Installation and Basic Configuration of Hardened Linux

(C) 2006,2007 the Hardened Linux Project, http://hardenedlinux.sf.net

License: GNU Free Documentation License

Note: This docs are currently outdated. We changed a LOT of things on HL. A new documentation will come with our next snapshot version (1.7.0).

It is very easy to get your own copy of Hardened Linux. Simply go to our download site. You will find the ISO images there. Now burn these images on a CD-ROM (for example by using Nero under Windows or k3b under Linux).

Hardened Linux can run on a very old hardware. You at least need the following hardware components (this is not verified, we just HOPE that it will work on such hardware components...):

• CPU: x486-DX2 or better (50 MHz should be okay but _VERY_ slow)
• RAM: 16 MB (better use more RAM and of course, you should use a SWAP partition)
• HDD-Space: HL default install takes less than 600 MB.
• Media: A CD-ROM drive is needed to install from CD.

The installation of HL is not difficult and does not take much time. We now describe the whole process step-by-step.

Target HDD

To install HL you need to boot from the CD-ROM (or the ISO image, if you are using qemu or such an emulator). After the system has bootstraped successfully, the install system displays a prompt for you. If you _don't_ want to use /dev/hda as your installation disc, you should now enter the device name of the disc you want to use instead.

If you're unsure, you can exit to the shell by pressing CTRL+C. You can use dmesg to find out which discs are available.

If you have just pressed return, cfdisk will start. Else you have to start it by hand with your disc device as parameter. For example: cfdisk /dev/sda.

setup

The setup is normaly started by the installer script but if you're in the shell, you can start it with the setup command.

The first part of the setup lets you choose your keyboard encoding. If you for example use a german keyboard, then the first line of letters starts with 'qwertz'. In this case choose the entry 'qwertz/de-latin1-nodeadkeys.map' to get the german keyboard encoding in HL and in the setup.

If you have created a SWAP partition, you can now activate and use it. There is also an option to check the SWAP space for bad blocks.

You now have to choose a target partition to install HL on. The next step is to choose a file system and format your partition with it. This is quite easy. We recommend a 'ext3' or 'reiserfs' filesystem if you are unsure.

Before the packages are getting installed, you have to select a source (your CD-ROM device) to install your packages from. Normaly you can simply choose the 'auto detect' mode. Else you need to type the device name by hand.

After choosing the right device the setup system will install all the default packages without user interaction.

After the package installation is done, the setup starts the pre-configuration on Hardened Linux.