installing Debian with debootstrap and LNX-BBC

[Kragen Javier Sitaker]

I'm installing Debian on a machine remotely using debootstrap from
LNX-BBC.  Here are my notes.

LNX-BBC automatically mounts your disks:

    cd /mnt/rw/discs/disc0/part1

But we have to remount them read-write:

    mount -no remount,rw .

Then download debootstrap according to
http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/apcs04.html.en --- although
probably http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/i386/apds03.html.en is
better now!  (These are chapters of the Debian GNU/Linux Installation
Guide.)

    mkdir debootstrap
    cd debootstrap
    wget http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/d/debootstrap/debootstrap_0.3.3.1_all.deb
    ar -x debootstrap_0.3.3.1_all.deb 

Can't extract data.tar.gz in the root directory (read-only filesystem)
so I am hoping to use DEBOOTSTRAP_DIR to enable debootstrap to find it
here:

    tar xzvf data.tar.gz 
    export DEBOOTSTRAP_DIR=/mnt/rw/discs/disc0/part1/debootstrap/usr/lib/debootstrap
    usr/sbin/debootstrap --arch i386 etch /mnt/rw/discs/disc0/part1 \
        http://http.us.debian.org/debian

I think this didn't succeed, because of this message:
     I: Installing core packages...
     W: Failure trying to run: chroot /mnt/rw/discs/disc0/part1 dpkg --force-depends --install var/cache/apt/archives/base-files_4_i386.deb var/cache/apt/archives/base-passwd_3.5.11_i386.deb

It looks like it may have failed because of a PATH problem:
    [root at lnx-bbc:/mnt/rw/discs/disc0/part1/debootstrap]# chroot \
        /mnt/rw/discs/disc0/part1 dpkg --force-depends \
        --install var/cache/apt/archives/base-files_4_i386.deb \
        var/cache/apt/archives/base-passwd_3.5.11_i386.deb
    chroot: cannot execute dpkg: No such file or directory

That's because dpkg is in /usr/bin, and /usr/bin isn't in the $PATH on
LNX-BBC.  So I repeat the process:

    export PATH=/usr/bin:$PATH
    usr/sbin/debootstrap --arch i386 etch /mnt/rw/discs/disc0/part1 http://http.us.debian.org/debian

Same problem, but this time when I try running dpkg by hand, it says:
    dpkg: `install-info' not found on PATH.
    dpkg: `update-rc.d' not found on PATH.
    dpkg: 2 expected program(s) not found on PATH.
    NB: root's PATH should usually contain /usr/local/sbin, 
        /usr/sbin and /sbin.

And in this case, the absence of /usr/sbin is the problem.
    export PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
and this time I get
    I: Base system installed successfully.

And I'm in:
    [root at lnx-bbc:/mnt/rw/discs/disc0/part1/debootstrap]# LANG= chroot .. /bin/bash

So I can
    apt-get update
    apt-get install vim
    vim /etc/fstab
and I put these in my fstab:
    /dev/hda1         /             ext3    defaults                 0    1
    /dev/hdb1         /bigdisk      ext3    defaults                 0    2
    /dev/hdb2         /bigdisk2      ext3    defaults                 0    2
    proc             /proc         proc    defaults                 0    0
    /dev/fd0         /mnt/floppy   auto    noauto,rw,sync,user,exec 0    0
    /dev/cdrom       /mnt/cdrom    iso9660 noauto,ro,user,exec      0    0

I didn't include /sys, /dev, /dev/pts, /proc/bus/usb, /tmp, or
/dev/shm in the fstab because they aren't in it on my other Debian
system.  I didn't include swap because there's no free space on the
disk, and I figure I can use a swapfile anyway.  Later.

