Preparing The Chroot Environment

Enable swap:

mkswap /dev/sda10

swapon /dev/sda10

Format your partitions to ext3:

mke2fs -j /dev/sda5
mke2fs -j /dev/sda6
mke2fs -j /dev/sda7
mke2fs -j /dev/sda8
mke2fs -j /dev/sda9

Mount your formatted partitions.

mkdir /mnt/debian
mount /dev/sda5 /mnt/debian/
mkdir /mnt/debian/home
mkdir /mnt/debian/usr
mkdir /mnt/debian/tmp
mkdir /mnt/debian/var
mount /dev/sda6 /mnt/debian/home
mount /dev/sda7 /mnt/debian/usr
mount /dev/sda8 /mnt/debian/tmp
mount /dev/sda9 /mnt/debian/var

Download and install a basic Debian installation with debootstrap:

mkdir /root/work
cd /root/work
wget http://ftp.ch.debian.org/debian/pool/main/d/debootstrap/debootstrap_0.3.3.2_all.deb
ar -x debootstrap_0.3.3.2_all.deb
cd /
zcat /root/work/data.tar.gz | tar xv
debootstrap --arch i386 etch /mnt/debian/ ftp://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/

Now let's get in the chroot:

mount -t proc proc /mnt/debian/proc
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/debian/dev
LC_ALL= chroot /mnt/debian /bin/bash
export TERM=xterm-color

Ok, so now we're in the chroot.

Configuring Your Basic System

Edit /etc/fstab:

nano /etc/fstab

The file should look something like this:

# /etc/fstab: información estática de sistema de ficheros.
#
# file system    mount point   type    options                           dump pass
proc             /proc         proc    defaults                            0    0
/dev/sda5        /             ext3    defaults                            0    1
/dev/sda6        /home         ext3    defaults                            0    2
/dev/sda7        /usr          ext3    defaults                            0    2
/dev/sda8        /tmp          ext3    defaults                            0    2
/dev/sda9        /var          ext3    defaults                            0    2
/dev/sda10       none          swap    sw                                  0    0
/dev/fd0         /media/floppy auto    noauto,rw,sync,user,exec            0    0
/dev/cdrom       /media/cdrom  iso9660 udf,iso9660,user,noauto             0    0

For backward compatibility reasons, it is recommended doing this:

cd /media
mkdir cdrom0
ln -s cdrom0 cdrom
cd /
ln -s media/cdrom

Now log in to the EasySpeedy control panel again and click on server details. You should see a lot of information related to the network environment of your server. For editing /etc/networks, you need the IP address that is labeled network.

nano /etc/networks

localnet 82.103.XXX.X

Now, let's move on to configure /etc/network/interfaces.

nano /etc/network/interfaces

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).
# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
        address 82.103.XXX.XXX
        netmask 255.255.240.0
        network 82.103.XXX.X
        broadcast 82.103.XXX.XXX
        gateway 82.103.XXX.X
        # dns-* options are implemented by the resolvconf package, if installed
        dns-nameservers 82.103.XXX.X
        dns-search easyspeedy.com

nano /etc/resolv.conf

search easyspeedy.com
nameserver 82.103.XXX.X

If you dont want to use UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) enter no as UTC value in the following config file:

editor /etc/default/rcS

#
# /etc/default/rcS
#
# Default settings for the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/
#
# For information about these variables see the rcS(5) manual page.
#
# This file belongs to the "initscripts" package.
TMPTIME=0
SULOGIN=no
DELAYLOGIN=no
UTC=no
VERBOSE=no
FSCKFIX=no
RAMRUN=no
RAMLOCK=no

Now its time to configure your timezone. In my case I selected 2 (for America), and then Santiago (de Chile).

tzconfig

Configure /etc/hostname:

nano /etc/hostname

e82-XXX-1XX-49s

Now it's /etc/hosts' turn.

nano /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1       localhost
82.XXX.XXX.49   e82-XXX-1XX-49s.easyspeedy.com  e82-XXX-1XX-49s
# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1     ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
ff02::3 ip6-allhosts

As we will be needing additional software, we must add the Etch repositories to include more packages and security updates.

nano /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ etch main
deb-src http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ etch main
deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib

aptitude update