This install document covers x86 ISO's ''current as of 20040414 release''
Installing Source Mage from an ISO is a very easy process. This document will guide you through the installation process step by step.
Boot-up
Reconfigure your bios so that it tries to boot off of a cd before the hard drive. Make sure there are no floppies in the drive and reboot. After it looks at the cd it should start a welcome screen up. It should say something like this:
SMGL-i386-<version>.iso kernel x.x.xx Then at the bottom it should say boot:v
At this screen you can normally just press enter and it will spout about your hardware and other information. Soon it should come to the initrd menu.
Initrd Menu
This menu is if you need to do anything special in order to install Source Mage. You can load modules (modules for various file systems, raid drivers, and various other drivers). Since you are installing from the ISO you can just leave it be and press Continue booting to continue with the installation. At this menu you can also choose what root device you would like to use if you are using the cd as a rescue cd.
= Install Menu =
note: some machines have this menu appear as a solid color (font color equal to background, this is due to a bug in the 2.6.8.1 framebuffer) if this is the case at the bootup screen type "install vga=791" and it should boot up with less aggressive framebuffer options.
note: The menus are guided (not all of them show up untill a certain point) but you can have all of the items shown by selecting Disable Guided Menu.
In this menu you have quite a few options. First you can view an introduction, which gives some basic information about Source Mage. Then
Restart Installation With this option it is now possible to restart from the beginning without having to reboot. After that you have
Native Language support Where you choose the font, keymap, language and editor for the installer and the new system.
Partition Drive Select which disc you would like to edit the partitioning of. Now you have to pick which program you would like to use to partition. Your options are cfdisk, fdisk, and parted. fdisk and parted are have a CLI interface, cfdisk has a ncurses UI. After partitioning is done you will arrive back to the Install menu.
[Optionally] make a software RAID device The menu will guide you through assigning partitions to the array, will automatically change the id in the partition table for the arrays partitions, then make the array and initialise it. Later the installer will copy the generated raidtab to the new system.
Mount Filesystems and swap Select the disc which contains the partition to mount as root and then select the partition number. If you forgot the exact number you can go back to partitioning and use cfdisk to get an easy view of what partition number it is, although the installer now lists partition types and blocksizes so it should no longer be necessary. It will then ask you if you wish to check for errors. The default is no and it is usually fine to leave it as this as checking for errors (especially on large drives) can take a LONG time. It will then show you the mkfs command it will use and it will say Yes or No. Yes means you want to run this command (and format that partition that way). No means you don't. For a root drive you probably should do yes but if your mounting a backup drive (any drive you put in will be put into /etc/fstab automatically) then make sure you are carefull or you'll wipe all your data. After you mount the root partition it will bring you back to the Install Menu, but the options have changed. If you wish to mount more partitions now you can do it by just pressing enter (selecting Mount Filesystems again).
In the unguided menu the next option is to [Optionally] Make Swapfile but the guided menu has it removed because it is truly optional, now immediately before setting up the install, a check for either a swap partition or a swapfile is made and you are offered the chance to create a swapfile or continue. Swapfiles serve the same purpose as the swap partition. You can use them instead of swap partitions (if you don't want to repartition again) or you can use it to expand your current swap partition. Most Source Mage users just use swap partitions. If you wish to create a swapfile you will be asked how big (in megabytes) you would like your swapfile. As was stated before, you don't need either a swap file OR swap partition, but they are a good idea, and the dedicated partition is preferred to the swapfile as swapfiles can add a layer of overhead to your system.
Now it's time to set your root partition up.
Selecting Select Timezone for the first time will ask you if you are ready to start a background process while you configure the rest of the options. This will install sorcery, the stable grimoire, some sources (kernel etc), some files not tracked by sorcery, and a handful of binaries and libraries used in the stage that installs the spells. Select yes if you have finished mounting partitions, then it will return you to the first menu in Select Timezone.
Select Timezone Pick which timezone you are in. After you pick a timezone you will be able to select either GMT or Local. Local time means that your clock is at your current time already and is reccomended for dual boot systems. GMT means in it assumes your system clock is at Greenwich Mean Time and will have linux subtract how many hours to your current time zone. This is recommended if it's a linux only system.
Architecture Optimize Select what cpu you are using on that machine. Next you have to choose what other optimizations you would like to use. Speedy means it will optimize for speed, risky means it will go faster but it is a lot more risky an option to use. Tiny means it will make the final application small, and strip means it will strip out all the debugging symbols in the app (making the binary smaller). speedy and tiny can't go together as gcc can only apply one -Ox flag at a time, it reads left to right and the last flag found is applied. Then choose how many make jobs for sorcery to run. The number of CPUs + 1 is a good start, because often during compiling the processor is inactive for short periods or only under medium load. A second make job running in parallel utilises the unused cycles and speeds up compiles.
