This is a work in progress, this means that I'm on it right now, it is not finished yet and it may breake your system!

Caveat

As you may already have guessed following this instruction may breake your systme and you are on your own to fix it again.

Preparing the Hard Disk

Partitioning

Use fdisk to partion your hard disk.

# fdisk /dev/hda

For the rest of this instruction we assume the following partition layout.

/dev/hda1 (83  Linux)        - for /
/dev/hda2 (82  Linux swap)   - as swap

Creating Filesystems

Below is how we get our / populated with ext3.

# mke2fs -j /dev/hda1

And the same for our swap partion.

# mkswap /dev/hda2
# sync; sync; sync
# swapon /dev/hda2

The Base System

Mountig Root

# mkdir /mnt/ubuntu
# mount -t ext3 /dev/hda1 /mnt/ubuntu

Getting debootstrap

Debootstrap is a collection of scripts that we will use in the next step to set up a base system. We need an appropriate version of debootstrap from http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/d/debootstrap/ to make this work.

Make sure that binutils is installed on your system.

On an apt based system we can use dpkg to install it.

# wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/d/debootstrap/debootstrap_0.3.3.0ubuntu2_all.deb
# dpkg -i debootstrap_0.3.3.0ubuntu2_all.deb

If your current system is rpm based, use alien to install it or find a rpm on the web (http://azhrarn.underhanded.org/debootstrap-0.2.23-1.i386.rpm).

Installing the Base System

# /usr/sbin/debootstrap --arch i386 dapper /mnt/ubuntu http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu

(arch may be different for you, e.g. md64, hppa, ia64, powerpc, or sparc)

Basic Configuration

Set the Hostname

Change HOSTNAME to whatever suits your environment.

# echo HOSTNAME > /mnt/ubuntu/etc/hostname

fstab

# vim /mnt/ubuntu/etc/fstab

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    defaults        0       0
/dev/hda1       /               ext3    defaults,errors=remount-ro 0       1
/dev/hda2       none            swap    sw              0       0

Chrooting

mount -t proc none /mnt/ubuntu/proc
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/ubuntu/dev
LANG= chroot /mnt/ubuntu /bin/bash

Installing OpenSSH Server

apt-get install openssh-server

Install a Kernel

apt-get install ....

Installing GRUB

apt-get install grub
mkdir /boot/grub
cp /lib/grub/i386-pc/* /boot/grub
vim /boot/grub/grub.conf

# /boot/grub/grub.conf
default 0
timeout 3

title=Ubuntu
  root (hd0,0)
  kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1
  initrd /initrd.img

ln -s /boot/grub/grub.conf /boot/grub/menu.lst

# grub

grub> root (hd0,0)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit

Reboot

# exit

# umount /mnt/ubuntu/proc
# umount /mnt/ubuntu/dev
# umount /mnt/ubuntu
# reboot

Finishing

apt-get install ubuntu-standard

References

• ["Installation/FromKnoppix"]

• [http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml The Gentoo Handbook] contains a very good (Gentoo specific) [http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1 instruction on chrooted installation procedures].

• [http://doc.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/install/i386/apds03.html An other instruction] from the [http://doc.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/install/i386/index.html Ubuntu Installation Guide] is somewhat outdated and has shortcomings related to the bootloader installation.

• [http://www.underhanded.org/papers/debian-conversion/remotedeb.html HOWTO - Install Debian Onto a Remote Linux System] - A Debian specific HOWTO.