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Installation

Preliminary Networking Information

The Debian installation software provides for the configuration of the network

as early as possible in the installation process. This creates the potential for

performing the remainder of the installation from a network mounted device.

The network installation process is concerned with the construction of three

configuration files:

/etc/hosts

/etc/resolv.conf

/etc/init.d/network

It does so by collecting the following information:

Host Name

Domain Name

Full Name

IP address

Netmask

Network Address

Broadcast Address

Gateway Address

Nameserver Addresses

The Host Name is the name given to the machine itself. The installation

software provides the name debian as the default value. Any  reasonable 

string of characters can be used as a host name, but normally this is intended

to be readable and should thus be a legitimate name. On some local area

networks these names are determined by the network administrator. In this

case the name will need to be supplied by the administrator.