Install/Configure Linux Kernel It will ask you if you wish to compile the kernel or copy the default from the ISO (the one it booted with and that is running). The sources for the same version as is running are included in the ISO, but other sources can be downloaded, if you have brought up a network connection. The default kernel has everything a desktop system would want but is for a simple i386 processor (which will stop your cast of xfree86 working if you want dri), most of the additional features are compiled as modules, but the kernel itself is large and could be slower than a custom kernel, that is a price to be paid for compatibility with so many hardware types. If you have experience compiling kernels and wish to customise yours you should choose "compile". The actual compilation will occur after the systems "spells" have been installed to the harddrive.
Configure Log System Choose from the four options, sysklogd, syslog-ng, metalog or no logger at all. They all have different features and if you find later (during normal use, not later on during this install) that the one you chose doesn't suit your needs, you can "cast" another and it will remove the first choice and install your new one, as if by magic.
Configure Bootloader Choose from grub or lilo, then choose to install it to the MBR or to the boot sector of the partition holding /boot. "MBR" in this case does not refer to the MBR of the primary drive, it is only the MBR of the drive that /boot is on. i.e. If you are installing SMGL to /dev/hdb* then MBR is /dev/hdb not /dev/hda. If you're dual/multi booting your system and don't want the bootloader installed on the master boot record you should choose "No". If you want the bootloader to install to the master boot record (and have it be the main boot loader for the system) then select "Yes". That will put the bootloader onto the master boot record. After the "spell" installation you have a chance to reconfigure the bootloader you chose, you can install it to a different location, and you can edit the configuration (to add append= lines or vga= lines or hdx= lines). NOTE: you cannot uninstall a bootloader from the MBR, you can only overwrite it with another one, so choose carefully, or you may make your other OS unbootable until you fix the problem.
Configure Networking The first box will ask for the hostname of your machine. Type in what you want the machine to be named. Next select what protocol you would like to use to connect to the internet. Ethernet is just with a standard NIC card, PPP is dial-up, and PPPOE is using DSL. Then just follow the dialogs for your specific connection protocol. After configuring your connection, the installer will offer to start it for you, if you start it now you will be able to download patches and sources for compiling your custom kernel.
Select optional spells to install Sorcery will generate a list of the optional spells available for install. None are necessary, some are useful, a brief description of each is printed along side the name. Some useful utilities, some extra system tools and some remote admin software are among the choices. For the 2.6.X kernel iso, after spell selection, you are offered a choice of udev on /dev or static /dev, and if udev is chosen udev, hotplug and tdb are also installed automatically.
Install Source Mage GNU/Linux to disk and it will start installing spells to your root partition. Depending how how fast your drive and cd-rom are this can take a small amount of time.
After the spells are installed a dialog box tells you the installation is completed, and the following two steps are changing password for root, and compiling the kernel (if you chose to compile). After changing the password, cast -c linux is run and it will offer a menu to select versions and patches. As mentioned above, only the sources for the currently running kernel version are available UNLESS you have already established a network connection. When you have made your choice select Save and Exit and then after unpacking the sources and applying any patches you selected it will load up menuconfig. Set up the kernel as you normally would and exit as you normally would. It will ask you if you wish to run menuconfig again. If you do, press y, otherwise press enter (or n). After that it will run oldconfig and start compiling. It will automatically run lilo (if it is installed) after the kernel is compiled or it will update the grub menu.lst if grub is your choice of bootloader.
Oops, I really need to compile a custom kernel A second chance to compile a custom kernel if you decide to.
Reconfigure bootloader Change your mind and install the bootloader to the MBR, and then edit the config file to add kernel parameters if you want.
Choose services to run at boot Toggle the installed services on or off, only two services are ESSENTIAL and init won't let you turn them off, so do whatever you want. If you have built a custom kernel without modules you could turn off modutils, or if you installed openssh or nfs-utils but don't want the server running at every boot you could turn them off here.
And that's it. You're done!
Done exit and reboot
Choice of Grimoires
Use scribe add <grimoire> to add ones you want, scribe remove <grimoire> to remove and scribe swap <grimoire> <grimoire> to change the order of your preferences.
If you want to have a GUI before setting in for the long rebuild you'll want to first compile some X (xorg is recommended) and a window manager (probably blackbox just for now) and a web browser (dillo is pretty quick to compile, or links-twibright, but there's always firefox :)).
Now is the PERFECT time to do a rebuild of your system. First you'll want to update sorcery and your grimoires with "sorcery update && scribe update". Then choose your features and compilation options in Sorcery with "sorcery". Next, you will want to update the following spells (in order): "binutils", "gcc", "gettext", "glibc" by using the command: "cast -c binutils gcc gettext glibc".(This will get you past the nastiness of recompiling everything (again) when gettext/glibc are updated to use your architecture specs). NOTE: gettext no longer triggers a rebuild of glibc [since 0.7], so you now need to list it. Finally, type: 'sorcery rebuild' to rebuild your system.
Doing all of this will recompile your installed spells and optimize them for your processor. I HIGHLY recommend that you do this now, as it can speed up your system. The longer you hold off, the more spells will be recompiled. To rebuild your system type "sorcery rebuild" without the quotes.
Welcome to Source Mage 