Using the official CD from Debian or Ubuntu to install a fresh new system can be tedious if you just want a minimal or customized system. An alternative way to install Debian or Ubuntu is to use cdebootstrap. cdebootstrap is a simple command-line program that downloads packages from a Debian/Ubuntu archive, unpacks them into a mounted filesystem, and set 'em up. But it's not a full-fledged installer, so you need to take care of partitioning and setting up bootloader in order to complete the installation.
In order to use cdebootstrap, you need to have an already-running Linux system. However, any Linux live CD will suffice. Fortunately, I have created my own Debian Live CD with included cdebootstrap. I booted my Debian Live and opened mlterm.
If you don't have cdebootstrap, there are many ways to install it. Download a cdebootstrap-static package from http://packages.debian.org/sid/cdebootstrap-static that matches your architecture. If you are running an rpm-based system, such as Fedora, use ar, tar and gzip to unpack the package. For example:
wget http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/c/cdebootstrap/cdebootstrap-static_0.5.5_i386.deb
ar xv cdebootstrap-static_0.5.5_i386.deb
gzip -dc data.tar.gz > /tmp/data.tar
cd /; tar xvf /tmp/data.tar
Before running cdebootstrap, make sure that you have an empty partition and have mounted it. GParted can be used to create an empty partition. In the following example, I used cdebootstrap-static to install Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper into a filesystem mounted on /mnt.
cdebootstrap-static --allow-unauthenticated --flavour=minimal dapper /mnt http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu
--allow-unauthenticated option is used in case ubuntu-archive-keyring or debian-archive-keyring is not installed. There are three flavours to choose from: minimal, standard and build. For suites other than dapper, you can choose one among etch, lenny, squeeze, sid, breezy, dapper, edgy, feisty, gutsy, hardy, intrepid, oldstable, stable, testing, unstable.. The URL at the end of command line is optional. For Debian, you can type http://archive.debian.org/debian.
cdebootstrap downloaded and installed the following set of packages into the new filesystem mounted at /mnt. This list is for a minimal flavour.
apt
base-files
base-passwd
bash
belocs-locales-bin
bsdutils
coreutils
debconf
debconf-i18n
debianutils
diff
dpkg
e2fslibs
e2fsprogs
findutils
gcc-4.0-base
gnupg
grep
gzip
hostname
initscripts
libacl1
libattr1
libblkid1
libbz2-1.0
libc6
libcap1
libcomerr2
libdb4.3
libgcc1
libgcrypt11
libgnutls12
libgpg-error0
libldap2
liblocale-gettext-perl
liblzo1
libncurses5
libopencdk8
libpam-foreground
libpam-modules
libpam-runtime
libpam0g
libreadline5
libsasl2
libsasl2-modules
libselinux1
libsepol1
libslang2
libss2
libssl0.9.8
libstdc++6
libtasn1-2
libtext-charwidth-perl
libtext-iconv-perl
libtext-wrapi18n-perl
libusb-0.1-4
libuuid1
locales
login
lsb-base
makedev
mawk
mount
ncurses-base
ncurses-bin
perl-base
python-minimal
python2.4-minimal
readline-common
sed
sysv-rc
sysvinit
tar
ubuntu-keyring
util-linux
zlib1g
In order to fine-tune the newly installed system, chroot into it and install additional packages.
chroot /mnt /bin/bash