And then I
    mount /proc

I'm kind of guessing about the device names, since LNX-BBC uses devfs,
but this seems to suggest that they are correct:
    root at lnx-bbc:/# cat /proc/ide/ide0/hda/model
    ST3200826A
    root at lnx-bbc:/# cat /proc/ide/ide0/hdb/model
    WDC WD800JB-00ETA0

Then
    apt-get install console-data  # and select qwerty, US American
And then I put this into /etc/network/interfaces:
    auto lo
    iface lo inet loopback
    iface eth0 inet dhcp

Vim kept complaining about not being able to put stuff in
/home/root/.viminfo, which is under LNX-BBC's $HOME, so I did this:
    ln -s /root /home/root

I'm pretty sure I'll need "alias eth0 8139too" in /etc/modules.conf or
whatever its modern equivalent is, because apparently the RealTek
8139-based Ethernet card that's in the machine doesn't get
auto-detected; from the LNX-BBC boot:
    8139too Fast Ethernet driver 0.9.25
    PCI: Found IRQ 5 for device 02:08.0
    PCI: Sharing IRQ 5 with 00:02.0
    eth0: SMC1211TX EZCard 10/100 (RealTek RTL8139) at 0x1000, 
        00:10:b5:ec:xx:xx, IRQ 5
    eth0:  Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8139C'
    eth0: Setting 100mbps full-duplex based on auto-negotiated 
        partner ability 45e1.
    eth0: no IPv6 routers present

First I have to figure out what the modern equivalent of modules.conf
is, though.  For now:
    echo 8139too >> /etc/modules

Then
    echo gentle.murch-sitaker.org>/etc/hostname
    tzconfig
    vi /etc/hosts  # and paste in the standard hosts, changing DebianHostName
    vi /etc/apt/sources.list  # and paste in the standard sources
    aptitude update
    aptitude install locales
    dpkg-reconfigure locales  # install all, select en_US.UTF-8

It was probably a mistake to install all locales, because it took a
long time to build them all.  (The CPU on this old machine is fairly
slow.)

Then to install a kernel and a bootloader:
    aptitude install kernel-package
    aptitude install screen  # so i can read a man page while editing the file
    mount -t devpts devpts /dev/pts  # to get screen to work
    screen 
    vi /etc/kernel-img.conf # and I put the following in it:
	do_symlinks = yes
	relative_links = yes
	do_bootloader = no
	do_bootfloppy = no
	warn_initrd = no
	postinst_hook = update-grub
	postrm_hook   = update-grub
    aptitude install kernel-image-2.6-386  # this failed due to no grub
    aptitude install grub
    mknod /dev/hda b 3 0

But then I ran into trouble:
    lnx-bbc:/# grub-install /dev/hda
    Probing devices to guess BIOS drives. This may take a long time.
    Could not find device for /boot: Not found or not a block device.

So I thought maybe I'd strace it.
    aptitude install strace
resulted in some more progress on the kernel front:
    Could not find /boot/grub/menu.lst file. Would you like 
        /boot/grub/menu.lst generated for you? (y/N) y

At this point, it hung, and I started to get the idea that aptitude
really isn't better than apt-get after all.  I control-Ced it, and it
installed strace and tried again.  This time I had strace, but it
wasn't helpful to diagnose the hang.

The main thing strace told me about the grub-install problem was that
grub-install was a shell script.  I read some of it, but it's 500+
lines long, so I gave up before understanding clearly what was going
on.

So I gave up on grub and decided to switch to lilo.
    aptitude remove grub
    vi /etc/kernel-img.conf # remove the *hook lines, set do_bootloader=yes
    aptitude install lilo
    vi /etc/lilo.conf  # and put the following in it:
	boot=/dev/hda
	root=/dev/hda1
	install=menu
	delay=20
	lba32
	image=/vmlinuz
	label=Debian
    lilo  # but this produces an error:
	Warning: '/proc/partitions' does not match '/dev' directory structure.
	    Name change: '/dev/hdc' -> '/dev/hdc'
	part_nowrite check:: No such file or directory

(XXX I am hoping that the "lba32" in there is correct.)

