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Installing Debian 9 from live image

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Huecuva
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Installing Debian 9 from live image

#1 Post by Huecuva »

Hi.

So I've downloaded the live USB image of Debian 9 and it appears that you can use the live image to try out Stretch OR you can boot the installer and install the OS, but not both. There does not appear to be a way to launch the installer from the live image and install while you're running live Debian from the USB like EVERY OTHER LINUX DISTRO EVER. I realize the whole live image thing is new to Debian and I installed Jesse on my server without using a live image, but it just seems like the option to install the OS should have been built into the live image. I have tried typing

Code: Select all

sudo debian-installer-launcher
in the terminal and it just said the command was not found. Am I missing something?

The main problem is that I'm trying to install Stretch on an SD card, which needs to be mounted before I can do that. Unfortunately, the installer doesn't mount the SD card and doesn't even detect it as being present but when I boot the live Debian image, it is there, and I can mount it but I cannot install Debian on it.

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Re: Installing Debian 9 from live image

#2 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

To install Debian from the "live" system follow this guide:

https://www.debian.org/releases/stretch ... 03.html.en

I like to use Grml's ISO image and their lovely grml-debootstrap(8) tool.

https://grml.org/
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debiman
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Re: Installing Debian 9 from live image

#3 Post by debiman »

Huecuva wrote:There does not appear to be a way to launch the installer from the live image and install while you're running live Debian from the USB like EVERY OTHER LINUX DISTRO EVER.
EVERY? EVER? Linux has been around much longer than since you hit puberty, and just a few years ago that was the standard. if there was a live version at all.

but yeah i understand, you were frustrated and needed to vent because they didn't create it to your personal needs.

i hope you manage to use a search engine (because you most likely aren't the first to encounter this problem), find a solution, and apply it.

Wheelerof4te
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Re: Installing Debian 9 from live image

#4 Post by Wheelerof4te »

Oh, boy. Installer is bootable by Grub, keep hitting "down" key when you restart the system. You'll see it in a menu.
Better advice would be to just use DVD 1 image to install. Live images are mostly for testing and repairs. Plus they contain some random software.

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Re: Installing Debian 9 from live image

#5 Post by None1975 »

Just download network installer and install it. Live images is used for one purpose-make sure that all components of hardware works properly.
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Re: Installing Debian 9 from live image

#6 Post by Wheelerof4te »

^Many network cards (wi-fi mostly) don't work on default Debian netinstall image. Getting DVD 1 image is safer. You can have the entire main repo in just 3 DVDs.

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Re: Installing Debian 9 from live image

#7 Post by p.H »

Wheelerof4te wrote:Oh, boy. Installer is bootable by Grub, keep hitting "down" key when you restart the system. You'll see it in a menu.
I have never used Debian live images, but IIUC this just boots the standard Debian installer instead of the live system, it does not launch the installation from the live system. So I'm afraid it won't solve the OP's problem being the lack of support of the SD card reader in the installer.
Wheelerof4te wrote:Many network cards (wi-fi mostly) don't work on default Debian netinstall image. Getting DVD 1 image is safer.
Some network cards don't work due to the lack of required non-free firmwares in the official Debian installer images. The official DVD 1 image does not include any non-free material either so it does not help making the network work, it just allows to do a more complete installation offline. Unofficial images including non-free firmwares are available.
Wheelerof4te wrote:You can have the entire main repo in just 3 DVDs.
Not quite. The entire main archive for an architecture takes about 14 DVDs, not 3. Only the first 3 DVD images are available on HTTP or FTP mirrors. The other DVD images must be built using Jigdo.

Huecuva
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Re: Installing Debian 9 from live image

#8 Post by Huecuva »

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:To install Debian from the "live" system follow this guide:

https://www.debian.org/releases/stretch ... 03.html.en

I like to use Grml's ISO image and their lovely grml-debootstrap(8) tool.

