Sun Oct 21 15:26:55 2018 UTC

Installation of NuTyX via the script without internet connection

Introduction

In this article, the destination partition will be /dev/sda4.

The boot procedure is not explained in this topic. This means that the machine already has a boot process and you only need to adjust the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file and add a new entry NuTyX on /dev/sda4.

In this article, all the commands are done via the root account

The writer is not responsible for the loss of any data that could happen due to incorrect application of the information herein. This topic is for a suitably skilled and advanced target audience.

How to proceed:

1. Mount the destination partition
2. Retrieve all the binary packages from base collection
3. Download and check the installation script from the download server
4. Put the /etc/install-nutyx.conf.d/cards.conf file in place
5. Install NuTyX
6. Update grub to accept the new NuTyX

Mount the destination partition

In this article the destination partition will be /dev/sda4. A minimum size of 15 Gbytes will allow you to install all the available graphical interfaces xfce4, lxde, gnome, mate and kde5 and will give you the possibility of adding a set of frequently used applications.

When the script is running it uses some variables. The most important one is:

LFS

We will redefine this variable so that the script can use it:

export LFS=/mnt/NuTyX

We format the destination partition. The file system of our choice is ext4. Ext4 gives us the possibility to avoid the use of an initrd

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda4

We mount the formatted partition on the folder defined by the LFS variable.

mkdir -p $LFS
mount /dev/sda4 $LFS

Everything is now ready to retrieve all the binaries needed for the installation of NuTyX.

Retrieve all the binary packages from base collection

This command needs rsync. Make sure it's installed on your distribution.

A bootable base NuTyX needs only the base collection: download and place in the correct destination directory:

mkdir -p $LFS/var/lib/pkg/depot
rsync -av --delete rsync://downloads.nutyx.org/nutyx/`uname -m`/10.4/base/ \
$LFS/var/lib/pkg/depot/base/

Once this command is completed, we will download the installation script from the server.

Download and check the installation script from the download server

We will use the command wget for the download. Make sure you have it installed on your distribution

wget http://www.nutyx.org/install-nutyx{,.md5sum}

We will check the integrity of the script before we use it.

md5sum -c install-nutyx.md5sum

install-nutyx: OK

Before we launch the script with the correct variables, we need to put the /etc/install-nutyx.conf.d/cards.conf file in the right place.

Put the /etc/install-nutyx.conf.d/cards.conf file in place

The install-nutyx script can use preconfiguration of some files. This means if it finds one of those files in the /etc/install-nutyx.conf.d/, the script will use the one found instead of the internal one of the script. We will then adapt the cards.conf file of our NuTyX for an "offline" installation by mentioning the only collection available for the installation base without specifying the download URL.

mkdir -p /etc/install-nutyx.conf.d
cat > /etc/install-nutyx.conf.d/cards.conf  << EOF
dir /var/lib/pkg/depot/base
base /var/lib/pkg/depot/base
locale de
EOF

We are now ready to start the installation of NuTyX.

Installation of NuTyX

If you proceed as mentioned above, the installation can be launched via the downloaded script:

bash install-nutyx

The installation is using the /dev/sda4 partition mounted on /mnt/NuTyX folder.

There should be no downloading.

....
...
..
****************************************************
      Installation of NuTyX 10.4 installed
      in /mnt/NuTyX sucessfully
****************************************************

****************************************************
* Thanks for installing NuTyX                      *
*                                                  *
* Check http://www.nutyx.org/en/documentation.html *
* or http://www.nutyx.org/fr/documentation.html    *
*                                                  *
* Make sure you review /etc/cards.conf             *
* to confirm your requirements in the packages     *
* selection  						     *
*                                                  *
****************************************************

Update grub to accept the new NuTyX

Adjust the /boot/grub/grub.cfg configuration file by adding the following entry:

menuentry "NuTyX x86_64 ext4 on /dev/sda4" {
 set root=(hd0,4)
 linux /boot/kernel root=/dev/sda4 ro quiet 
}