Upgrade install

[iwilliam]

Hi,

I have a base install on a hard drive in my laptop ( I had to do this way - I have no floopy or CD so I had to do a base install on another machine and then swap it over )

Is there any way I can upgrade this to a full install i.e. get all the packages etc that you would get when you do an install form a network mirror. I can only get to the # prompr at the moment - no x-windows etc

Thanks

Ian

[izar]

You can either use aptitude to install individual packages or select a task and install the necessary packages for the chosen task or you can do it manually with the tasksel command, which will basically do the same.
This is what I get by issuing the command: tasksel --list-tasks

tasksel --list-tasks
u desktop Desktop environment
i web-server Web server
u print-server Print server
u dns-server DNS server
u file-server File server
u mail-server Mail server
u database-server SQL database
u laptop Laptop
u manual manual package selection

You can choose a task and install it by doing:

Code: Select all

tasksel install <task>

You can also check the packages that a task will install

Code: Select all

tasksel --task-packages <task>

I take it that you have a working /etc/apt/sources.list file pointing to the appropriate mirrors

[iwilliam]

Hi,

I have edited sources.list so it is valid, however I have just noticed that I do not have any ethernet cards enabled so I will have to do that first - I am not sure how to do that on my Dell Latitude L400 ?

Ian

[izar]

Edit your /etc/network/interfaces file so that it looks like this:

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.2
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.1.20

Makes the necessary changes for your system. In my case my computer's IP is 192.168.1.2 and my router's is 192.168.1.20
You may also have to edit /etc/resolv.conf to enter your primary and secondary DNS:

nameserver xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
nameserver yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy

Restart the network services (do "/etc/init.d/networking restart") or reboot to see if everything works

[iwilliam]

Hi,

I have

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

in my interfaces file but when I ifconfig it only seems to show the loopback, I also have a ralink wireless card (Based on Ralink RT2500 Chipset, this card is hardware identical to Belkin F5D7010(v2), Linksys WMP54G(v4) and D-Link DWL-G510)

[izar]

Your interfaces file looks all right.
It looks like your card is not recognised.
Try

Code: Select all

lspci

to get a list of your hardware.
Then check if the module for your card is installed:

Code: Select all

lsmod

Use modprobe your-card-module to install it
You may also try:

Code: Select all

dhclient eth0

I hope this helps.

[iwilliam]

Hi,

I get "command not found" when I try lspci

[Telemachus]

That probably means that you don't have the package pciutils installed. (That's the package that provides the lspci command.) I think that package is part of the "Standard" task during installation, but you may have installed only the base system. Of course, the problem is that you can't install pciutils itself very easily, since you can't install anything very easily if you have no wireless and no option to use a cd. Do you have a non-wireless ethernet connection on that computer?

The other alternative I can think of is to download the lspci .deb on another computer, load it onto a usb thumbdrive and then put it on the laptop using that.

If you have no cd, no ethernet and your wireless doesn't work out-of-the-box, this could end up being a slow process. (I mean the larger process, not lspci or pciutils, which is relatively easy.)

[izar]

Hi,

I get "command not found" when I try lspci

As Telemachus says you will have to download the pciutils package and install it like this:

Code: Select all

dpkg -i pciutils_2.2.4~pre4-1_i386.deb

To be on the safe side download and install libpci2 first as pciutils has libpci2 as a dependency and may complain about this on install.