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<h1>Debian Installer etch RC1</h1> <p><strong>November 13th, 2006</strong></p> <p> The Debian Installer <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Team">team</a> is proud to announce the first release candidate (RC1) of the installer for Debian GNU/Linux Etch. </p> <h2>Improvements in this release of the installer</h2> <ul><li>This new version of the installer uses and installs the 2.6.17 kernel which is now the default for all architectures.</li><li>The installer will now create ext3 partitions with important options like resize_inode and dir_index enabled by default; the first means that on-line resizing of ext3 partitions is supported.</li><li>The 2.6.17 kernel should support installing from most CD-ROM/DVD drives in systems with a SATA controller. However, there are known issues in 2.6.17 with some controllers that have been fixed in 2.6.18.</li><li>Guided partitioning now also supports setting up the system on an encrypted LVM partition.</li><li>Because of the previous change, the user interface for guided partitioning was modified: users are now asked first for the type of guided partitioning to be done and next for the disk to be used. This change also affects preseeding <sup><a href="http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/News/2006/20061113#n1">1)</a></sup>.</li><li>Improved support for fully automated installations <sup><a href="http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/News/2006/20061113#n1">1)</a></sup>.</li><li>It is now possible to partition multiple disks with software RAID (levels 0, 1 and 5) using preseeding <sup><a href="http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/News/2006/20061113#n1">1)</a></sup>.</li><li>When configuring the network using DHCP, the installer will send vendor-option-string d-i. Using this the DHCP server can be set up to tell the installer which preconfiguration file to use <sup><a href="http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/News/2006/20061113#n1">1)</a></sup>.</li><li>Because SELinux has been made standard priority, newly installed systems will have SELinux support. However, to actually use SELinux, this needs to be enabled manually after the installation.</li><li>Architecture specific: <ul><li>i386: installation from floppy disk is supported again</li><li>arm: the Linksys NSLU2 has switched to the generic ixp4xx kernel and now uses APEX as the 2nd stage boot loader; using APEX allows to work around the NSLU2's 1 MB kernel limit</li><li>arm: support for the sub-architecture IOP32x has been added; the first device that is supported is the <a href="http://www.cyrius.com/debian/iop/glantank">GLAN Tank</a></li></ul></li><li>Added the following languages (for the graphical installer only): Gujarati.</li></ul> <h2>No longer supported as of this release</h2> <ul><li>Installation using a 2.4 kernel.</li><li>The following languages have been dropped because their translations were not sufficiently complete to be included in the Etch release: Belarusian, Gaelic (Irish), Georgian, Icelandic, Kazakh, Malagasy, Northern Sami, Persian, Welsh, Xhosa.</li></ul> <h2>Known issues in this release</h2> <ul><li>Partition resizing using partman may result in data loss if the starting sector of the partition is not at the start of a cylinder.<br /> This has been observed in particular for NTFS partitions created during installation of Windows Vista Beta 2. Resizing of NTFS partitions created by earlier Windows versions should still work.<br /> Because of this resizing of NTFS partitions containing Windows Vista has been blocked.</li><li>There are some usability issues for S/390 installs.</li><li>There are still various issues for some powerpc subarchitectures.</li><li>For sparc32 CD-ROM support is broken in the esp kernel driver; use the netboot installation method instead.</li><li>For SGI Indigo2 systems (mips) keyboard support may still be broken (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/382983">#382983</a>).</li><li>VGA console on TITAN- and TSUNAMI-class systems (alpha) is not supported; this is expected to be fixed for RC2.</li><li>Known issues for the graphical installer: <ul><li>some tasks (e.g. the File server task) may not install correctly due to bug <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/282147">#282147</a></li><li>switching consoles will crash the frontend on amd64</li><li>support for keymaps other than US has improved, but there are still some issues (deadkeys and combining characters do not work)</li><li>limited support for creating encrypted partitions</li><li>touchpads may not work correctly; use an external mouse instead</li><li>should work on almost all PowerPC systems that have an ATI graphics card, but is unlikely to work on other PowerPC systems.</li></ul></li></ul> <p> See the <a href="http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/errata">errata</a> for details and a full list of known issues. </p> <p> Note that at least one more release of the installer is expected before Etch is released; this next release of the installer will use the 2.6.18 kernel. </p> <p> Our thanks to everybody who has contributed to this release. Special thanks to Sylvain Ferriol for his work on 2.6 based installation floppies for i386. </p> <p> Installation CDs, other media, errata and everything else you'll need are available from our <a href="http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer">web site</a>. </p> <p><strong>Notes</strong></p> <ol><li><a name="n1"></a>These changes are documented in the development version of the <a href="http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/">installation guide</a> in the appendix Automating the installation using preseeding.</li></ol>
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