How to install debootstrap

Source file: debootstrap. Found a problem? See the FAQ. See also --foreign. Share Copy sharable link for this gist. Learn more about clone URLs. Download ZIP. Instruction how to install Debian using debootstrap. Warning This is a tutorial from , originally for installing debian jessie , it may work for newer versions of debian, but I haven't check it however, it should mostly work because not that much changed since then.

Install debootstrap Make work directory: mkdir work cd work Go here and download latest. We always want the loopback interface. Now you may edit it. The fstab contains information about the filesystems on your machine. Each fstab entry is of the form:. If one were to read that out it would sound something like the following. You can pretty much just copy and paste the first entry in the fstab, which is usually the root partition, but make sure to change the UUID. The below command should give the UUID of all the partitions on your hard disk.

Use it if needed. Now its time to boot to boot back into Ubuntu. Debootstrap is generally used in the following form:. Once the debootstrap command finishes doing its thing, you need to chroot into your newly created minimal Ubuntu install.

Before you continue run these commands. Create the fstab using the builtin editor command. If you are more comfortable using vi or nano then by all means do so! After you get these files edited properly there are still a few more crucial steps to take. You must install a kernel. One of the alternatives is UUID. To boot the system you will need Linux kernel and a boot loader.

You can search available kernel images by running:. Warning: I had trouble with physically disconnecting and reconnecting Ethernet cables while using this method. With NetworkManager everything works seamlessly.

This will not overwrite the current grub installation on disk, we will do it at the very end of these instructions.

Remember that an unprivileged user has to be created because, by default ssh'ing onto root is forbidden. I select Generic key PC intl. It would be great if the machine rebooted into the old system when something goes wrong with the new system.

This is attainable to some degree. If you can reboot machine physically or remotely if e. Remember to change this if the new system boots successfully and you want it to be the default system e. To set the system to reboot after 30 seconds if something goes wrong, create systemd service and timer to trigger it and enable the timer:. Remember to disable this if the new system boots successfully: systemctl disable --now precautionary-reboot. Sorry, something went wrong.