https://grml.org/
I had found that solution but wasn't aware that it would work for my situation. However, I'm not willing to go through that messy business just for this little pet project, and I'm not completely married to the idea of using Debian for this particular purpose. I was originally going to use #!++, but it turns out I don't have the patience to try and figure out how to set up an MPD/Icecast stream on such a minimal OS. I'll just use another distro or find some other solution. I was hoping I was just missing something simple like Mint has. Unfortunately Mint doesn't appear to work any better and that doesn't leave much hope for MintDE. Thanks for the actually helpful answer, though. There has to be a simpler way to do what I'm trying to do, but if I can't find anything better, I might give that a shot if I feel ambitious enough.
debiman wrote:EVERY? EVER? Linux has been around much longer than since you hit puberty, and just a few years ago that was the standard. if there was a live version at all.
No, it hasn't. And >5 years is not "just a few years ago" I've been using Mint and their live USB images to install for years, thanks. All I'm saying is that most distros can be installed from their live images and Debian should maybe just get with the times, yeah?
debiman wrote:i hope you manage to use a search engine (because you most likely aren't the first to encounter this problem), find a solution, and apply it.
I looked for about half an hour and couldn't find the solution I was looking for, which is why I posted here. It doesn't matter how long I would have spent looking, it appears the solution I was looking for doesn't exist.
p.H wrote:I have never used Debian live images, but IIUC this just boots the standard Debian installer instead of the live system, it does not launch the installation from the live system. So I'm afraid it won't solve the OP's problem being the lack of support of the SD card reader in the installer.
Correct.
p.H wrote:Some network cards don't work due to the lack of required non-free firmwares in the official Debian installer images. The official DVD 1 image does not include any non-free material either so it does not help making the network work, it just allows to do a more complete installation offline. Unofficial images including non-free firmwares are available.
It's funny how live Debian actually detects my wifi card and lets me connect but the the live Mint does not. It's also weird that I'm able to connect to wifi in the live Debian, but the Debian installer often has a lot of trouble either detecting the wifi card or connecting to the wireless network. Yet another strange thing is that, while I've already mentioned that the live Debian session will detect and mount my SD card, the live Mint will not detect that either.
Last edited by Huecuva on 2018-02-12 21:14, edited 2 times in total.

Huecuva
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Re: Installing Debian 9 from live image

#9 Post by Huecuva »

Happy now?
Last edited by Huecuva on 2018-02-12 21:12, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Installing Debian 9 from live image

#10 Post by GarryRicketson »

==== edited===
To explain, since the OP did remove the full quoted posts, yes, Happy now,
thank you

Why are you simply full quoting all these posts ?

Please read: Please learn to stop "full quoting."
Please stop doing that.
Last edited by GarryRicketson on 2018-02-12 21:28, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Installing Debian 9 from live image

#11 Post by bw123 »

None1975 wrote:Just download network installer and install it. Live images is used for one purpose-make sure that all components of hardware works properly.
I agree with this. I like live images and use them sometimes, but the last one I tried (kde) would not install the system that it ran as a 'live system' it just ran the netinstall. It wasn't a good choice for me because I had no network.

There used to be some "launch debian installer" links on the live image desktops, but I never used them, or win32installer either.

Just do netinstall if possible, or install from cd1 altering the last step of tasksel to your preferences.

The issue about detecting an sdcard, might depend on the hardware, so if OP really wants help solving it, the fourm needs some hardware info.
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Huecuva
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Re: Installing Debian 9 from live image

#12 Post by Huecuva »

I'm skeptical that either of those methods would detect my SD card.

As for hardware info, the device I'm attempting to install on is something called a FitPC Pro 3 Barebone and you can find the specs here. It has 4GB of RAM installed. I also put one of these in the spare miniPCI-E slot with a 32GB SD card in it, which is the one I'm trying to install Debian on. Before you ask why I'm using that instead of just using the hard drive or SSD I no doubt have plugged into the available SATA port, the reasons are slightly complicated and not relevant to this thread. If someone really wants to know, I can tell you.

It's funny that the specs mention the official supported Linux is Mint 18, yet my live Mint 18.3 image will not detect the wifi card.

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debiman
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Re: Installing Debian 9 from live image

#13 Post by debiman »

Huecuva wrote:The main problem is that I'm trying to install Stretch on an SD card, which needs to be mounted before I can do that. Unfortunately, the installer doesn't mount the SD card and doesn't even detect it as being present but when I boot the live Debian image, it is there, and I can mount it but I cannot install Debian on it.
i don't think the sd card needs to be mounted.
but it sure needs to be detected by the installer.
have you selected manual partitioning?
if you still can't see it it probably requires some drivers that are not present on the installation disk.
my guess is, the chroot method is your best bet then.

PS: in the comments here, other people had your problem.
but of course you didn't find that when you were searching the net for half an hour.
google search bubble?

