools can be used to install it. This software has varying licenses which may prevent you from using, modifying or sharing it. Please choose whether you want to have it available anyway. Interesting.
A MAJOR Security Bug
There came a screen about sudo. It allowed me to choose whether I wanted to use sudo or normal root access. I decided to try out the sudo thing and proceeded. I was asked to set up a normal user account which would have root access through sudo. Fine. No root password was asked for. That's still fine.
After booting up the newly installed system, I logged into gnome with the normal user account. Opened up a terminal and did a sudo vim /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Hehehe, nice warning. Anyway, that's all fine.
Then I found this Applications>Accessories>Root Terminal in the menu. I started it up and found that a gnome window asking me for the root password popped up. Assuming that it wanted my password, I typed it and pressed entered and I got a wrong password screen. Eh? Fine. So maybe I made a typo. Let's see.. Huh? Same thing again. Hmmm.
After you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable must be the truth. Ok. Weird.. I didn't enter anything and pressed enter. I had root access. :O. I immediately switched to the first console, typed in root at the login prompt and pressed enter for a blank password. I was logged in. Now that's a pretty HUGE security hole that. Anurag suggested that I should update first and check if this bug still exists. Well, I haven't managed to update yet. I thought I should mention this anyway.
Another thing. I chose to install the network services and databases while installing. The system booted up with nearly all of them starting up. Isn't that a security risk too, especially since I hadn't been asked anything about the firewall configuration during installation?
Final Thoughts
I liked the GUI installer. The installation process itself is quite unchanged from Sarge if I remember correctly. Having never used Debian before this, I am not qualified to comment about any other changes. All in all, it was a pleasant experience.
--Floyd_n_milan 00:47, 28 February 2007 (IST)
