Installing Debian Lenny on a ThinkPad T60

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Debian Lenny on a T60 6371-6NU

You might also want to check out Debian Etch on a Thinkpad T60 HowTo and Installing_Debian_Lenny_on_a_ThinkPad_T61.

In case you can't decode the Thinkpad model number above, here are the specs (I've left out modem, infrared, cardbus since I haven't ever used them):

Processor Intel Core 2 Duo (Merom) 1.83GHz
Graphics Adaptor Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950
Display 15.4" TFT display with 1200x800 resolution (widescreen)
RAM 1 GB PC2-5300 (upgraded to 2GB)
Harddisk 120GB 5400 RPM Hitatchi HTS54161
Audio AD1981HD HD Audio 1.0 controller
Ethernet 82573L Gigabit Ethernet Controller
Optical LG-Hitatchi HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-4083N Dual Layer DVD+/-RW
Wireless Atheros AR5418
Biometric STMicroelectronics Fingerprint Reader

I'm going to do everything in Linux (i.e. assume that you already have a running linux version running somewhere else).

Installation

These are instructions for getting the most customised, minimal base Debian system running. As such, you can probably go with your gut and ignore some of these steps for example using the "expert" install mode.

  1. First of all, get the "businesscard" cd image for amd64 if you want to run 64 bit or i386 if you want 32 bit. Note however that going 64 bit no longer means you have to forgoe proprietary software like flash or java. See this article on the "debian adminstration" blog. If you do however go 64 bit you won't be able to use proprietary 32 bit modules in your kernel. Most notably, ndiswrapper won't work with 32-bit windows drivers.
  2. Burn the cd image to a cd with the command
    cdrecord -v debian-testing-amd64-businesscard.iso
    You may find that you need to add dev=/dev/cdrom (or whatever your burning device is) to the above command.
  3. Now stick in the newly burned disc and reboot.
  4. At the "boot:" prompt type "expert (you could also just hit enter, but you won't get as much control over what's about to be installed on your computer).
  5. Go through the install menu using my answers as outlined below as a guide. You will obviously want to tailor things to your specific situation:
  • Choose Language
    • Choose Language:
      English
    • Choose a locale:
      en_CA (stick with ascii for the default since UTF screws up some terminals)
    • Choose other locales to be supported:
      en_CA.UTF-8
      en_GB.UTF-8
      en_GB
      en_GB.ISO-8859-15
      en_US.UTF-8
      en_US
      en_US.ISO_8859_15



  1. In general the installer is pretty self explanatory. It's hard to go wrong by just answering each dialog as it comes. On thing I would recommend however is to select XFS as your filesystem as this seems to give better performance than the standard ext3. Reiserfs is also a good alternative.
  2. When it gets to asking you what software to install select nothing (we'll do that manually later). If however you want to be more comprehensive than streamlined, you should go with the "Desktop", "Laptop", and "Standard System" software classes.

The First Boot: installing packages

You should boot up to a commandline login prompt (X-Windows hasn't been installed yet). Log in as root. It's now time to install the packages necessary to get things running. You'll find that thanks to the business card installation, you have an up to date system (i.e., aptitude update&& aptitude dist-upgrade won't find any packages needing upgrade. So lets get on with installing all the packages necessary to get things looking a little more like home.

First of all, you'll need to update the /etc/apt/sources.list file so that it can find the packages for the fingerprint reader. These actually are in debian, but they're in the experimental branch which isn't enabled by default. Below is my sources.list file. 

# testing - lenny
deb ftp://lizard-eth0.linux-srv.anlx.net/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free
deb-src ftp://lizard-eth0.linux-srv.anlx.net/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free

# stable - etch
deb ftp://lizard-eth0.linux-srv.anlx.net/debian/ etch main contrib non-free
deb-src  ftp://lizard-eth0.linux-srv.anlx.net/debian/ etch main contrib non-free

# unstable - sid
deb ftp://lizard-eth0.linux-srv.anlx.net/debian/ sid main contrib non-free
deb-src ftp://lizard-eth0.linux-srv.anlx.net/debian/ sid main contrib non-free

# experimental
deb ftp://lizard-eth0.linux-srv.anlx.net/debian/ experimental main contrib non-free
deb-src ftp://lizard-eth0.linux-srv.anlx.net/debian/ experimental main contrib non-free

# security updates
deb http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib non-free

If you use a different mirror than lizard, you'll want to make sure that it hosts the experimental branch. You'll notice that I've also included entries for etch and sid in addition to experimental. I do this for completeness in case there are packages I want that that are only available in sid, or if I want to revert to a more stable version of a package in etch. Note that the order I specify the branches in the sources.list file makes no difference, thus in order to maintain priority for lenny packages, I also have an /etc/apt/preferences file with pin priorties: 

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=stable
Pin-Priority: 300

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=testing
Pin-Priority: 600

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 200

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=experimental
Pin-Priority: 100

Basically this is saying that unless I specify otherwise, "testing" (lenny) packages are to be preferred over "stable" (etch) over "unstable" (sid) over "experimental". Basically a lower Pin-Priority means lower precedence. If you want to override this precedence, you can either use the aptitude gui and select a specific version to install or add the flag -t <targe branch> to your aptitude install <package> command. If you do this in such a way as to select a package that has a higher priority alternative available it will be upgraded next time you do an aptitude upgrade unless you pin that particular package version (see the relevant section of the apt howto).

Now that we have that sorted out we should do an 

aptitude update

If by some chance you get an annoying message like 

W: GPG error: <servername> <branch> Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 07DC563D1F41B907
W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems

(especially annoying because it happens when you run apt-get update you just get the same message over again), the solution is to run the run the following command: 

gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net --recv-keys 07DC563D1F41B907 && apt-key add /root/.gnupg/pubring.gpg && aptitude update

where you of course replace "07DC563D1F41B907" with what ever public key you get in the orginal GPG error message. Now of course, the reason this is happening is to ensure your security. You don't want to be downloading packages from unknown or forged sources, so don't just go verifying keys willy nilly without thinking about why you might be getting such a message. In particular, if you are getting such a message without having recently changed your mirror, something fishy might be going on.

to be continued . . .

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