Debian 6 Install Fails at Software Install
 

I am trying to install "Debian GNU/Linux 6.0.5 "Squeeze" - Official i386 NETINST Binary-1 20120512-20:43", but it fails at the software installation stage. I've tried using the graphical installer with both normal and advanced options. I first tried with boot option of "install desktop=kde".

I've tried a few different Australian mirrors. I've done the CD check thing.

The attached log files are from my last attempt to install.

Any advice or guidance would be sincerely appreciated.

Debian 6 Install Fails at Software Install
 

Gday Mate! (Does that instantly make me a know-nothing American, or can I actually greet you that way?)

I live in the Debian/Ubuntu world and I just redid Squeeze on my machine not 10 days ago. I of course used a netinst CD.

My first thought on your post was that you weren't connecting to the net, but looking over your logs it is obvious that a number
of packages WERE installing -- it's just at some point you weren't getting packages and it all went to heck from there.

I checked you out BTW. You show as "Noob" but your prior posts indicate a level of serious study and pretty good understanding.

The short answer is, I don't see anything wrong with what you did
So, in true linux fashion, I recommend breaking the problem into simpler pieces.

Go reinstall from scratch and when you get to the point where it says "what kind of system do you want" -- don't say "desktop" (which is natural, and it
looks like what you did). Instead select "standard system". See if that will install for you. Once you have that, you have a fully functional
Debian, just no GUI. You can then add just the parts you need.

I used to do Gnome, before they messed it up with Gnome3, then I jumped ship to xfce. I Googled "Adding XFCE to a minimal gnome system" and found
instructions which said "install standard system", then apt-get install the following. (If you don't already know it, aptitude and synaptic live on top
of plain old apt. It is worth learning how to use apt because you don't need a GUI at all to install software (including a GUI).)

Attached are my own notes for setting up my system with a netinst and then going to xfce. I am sure you can find similar advice on how to add kde to a minimal
system.

In case it's not obvious, nix the "install desktop=kde" bit. Just run the installer as plain vanilla. (The non-GUI installer
works great too, BTW, but I don't think that's your problem).

A bit more on Debian install BTW. When it gets mostly through (where you appear to have been) it runs a script called "tasksel" for selecting the most
common Debian configurations. You can do a plain-vanilla install (as I suggested) and then run tasksel later. BUT, I recommend in your case
the individual apt-gets.

If you can't even get a vanilla non-GUI install, we'll try other things (like wondering if you had your networking configured right to begin with but
then went through a reboot and your networking stopped?) There are ways to check that. You can have a second terminal running when the install is running.

Some questions: Why do you have to make a new install? Where there problems with an older install?
It seems that the downloading part of the installation was not the problem, but problems occur only when the system tries to install the packages. Seems to be possible that this is an hardware error, I would recommend to check the RAM (using Memtest86+) and the harddisk (using the manufacturers diagnosis tool) for errors.

I had a hard drive failure, so with the new hard drive I went to the latest Kubuntu LTS (12.04). That turned out to be very unstable, so I thought I'd give Debian a go. I want something very stable.
I used my Kubuntu 12.04 LTS CD to run Memtest86+, and the screen went very red, very quickly. I think my RAM is unhealthy. I now think this explains why Kubuntu was so unstable. I wonder if perhaps this caused my last hard drive to fail. Don't know.

Thank you very much for your assistance. I'm going to buy some more RAM now. Given that this is almost certainly the problem, I'll mark this as SOLVED.

@pcardout - G'day to you too. Thanks very much for your help. At this stage I'll address the RAM. If I still have trouble, I'll use your notes to do a basic install. I'd better update my profile too, it shows me using Slackware, and that's going back years!

If I have any more problems after my RAM is changed, I'll post a new thread.

Remove and reseat the RAM, blow out the RAM slots re run the memtest. If it still fails and you have more than one RAM module, shut down, remove one RAM module boot up and re-test. If that fails, repeat for others until you've isolated the failing module.

In the unlikely scenario that more than one module or all modules are failing, check the DRAM timing/refresh options in your BIOS setup. Some cheap RAM is prone to failure with aggressive timings, so knock it down a bit and re run the memtest to see if it improves.

Hello caravel --

Good advice. For WIW I had an ASUS Mobo that after a few years developed memory problems and it was somehow
the memory controller and not the memory itself. I figured that out by process of elimination. The mobo developed
a bad slot.

G'day to you BeerisGood!

caravel - I didn't read your post in time, and ordered a new RAM module. So, I hope that's the problem! I'll try reseating the existing one anyway.