debootstrap - Bootstrap a basic Debian system

debootstrap [OPTION...] SUITE TARGET [MIRROR [SCRIPT]]

debootstrap [OPTION...]

debootstrap bootstraps a basic Debian system of SUITE (eg, sarge, etch, sid) into TARGET from MIRROR by running SCRIPT. MIRROR can be an http:// URL or a file:/// URL. Notice that file:/ URLs are translated to file:/// (correct scheme as described in RFC1738 for local filenames), and file:// will not work.

Debootstrap can be used to install Debian in a system without using an installation disk but can also be used to run a different Debian flavor in a chroot environment. This way you can create a full (minimal) Debian installation which can be used for testing purposes (see the EXAMPLES section). If you are looking for a chroot system to build packages please take a look at pbuilder.

--arch ARCH

Set the target architecture (use if dpkg isn't installed). See also --foreign.

--include=alpha,beta

Comma separated list of packages which will be added to download and extract lists. Don't forget to resolve the dependencies manually, otherwise the installation may fail.

--exclude=alpha,beta

Comma separated list of packages which will be removed from download and extract lists. WARNING: you can and probably will exclude essential packages, be careful using this option.

--no-resolve-deps

By default, debootstrap will attempt to automatically resolve any missing dependencies, warning if any are found. Note that this is not a complete dependency resolve in the sense of dpkg or apt, and that it is far better to specify the entire base system than rely on this option. With this option set, this behaviour is disabled.

--variant=buildd|fakechroot

Name of the bootstrap script variant to use. Currently, the variant supported are buildd, which installs the build-essential packages into TARGET and fakechroot, which installs the packages without root privileges. The default, with no --variant=X argument, is to create a base Debian installation in TARGET.

--verbose

Produce more info about downloading.

--print-debs

Print the packages to be installed, and exit. Note that a TARGET directory must be specified so debootstrap can download Packages files to determine which packages should be installed, and to resolve dependencies. The TARGET directory will be deleted unless --keep-debootstrap-dir is specified.

--download-only

Download packages, but don't perform installation

--foreign

Do the initial unpack phase of bootstrapping only, for example if the target architecture does not match the host architecture. A copy of debootstrap sufficient for completing the bootstrap process will be installed as /deboostrap/debootstrap in the target filesystem.

--second-stage

Complete the bootstrapping process. Other arguments are generally not needed.

--keep-debootstrap-dir

Don't delete the /debootstrap directory in the target after completing the installation.

--unpack-tarball FILE

Acquire .debs from tarball FILE instead of downloading via http

--boot-floppies

Used for internal purposes by boot-floppies

--debian-installer

Used for internal purposes by the debian-installer

To setup a sarge system:

# debootstrap sarge ./sarge-chroot http://ftp.debian.org/debian

# debootstrap sarge ./sarge-chroot file:///PATH_TO_LOCAL_MIRROR/debian

Full process to create a complete Debian installation of sid (unstable):

main # cd / ; mkdir /sid-root main # debootstrap sid /sid-root http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ [ ... watch it download the whole system ] main # echo "proc /sid-root/proc proc none 0 0" >> /etc/fstab main # mount proc /sid-root/proc -t proc main # cp /etc/hosts /sid-root/etc/hosts main # chroot /sid-root /bin/bash chroot # dselect [ you may use aptitude, install mc and vim ... ] main # echo "8:23:respawn:/usr/sbin/chroot /sid-root " \ "/sbin/getty 38400 tty8" >> /etc/inittab [ define a login tty that will use this system ] main # init q [ reload init ]

Note that you will generally need a recent version of debootstrap to do this; the version currently in stable will generally have stopped working due to changes to unstable shortly after the last release.

debootstrap was written by Anthony Towns <ajt@debian.org>. This manpage was written by Matt Kraai <kraai@debian.org>.