I am hypothesizing that this error is from /dev/hda1 not existing, so:
    mknod /dev/hda1 b 3 1
    lilo
This does seem to improve things:
    Warning: '/proc/partitions' does not match '/dev' directory structure.
	Name change: '/dev/hdc' -> '/dev/hdc'
    Cannot proceed maybe you need to add this to your lilo.conf:
	    disk=/dev/hdb inaccessible
    (real error shown below)
    Fatal: open /dev/hdb: No such file or directory

I don't know why it thinks it should be touching /dev/hdb or /dev/hdc,
but I'll go ahead and let it:
    mknod /dev/hdb b 3 64
    mknod /dev/hdb1 b 3 65
    mknod /dev/hdb2 b 3 66
    mknod /dev/hdc b 22 0
    lilo
And this time it seems to have been successful:
    Warning: '/proc/partitions' does not match '/dev' directory structure.
	Name change: '/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/disc' -> '/dev/hda'
    Added Debian *

Now I exit from the screen and the chrooted shell in order to see my
disk-space status; there appears to be plenty of space left.  So I try
the 'tasksel install standard' recommendation from the manual.
    LANG= chroot .. /bin/bash
    tasksel install standard

But this installs SELinux and Exim, among other things.  So:
    apt-get remove exim4  # doesn't work
    apt-get remove exim4-base  # works but uninstalls at, mailx, and mutt
    apt-get remove selinux-policy-refpolicy-targeted 

Then I needed to remember to install sshd:
    apt-get install openssh-server

Then I noticed (via netstat -an) that there were some sockets, so I
lsof | grep TCP and | grep UDP to see who they were.  They were
portmap and rpc.statd, so I removed them:
    apt-get remove nfs-common portmap
That didn't work --- hung forever trying to stop the portmap daemon.
I ended up killing the process by hand, removing /sbin/portmap, and
then re-removing the package.

Then I figured I'd update the passwd, shadow, and group files so I
could log in; I merged the original versions with the newer ones.

Then I overwrote the stuff in /etc/ssh with the old versions:
    lnx-bbc:/kragen/gentle-backup/etc/ssh# cp * /etc/ssh

Hope that's compatible!

Just to test, I used ps x | grep ssh to find the pids of the LNX-BBC
shell process, and then inside screen, I ran this command:
    kill -9 641 666; /etc/init.d/sshd start

It worked in the sense that I now had an ssh server running in the
environment that I hoped would become the new system, but it was a
mistake in the sense that I hadn't yet installed sudo!  So I asked my
friend with physical access to run these commands before we reboot,
which worked:
    chroot /mnt/rw/discs/disc0/part1 apt-get install sudo
    chroot /mnt/rw/discs/disc0/part1 visudo  # and add me!

It didn't reboot properly --- LILO died with L 00 00 00 ... --- but
LBA wasn't enabled in the BIOS.  While debugging this, my friend found
an error in the Portuguese translation of the BIOS.  We gave up
debugging it for a while.

Because the machine was down for a long time, the DHCP server gave it
a different address, so I put the new address into DNS.

Now I have a problem; my server is running inside a chroot, but I
can't mount the partitions /bigdisk and /bigdisk2 inside the chroot
because they are already mounted outside of it; and I can't unmount
them because "umount" can't see them.

Apparently even the Linux 2.4.19 used by LNX-BBC does this clever
thing where you can't see /proc/*/cwd for processes chrooted somewhere
above you, so I can't "sudo chroot /proc/1/root bash".  However, the
standard C approach to breaking out of the chroot does work (here
without error handling for brevity):
        chroot(argv[1]);
        chdir("../../../../../../../../../..");
	chroot(".");
        execl(argv[2], argv[2], 0);

I was going to do things the hard way and inject code into a process
running outside the chroot by means of gdb, but then I added
error-checking to the C code and got it working.
    sudo ./unchroot flickr-interesting/ /bin/bash
    # and then unmount things in the resulting root shell
    sudo mount /bigdisk
    sudo mount /bigdisk2
    sudo /etc/init.d/chrooted-apache start # this is me-specific

And now my web server is back up and running, for now.