thelinuxlink.net

Masters of All Things Distro-wise,

Why oh why does the Debian Etch distro take 14 isos to download?

(Are they including TLLTS audio and video in the isos? Ha!)

Thanks,
Steve

The reason is that the 14 iso images contain some 13,000 packages. I recommend using the Debian net install disc. This only installs the Debian base system and it is only one disc that is a little more than 100 megs, I believe. Then, you can just apt-get everything else.
http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/

Debian comes on 14 ISOs for machines that aren't connected to the internet, although only the first disc is required to install a working system. Either download the first disc, or grab the network install disc, and install a base system and apt-get the packages you want.

How do I get beyond the Debian Sarge default network install garbage when I only want a CD install? I can add my network stuff later.

I already searched the debian lists.debian.org and haven't found but one message about this problem. Since you guys are always talking about installing every distro under the sun, I figured you could tackle this one easy.

My System:
New Toshiba Satellite M55 laptop. 1Gig RAM/100GB HD/2Ghz/Intel 2200BG wireless/Marvell Yukon 88E8036 10/100Mbit ethernet/i915GM 128MB video

Here's the problema:
I downloaded all the CDs specifically because I do not connect my laptop to ethernet and the net install instructions state you cannot do net install from a wireless connection.

I'm here because now, I cannot install these CDs becuase the stupid installation procedure wants to connect to a debian FTP mirror somewhere. The first roadblock I get, is that my hard wire ethernet card is not detected and there is no provided driver for it. No problem, or so I thought. Why do I need to detect network anything if I'm installing from CD in the first place? The install procedure does a DHCP search even after I specifially state that I do not have a network card. It of course properly fails the DHCP search. Then, the second roadblock is that the install cannot connect to the debian FTP mirror. Duh, I already told it there is no network card. WTF?

I'm using disk one of the 14 CD set. I am specifically not using the net install disk.

Reasons for Deb:
I thought it would be better for me to start fresh with plain Debian. Ubuntu and Kubuntu live CDs work on my laptop fine but I don't want to be locked into their distro/desktop style. Being that those are based on Debian I could load up the regular Debian and add a desktop of my choice on top of that. I like some features of KDE and Gnome, but would rather use something lighter. The Debian decision is based on one of the TLLTS shows with the KDE developer that was doing a lot of X work. Besides. My last few distros have been Red Hat or Fedora and I want to try a different way.


Suggestions welcome.

If you select "CD-ROM" during installation, it should pull all the packages off the CDs. I don't know why it would attempt to use FTP without you specifically telling it to.

I'll look for that screen. I don't remember seeing the choice. Just after the installation boots up it starts checking for disks, networking, etc. and I'm not given a choice of things to do. I can get to a menu on the back "button" after something fails.

Thanks for the reply.

Take a look through these installation screens, and see if there's something you missed. Another thing you may not be aware of, is if you type "linux26" as a bootup option, you'll get a 2.6.8 kernel, instead of 2.4.27.

http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slide ... 61&slide=1

I tried linux26 last night for a second time since starting all this, but that's not going to work at the moment. The linux26 method reports that I have no media when I get to the partitioning part. I tried the linux26 option from the begining, then started using the plain straight install method which then got me into the network problem. I read that Sarge had a problem with SATA drives, but according to Windows and looking up the drive model number online, it's an IDE drive. Also that note was only on the ia64 list, not i386. I don't know why it would have a problem with my IDE drive. Someone else on the linux on laptops site had Sarge going on another next lower model number Toshiba so I figured it would work alright for me.

I think I'll have to stick to the regular kernel and then try upgrading after install.


The screen shots are good, but they don't show what happens when the network card isn't detected. In my case , I've seen those screens, but when it didn't find my card I got a list of cards to choose from. When your card isn't detected you have to either choose a bogus card or choose "no network card installed".

I didn't see the screen you mentioned before where you select the install method by CD or Net, etc.

I'll play with is a little more.

Well I had to give up my clean Debian wish for the moment.

After attempting the regular Debian install again, I had to back out of the setup when it asked me to choose a mirror again. I went to the steps after network setup and got so far as to partition and format the hard drive. However after partitioning and having everything formatted, the install decided it didn't know anything about a CD drive any longer. There was a screen telling me that no CD was mounted and it couldn't install the base system. I was of course booting from the CD. I also switched over to shell mode under ALT-F2 and the CD was mounted and I could browse it via command line.

Luckily I had a set of Ubuntu live 5.1 and Ubuntu 5.1 install CDs. So here I am writing from that installation. Ubuntu used the wireless networking to finish installing after reboot. Everything seems to work OK.

It's kind of disapointing that the thing Ubuntu comes from doesn't work on it's own. I don't understand how the base system could not be installed from the same media the install system was booting from. It just didn't work for me.