Quickstart

Revision as of 08:53, 31 August 2012

This document details the steps needed to get your x164 switch started.

Installing a Linux distribution

Use of Debian Squeeze is recommended for its stability, but you can use other Linux distributions as you wish. You can look for the proper option for your machine here. Installation guides are also available for the different supported architectures here.

This website offers a screenshot based tutorial that explains how to make a bare-bones installation without a graphical desktop environment. We suggest to create a separate partition /vz to store the virtual machines, as for example in the following scheme.

Disk partitioning

The recommended partition scheme is the following:

It is encouraged that you follow the order shown in the table when partitioning.

Updating and upgrading

After completing the installation you should run the following commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

This ensures you have the latest version of the installed packages.

SSH

If you want to work on your server remotely from a remote client, it is recommended to use a Secure Shell (SSH) protocol. First you need to install an implementation of SSH like OpenSSH. Type the following command:

apt-get install openssh-server

Now you can open the terminal on your client and type the following to log in the host machine:

ssh [hostname]@[ipAdress]

It will ask you for the hostname's password. From now on you can continue working from your client machine. To log out simply type

logout

For further information on the OpenSSH project, please refer to their website.

Midnight Commander

We recommend using a visual file manager like Midnight Commander (mc) to make working with the command line easier. To install it in your server enter this command:

apt-get install mc

You can find more information about mc in [1]