HD Install Preparation

For normal use we recommend ext3; it is the default file system for sidux and is well maintained.

Before installation please remove all usb-sticks, cameras, etc. Installation to USB Devices requires additional steps. You can edit the installer file: ~/.sidconf, and thereby use a different filesystem or spread your installation over different partitions. For example a separate /home.

It is highly recommended that you have a separate data partition. The benefits in terms of disaster recovery, stability of your data are unmeasurable.

Therefore your $HOME becomes a place where basic application configurations are kept. or to put it another way, a container for applications to store their settings.

Re-installing applications to rebuild or duplicate to another computer

To make a list of your installed applications so you can duplicate the installed base on another machine, or perhaps you are for some reason, reinstalling on your current PC, in a konsole

dpkg -l|awk '/^ii/{ print $2 }'|grep -v -e ^lib -e -dev -e $(uname -r) >/home/username/installed.txt

Then copy the text file to a usb key or any other removable media of your choice.

On the new machine copy the text file to $HOME and use the list as a reference to install your required applications.

RAM and Swap

On PC's with less than 512 MB RAM you must have a swap-partition. The size should not be less than 128 mb (cfdisk-output should not be trusted either as it calculates with a 10-base), more than 1 GB swap is seldom reasonable, except if you are copying large data files, like copying CD/DVD data on-the-fly, and/or you need suspend-to-disk/hibernate and server systems. If this is your case, allocate 2 GIG swap, as a minimum.

Please see: Partitioning your HD

ALWAYS BACK-UP YOUR DATA including your bookmarks and emails!

Installation to the hard drive is much more comfortable and lots faster than running a system off a live-CD.

First, you need to set your boot order in the BIOS to CD-ROM. With most computers you can get to the Bios-setup by pressing [del] key while booting (with some BIOS-Versions you can simply choose the boot device while booting, with AMI-BIOS, e.g., with F11 or F8).

sidux should boot up now in most cases. If that's not the case, you can use Boot-options, (called cheatcodes) which can be issued in the boot manager. Using boot parameters (e.g. for screen resolution or language selection) can save a lot of time with the post-install configuration. Also see Cheatcodes and VGA Resolutions

Other Language Installs

1. On sidux live-cd grub use F4 to choose another language ( e.g. fr, pl, es)
2. Start the installation and install additional packages of your choice by using the meta-installer (if any).
3. Install to HD and reboot
4. Remove unwanted languages, if you want to. Then install the needed languages manually via apt-get, if a meta-package for the language you require is not yet available.

Now you are able to verify if your hardware is fully recognised by running the live-CD. The network Internet connection can be comfortably set up from the sidux menu. For WIFI/WLAN please read this

The sidux-Installer

1. The Installer is started from the Desktop icon, the KMenu> System>sidux-installer, or via the konsole using:

sux
install-gui.bash

2. After reading (and understanding) the warning text we move on to choosing a partition.

Now choose where the installation is supposed to go to and we establish the mount points. Partitions for which we do not establish mount points for are mounted by the installer (the swap partition will be automatically mounted, when the system starts).

All other partitions will be placed as a /media/ partition. Here you have to select the root partition ("/") for your sidux installation. However, it is at this moment you can also choose to create a data partition.

Have you backed up your data?

If you haven't partitioned your hard drive yet, do it in the Start Part.-manager and have a look at Partitioning your HD using Gparted or, if you want to use the shell, read Partitioning your HD

You may also start them from the konsole/terminal

su
gparted

or

su
cfdisk

3. As a boot manager sidux uses GRUB, therfore install Grub to MBR! If you make a different choice here, you should know what you are doing. You would have to edit other bootmanagers manually, if you want to keep them.

Grub recognizes other installed OS's (e.g. Windows) and adds them to the boot menu.

Moreover you are able to change the timezone in this window.

4. On we go with user, his/her password and the root-password (remember those!). Please don't choose too easily-guessed passwords. Whomever wants to add other users can do so after installation with the KDE-Tool kuser

5. Now choose the name of the Installation (you can name it anything you wish, provided that the 'Hostname: The hostname should consist of letters (and numbers) only and it must not begin with a number'.

After that you can choose whether cupsys or ssh shall start automatically or not.

6. This query is the last chance to check the adjustments you made. Read through it again carefully, then click Save Config and Next..

At this point it is possible to change/edit the config file and then start the install procedure with the changed configuration. The installer does not make any checks and you must not click the 'back' on the installer otherwise the changes entered manually will be lost.

Editing (~/.sidconf) is for experienced linux-users, who want to write their special changes to the config-file or have a special partitioning scheme on their hard drive that would be rejected by the automatic check of the installer.

To commence the installation click on Begin Installation The whole process takes, depending on your system, between 5 - 15 minutes, on older PCs it may take as long as 60 minutes..

If the progress bar hangs in one place for a while, don't abort, just give it some time.

Finished! Take the CD out of the tray. Now reboot to your new HD Install.

First Bootup

After booting up for the first time you will discover that sidux has forgotten its network-configuration. So you have to reconfigure your network (Wlan, Modem, ISDN,...).

Whomever previously had their network address automatically (DHCP) detected by using a DSL-Router must reactivate it with:

ceni

The appropriate tools are still to be found in the Kmenu>sidux>Internet>ceni. Also refer to: Internet and Networking

To add users to your installation

To add a new user with automatic group permissions granted, as root:

adduser <newuser> (just press enter, it should take care of the complexities)
You will get asked to type in the password twice

sidux specific icons (like the manual and IRC icons) need adding manually. To add them you will need to right click the application in the Kmenu to add it to the desktop.

kuser can create new user as well, however you will need to manually adjust the group permissions for that user.

To delete a user

deluser <user>
read
man deluser

About sux

Numerous commands need to be run with root privileges. To achieve this you type:

sux 

While the common command for becoming root is 'su' using sux instead will allow you run GUI / X11 applications from the command line and allow root to start graphical applications, as sux is a wrapper around the standard su command which will transfer your X credentials to the target user.

An example of running an X11 app via sux is to use a text editor to edit a root file like kwrite or kate, to do partitioning with gparted or an Xapp file manager like konqueror. You can also alter root files by right clicking the file and choosing 'edit-as-root', and entering your root password, this will call kdesu in the background.

Unlike 'sudo', it means that someone can't just come along and type 'sudo' and make potentially damaging changes to your system.

WARNING: While you are logged in as root, the system will not stop you from doing potentially dangerous things like deleting important files etc., you have to be absolutely sure about what you are doing, because it's very possible to seriously harm your system.

Under no circumstances should you be as root in the console/terminal to run applications that a standard user uses to go about being productive on a day to day basis, like sending emails, creating spreadsheets or surfing the internet and so forth.