Bristol Wireless Wiki - Simply MEPISInstall

How to Install Simply MEPIS

The Machine

You will need to be connected to the internet. You will need to have a MEPIS CD in the CD drive. Boot up MEPIS using the 2.4.26 Kernel. If it fails the first time use the option with ide=nodma option. This will get around trouble with the CD-ROM drive. Log in as root, with the password root. This gives you ultimate control of the machine. Click on the installation centre icon on the desktop. Select the box to "Use the whole hard drive to blah.." press next. The process of formatting and copying files should take between 20 and 40 minutes.

Configuration

You will then be asked to configure the box.

Important Settings

It is very important that these settings are entered correctly as we need them to log on and correctly use the machine. Install GRUB (the bootloader) to MBR. Then follow the instruction and enter the following in the appropriate boxes

Username: welcome
Password: wireless
Root Password: wireless
Keyboard: UK
Locale: engb

Most of the options should be kept as the default. Make sure windows networking (samba) is off and guarddog firewall is off too. You will be asked to select the locale, use English (UK), of course. This is the final step. You will be asked to reboot without the CD in. before rebooting it is advised to login to a terminal window and as root type 'cfdisk' and make the top partition bootable by pressing return and 'write' then 'quit'. Now it's time to reboot!

Do this. Wait until the prompt to log in appears and log in as "welcome"

Sound

If the sound doesn't work press CTRL+ALT+F2, this will take you to a terminal. Log in as "root". Do:

# /etc/init.d/alsa stop
# alsaconf

Press return when prompted. The sound should now work! Press CTRL+ALT+F7 to get back to the desktop.

Open Office Defaults

The OpenOffice template needs to be changed to UK rather than US. You do this by changing the default language and spell checker to UK and then saving a default template. Don't bother to select it, just type default when the save dialogue appears. The procedure is like this

Open "Openoffice Writer" (icon that looks like a piece of paper on the bottom panel). This takes a while to load;
Go to tools -> options;
Click on plus sign next to "language settings" then "languages" which appears below it;
Change the "locale setting" and the default language to English(UK);
Click "writing aids" then "edit" in the top right. Change the dictionary to English(UK);
Click OK to exit these dialogues;
Go to File -> Templates -> Save then type default and press return;
That's it.

Please set open office to save as .rtf files.

By way of a test, if you then type 'color colour' into the document, the American spelling should be underlined in red.