Lunar Linux is a source-based distribution designed to be a System Administrator's dream. The installation and upkeep are simple and the breadth and depth of optimizations have clearly marked Lunar as one of the fastest Linuxes available today!
This document is here to get you going and perhaps later on to give you some tips on running daemons the Lunar way and other valuable tools.
- First you must download the ISO of Lunar and decompress it. http://www.lunar-linux.org will have the latest one (either testing or stable). Bzip2 will be needed to decompress it. Bzip2 can be found on my website, on Google, or on your machine.
- Either burn the ISO to a CD or use a loopback device (for CD-ROM less systems). If you don't have a CD-ROM http://moongroup.com/pipermail/lunar/2002-July/001952.html will explain how to boot via loopback device.
- Boot from the ISO.
- For installation purposes, hit enter. If you want to use memtest86, then press F5 and hit enter on the screen after that. If you need special options, then use “Safe Mode”. Use this option if normal mode doesn't work for you.
- It next asks if you want different video modes. Hitting space will give you default, hitting enter will allot you to have more lines per screen.
- Next screen should be your initrd screen; it should say this at the top left of your monitor. If you are using the CD as a rescue disc then select “Choose root device” and feed it your root device. An example of that would be: /dev/discs/disc0/part1 and then tell it your partition type. If you are going to do an install, choose to continue booting. Some things my fail when it tried to load some stuff up, don't worry.
- OPTIONAL: Native Support
If you desire another language , keymap, console fonts, and/or text editor (you will be using this to edit your boot loader's configuration) select “Native Language Support”. Lunar is entirely in English; however it is possible to change the languages of other programs.
- OPTIONAL: Select “Partition Drive”. Use this if you want a fresh install.
- This screen asks for which disc you want to install Lunar to. Feed it which disk you want to install Lunar.
Disc0 = Primary/Master, Disc1=Primary/Slave, Disc2=Secondary/Master, Disc3=Secondary/Slave for IDE devices. - The next screen will allow you to choose between 3 different partitioning programs. If you are new to Linux, it may be easier for you to use cfdisk. You will need a SWAP. You must choose whether you want a SWAP partition or SWAP file. The advantage to a SWAP file is that it can be easily adjusted in size. A SWAP partition can be used with other distro's or installs. A good rule of thumb is 2X physical memory for SWAP is good enough.
- This screen asks for which disc you want to install Lunar to. Feed it which disk you want to install Lunar.
- Select "Mount Partitions".
- You must mount your root partition first. Feed it the disk to where you want Lunar installed.
- Next select which partition for the install.
- Feed it which FS type you want to use. There are debates as to which FS's are better. Each tends to have advantages and disadvantages. A journaling FS is a very popular option. Journaling results in massively reduced time spent recovering a filesystem after a crash, and is therefore in high demand in environments where high availability is important, not only to improve recovery times on single machines but also to allow a crashed machine's filesystem to be recovered on another machine when we have a cluster of nodes with a shared disk .
- OPTIONAL: SWAP file. If you are using a SWAP partition, then skip this step.
- Select “Make Swapfile”.
- Select the location of where you want your SWAP file to be located.
- Feed in the size you want your SWAP to be. Again, a good rule of thumb is 2X physical memory for SWAP is good enough.
- Tell it to you want to make the SWAP file.
- Select “Transfer Lunar”. It will ask you if you are done mounting filesystems, select yet. This copy process may take a while.
- Configuration of Lunar and your kernel.
- Select “Select Timezone”.
- Enter your appropriate time zone.
- Choose whether your hardware (BIOS) clock is in GMT or local. Normally it's in local.
- Select “Architecture Optimize”.
- Preferred compiler. Unless you had previous problems with GCC3, use GCC3.
- Follow default settings for C compiler.
- Follow default settings for C++ compiler.
- Select your platform, most likely you are using an x86.
- Now select which basic optimization you want. Select your preference. It is suggested to use Small, Faster, or Fastest.