Huecuva
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Re: Installing Debian 9 from live image

#14 Post by Huecuva »

I have tried manual partitioning. It still doesn't detect the SD card.

No, I did not find that during my half hour of searching. Google search bubble? It's possible. I will have a closer look at that link when I have more time. It just might help. Thanks.

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Re: Installing Debian 9 from live image

#15 Post by sunrat »

Did you try switching to another console after booting the installer, eg. Ctrl-Alt-F2 and manually mounting the SD card?
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spartrekus
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Re: Installing Debian 9 from live image

#16 Post by spartrekus »

Huecuva wrote:Hi.

So I've downloaded the live USB image of Debian 9 and it appears that you can use the live image to try out Stretch OR you can boot the installer and install the OS, but not both. There does not appear to be a way to launch the installer from the live image and install while you're running live Debian from the USB like EVERY OTHER LINUX DISTRO EVER. I realize the whole live image thing is new to Debian and I installed Jesse on my server without using a live image, but it just seems like the option to install the OS should have been built into the live image. I have tried typing

Code: Select all

sudo debian-installer-launcher
in the terminal and it just said the command was not found. Am I missing something?

The main problem is that I'm trying to install Stretch on an SD card, which needs to be mounted before I can do that. Unfortunately, the installer doesn't mount the SD card and doesn't even detect it as being present but when I boot the live Debian image, it is there, and I can mount it but I cannot install Debian on it.
you could maybe try to unpack the image squashfs to a drive.
Bring the grub sector 446 to the disk /dev/sda (will destroy all)
Bring the partitions with fdisk, create ext3, and place the content of squashfs, in other word populate, and do not forget to check the initramfs and kernel (to be found at boot)

Huecuva
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Re: Installing Debian 9 from live image

#17 Post by Huecuva »

Well, I managed to get the graphical installer to detect the SD card with a USB adapter. I figured I'd just edit fstab when the install was done and then move the SD card to the internal reader. Unfortunately, the installer seems to have trouble properly partitioning the SD card and leaves it completely unreadable by anything I tried until finally I gave up and used my Widows 10 rig to make it usable again.

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Re: Installing Debian 9 from live image

#18 Post by spartrekus »

Huecuva wrote:Well, I managed to get the graphical installer to detect the SD card with a USB adapter. I figured I'd just edit fstab when the install was done and then move the SD card to the internal reader. Unfortunately, the installer seems to have trouble properly partitioning the SD card and leaves it completely unreadable by anything I tried until finally I gave up and used my Widows 10 rig to make it usable again.
I do not understand what you did. likely you need gparted live on an sd to have a linux loaded on the ram, with all stuffs
https://downloads.sourceforge.net/gpart ... 1-i686.iso
once you have this you have a linux on ram on an usb stick, to start to play

1: which live image do you want to have on your harddisk?
have you a squashfs image, loaded from the grub.cfg
maybe you could give us more infos...

everything is possiible with linux ;) !
(and FreeBSD too ;)))

Huecuva
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Re: Installing Debian 9 from live image

#19 Post by Huecuva »

What I did was put my SD card in a USB card reader and then launch the graphical Debian installer. The installer detected the SD card just fine but when I selected the option to use guided partitioning and use the whole disk, it tries and then fails, leaving the SD card completely unreadable. I had to use Windows 10 to repartition and format it before anything would read it again because GParted and Parted Magic (UBCD) couldn't do anything with it. Yes, I tried them both. I'm pretty sure GParted isn't going to help me partition the SD card for Linux. I'm not sure what other "infos" you need.

Like I said, I'll just use the SD card for storage and install Debian on an SSD instead. It will make it a bit more of a pain to put more music on the storage drive (SD card) when I decide to do that instead of just being able to pop it out, plug it into my Windows rig and dump some MP3s on it, but...eh. C'est la vie.

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Re: Installing Debian 9 from live image

#20 Post by p.H »

Huecuva wrote:I selected the option to use guided partitioning and use the whole disk, it tries and then fails, leaving the SD card completely unreadable. I had to use Windows 10 to repartition and format it before anything would read it again because GParted and Parted Magic (UBCD) couldn't do anything with it.
1) IMO, guided partitioning sucks.

2) IME, GParted and generally all libparted-based partition managers (including partman, the Debian installer partitioning tool), behave badly with invalid or non-standard partition tables. The good old fdisk often works better on these.

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