# Booting from USB Memory Stick

&boot-installer-intro-usb.xml;

## Booting from optical disc (CD/DVD)

&boot-installer-intro-cd.xml;

## Booting from Linux using `GRUB`

To boot the installer from hard disk, you must first download and place the needed files as described in boot-drive-files.

For `GRUB2`, you will need to configure two essential things in `/boot/grub/grub.cfg`:

- to load the `initrd.gz` installer at boot time;

- have the `vmlinuz` kernel use a RAM disk as its root partition.

An entry for the installer would be for example:

    menuentry 'New Install' {
    insmod part_msdos
    insmod ext2
    set root='(hd0,msdos1)'
    linux /boot/newinstall/vmlinuz
    initrd /boot/newinstall/initrd.gz
    }

## Booting with TFTP

&boot-installer-intro-net.xml;

There are various ways to do a TFTP boot on i386.

## NIC or Motherboard that support PXE

It could be that your Network Interface Card or Motherboard provides PXE boot functionality. This is a Intel re-implementation of TFTP boot. If so, you may be able to configure your BIOS/UEFI to boot from the network.

## NIC with Network BootROM

It could be that your Network Interface Card provides TFTP boot functionality.

Let us (&email-debian-boot-list;) know how did you manage it. Please refer to this document.

## Etherboot

The etherboot project provides bootdiskettes and even bootroms that do a TFTPboot.

## The Boot Screen

When the installer boots, you should be presented with a friendly graphical screen showing the &debian; logo and a menu:

    &debian-gnu; installer boot menu

    Graphical install
    Install
    Advanced options                            >
    Accessible dark contrast installer menu     >
    Help
    Install with speech synthesis

This graphical screen will look very slightly different depending on how your computer has booted (BIOS or UEFI), but the same options will be shown.

Depending on the installation method you are using, the Graphical install option may not be available. Bi-arch images additionally have a 64 bit variant for each install option, right below it, thus almost doubling the number of options.

For a normal installation, select either the Graphical install or the Install entry — using either the arrow keys on your keyboard or by typing the first (highlighted) letter — and press &enterkey; to boot the installer. The Graphical install entry is already selected by default.

The Advanced options entry gives access to a second menu that allows to boot the installer in expert mode, in rescue mode and for automated installs.

If you wish or need to add any boot parameters for either the installer or the kernel, press &tabkey; (BIOS boot), or &ekey; then &downkey; three times then &endkey;, to edit the linux line of the boot entry (UEFI boot). This will bring the boot command for the selected menu entry and allow you to edit it to suit your needs. Note that the keyboard layout at this point is still QWERTY. The help screens (see below) list some common possible options. Press &enterkey; (BIOS boot) or &f10key; (UEFI boot) to boot the installer with your options; pressing &escapekey; will return you to the boot menu and undo any changes you made.

Choosing the Help entry will result in the first help screen being displayed which gives an overview of all available help screens. To return to the boot menu after the help screens have been displayed, type menu at the boot prompt and press &enterkey;. All help screens have a boot prompt at which the boot command can be typed:

    Press F1 for the help index, or ENTER to boot:

At this boot prompt you can either just press &enterkey; to boot the installer with default options or enter a specific boot command and, optionally, boot parameters. A number of boot parameters which might be useful can be found on the various help screens. If you do add any parameters to the boot command line, be sure to first type the boot method (the default is `install`) and a space before the first parameter (e.g., `install nomodeset`).

The keyboard is assumed to have a default American English layout at this point. This means that if your keyboard has a different (language-specific) layout, the characters that appear on the screen may be different from what you'd expect when you type parameters. Wikipedia has a schema of the US keyboard layout which can be used as a reference to find the correct keys to use.

If you are using a system that has the BIOS configured to use serial console, you may not be able to see the initial graphical splash screen upon booting the installer; you may even not see the boot menu. The same can happen if you are installing the system via a remote management device that provides a text interface to the VGA console. Examples of these devices include the text console of Compaq's integrated Lights Out (iLO) and HP's Integrated Remote Assistant (IRA).

To bypass the graphical boot screen you can either blindly press &escapekey; to get a text boot prompt, or (equally blindly) press H followed by &enterkey; to select the Help option described above. After that your keystrokes should be echoed at the prompt. To prevent the installer from using the framebuffer for the rest of the installation, you will also want to add `vga=normal nomodeset` to the boot prompt, as described in the help text.