You’ll have to configure the network even if you don’t have a
network, but you’ll only have to answer the first two
questions—“Choose the Host name,” and “Is your system connected to a
network?”
If you are connected to a network, you’ll need the information you
collected from 2.2.1. However, if your primary connection to the
network will be PPP, you should choose _NOT_ to configure the
network.
dbootstrap will ask you a number of questions about your network;
fill in the answers from 2.2.1. The system will also summarize your
network information and ask you for confirmation. Next, you need to
specify the network device that your primary network connection
uses. Usually, this will be eth0 (the first Ethernet device). On a
laptop, it’s more likely that your primary network device is pcmcia.
Here are some technical details you may find handy: The program
assumes the network IP address is the bitwise AND of your system’s
IP address and your netmask. It will guess the broadcast address is
the bitwise OR of your system’s IP address with the bitwise negation
of the netmask. It will guess that your gateway system is also your
DNS server. If you can’t find any of these answers, use the system’s
guesses. You can change them once the system has been installed, if
necessary, by editing
/etc/init.d/network. (On a Debian system, daemons are started by
/scripts
in the directory /etc/init.d/.)