- Now choose which type of processor you have. If you are unsure choose I386. If your processor is listed, choose it instead.
- Don't select any speed optimizations. We will do a lunar rebuild later on which will have these.
- Don't enable extra features either, until you understand how the system works.
- Unless you know for a fact you have floating point math options, select None.
- Use defaults for linker options, sometimes Combreloc can cause problems. Many packages (emacs for example) will break if that option is selected.
- Don't enable addon program support unless you need it.
- If you have one processor or are unsure, just hit enter here. If you are sure that you have more than one processor, then enter the number of processors. If you have only one, do not enter 1, just leave it blank.
- Select “Configure Linux Kernel”.
- Be sure and read the first two screens. They provide valuable information.
- Select the kernel module you want. If you want to do a custom kernel, use the default “linux”.
- If you want to use lilo, select Y here, if you want to use grub, say n here.
- If you want to configure your bootloader, say y here, else say n.
- If this is an upgrade and you have Xfree86, then you can select xconfig. If this is a fresh install, then use menuconfig. Config is text based and can be annoying to use and can be time consuming.
- If you want to have a custom kernel, select y here, else select n. If your kernel does not compile and you see errors related to SCSI devices, then you must do the custom kernel option and turn off SCSI. SCSI emulation is needed for using a CD-R. If you want, you can use defaults here and recompile your kernel later. Re-compiling your kernel and Lunar box will be explained later on.
- Configuring your bootloader. Once your kernel is done compiling, you are then brought into the text editor you specified during native language selection (or by default, nano).
- Unless you have really old hardware you can uncomment lba32.
- If you want your machine to boot straight into Lunar, then you can set delay and timeout to zero.
- If you want a lilo password you can set it to something different by changing the value of password. If you do not want a password, remove the line and remove the “restricted” line at the end of the file.
- You will need to set the last word in the boot= to disc. (You did read the screens about the kernel without zooming past them, didn't you?).
IE: /dev/discs/disc0/disc
- Network configuration and re-configuration (if needed).
- Select “Hostname Setting”. Choose a name for your domain.
- OPTIONAL: Select “Configure Networking” if you connect to the Internet through DHCP or PPPOE.
- Go to “Add”.
- Feed in your Ethernet device. If you have multiple cards, then select the one that will be on the Internet.
- Type in the module name, if any, that you need to connect to the net. If you compiled your NIC card into your kernel, just hit enter.
- Feed in any parameters for the module for your NIC card.
- Select if it is a wireless device or not.
- Select if you need DHCP or not. If unsure, call your ISP and ask.
- Select your client. One may work for you while the other will just crash.
- Feed in any options to pass to your client.
- Select if you want your net connection activated on boot. If you are on a laptop that isn't connected all the time or have a PCMCIA NIC card, then you should select no.
- Select "Done".
- OPTIONAL: Rebooting. You will need to take the CD out. You won't be able to take the CD out while still during the installation. If you decide not to reboot, the only existent account is “root” with no password.
- OPTIONAL: Rebooting. You will need to take the CD out. You won't be able to take the CD out while still during the installation. If you decide not to reboot, the only existent account is “root” with no password.
- Select “Select Timezone”.
- Change your root password. By default you have no password. Just hit the enter/return key. You can change your password with the 'passwd' command.
- Change the password for user "toor". toor's account is a static bash shell. You may also choose to delete user "toor".
- Do a 'lunar update' after a fresh install. OR 'lin moonbase && lunar rebuild' will update and rebuild all in one swoop.
- Run 'lunar' to make adjustments to the compiler optimizations (if needed).
- Do a 'lunar rebuild' after running the initial 'lunar update' to rebuild everything with your custom optimizations. If you enable dangerous optimizations, it is possible to break your software if you have chosen incorrect optimizations.
- If you are new to Linux (or would like some extra information) Lunar has a special section for documentation. It is suggested you read this. It contains a wide amount of categories. "Linux-HOWTOs" & "Linux-miniHOWTOs" are a good read. You can find these in the docs section if the moonbase.