BIOS config and Linux software install

BIOS Configuration

Turn off everything in the BIOS you don’t need.  Things like boot error halts, parallel and serial ports, USB (unless using a USB flash drive), Shadow RAM, power management etc etc.  Put the hard drive and CD drive on the PRI IDE channel as master/slave.  Put your CF device on the Secondary IDE channel as master. 

WARNING: NEVER connect/disconnect IDE devices with the power on.  This includes CF drives.  Chances are you will damage the device.

Linux Software install

For this project I used Debian Sarge (Debian v3.1) with the Debian Linux 2.6.8.2 Kernel.  Debian seems like a decent flavor of Linux for this application in my opinion due to its high stability, high configurability, large optional feature set, relative ease to work with, and large community support.   

Download the minimal bootable CD image from debian.org and burn to CD.   From your development platform, boot from the CD and type in the following at the initial boot screen:

Boot: linux26 netcfg/disable_dhcp=true

Select language

Select static IP, netmask, gateway, hostname, and domain

Select the manual partition option. 

I created 3 x 3.0GB primary partitions (make sure all 3 are identical size) as follows:

Partition#1
Use as: ext2 file system
Format partition: yes, format it
Mount point: / (mount as root)
Mount options: defaults
Label: hda1
Reserved blocks: 5%
Bootable flag: on
Size:3.0GB

Partition#2
Use as: ext2 file system
Format partition: yes, format it
Mount point:none (do not mount)
Mount options: defaults
Label: hda2
Reserved blocks: 5%
Bootable flag: on
Size:3.0GB

Partition#3
Use as: ext2 file system
Format partition: yes, format it
Mount point: none (do not mount)
Mount options: defaults
Label: hda3
Reserved blocks: 5%
Bootable flag: on
Size:3.0GB

Finish partitioning and continue with install.  It will complain that you did not mount partition #2, and #3.  Just ignore that and continue.

Install GRUB in the MBR of the hard drive when asked .

For apt configuration select “ftp” or “http”. 

For package selection do not select anything and just select “ok” to continue.

The system should now go out and download/install a bunch of updates which may take awhile depending on your connection speed and server location selection.

We are now at a Linux command prompt logged in as root with the bare minimum Debian Sarge loaded on to hda1. 

Your_Server_name:~#

Now we want to install all additional packages needed for development and Asterisk.  Here is the list of packages I came up with that are needed in addition to what is already installed.   You need to issue the following command.  I put it all on one line so you can cut and paste if you are connected via ssh.

#apt-get install kernel-headers-“uname –r” kernel-source-2.6.8 bison openssl libssl-dev libeditline0 libeditline-dev libedit-dev libedit2 libncurses5 libncurses5-dev zlib1g-dev libnewt-dev gcc modconf kernel-package fakeroot bzip2 subversion binutils doxygen procps busybox

Note: Replace “uname –r” with what you get when you type “uname –r” at a command prompt.