I've just installed Lenny on a machine on quite a flakey internet connection. It took me about 3 hours to configure apt at the end of the install, after which I was asked to select further packages I wanted installed.

It then went to fetch something like 1,500 files, but it halted at around 50 out of the 1,500 for about an hour. Then it suddenly decided it had all the files it needed, after all, and went to the configure stage and then installed grub and rebooted.

Now I don't know what I've got installed, what's partially downloaded and what still needs to be installed.

Is there some way I can resume the installation?

Or do I need to start again from scratch?

What happens when you reboot?.
Did you select the 'desktop' option during the install?.

I boots into console login: no desktop.

I didn't specifically select the desktop option, but I think I got everything pretty well covered.

Chances are you didn't install X then,hence the console login.

No.

I'm pretty sure the entire installation is 1,400 files short.

That's why I want to resume the installation.

I guess I could start from scratch, though.

You could try installing X and some kind of desktop environment/window manager and go from there.

Never mind.

I've started from scratch.

Ok,your call.
Let us know how the new install goes.

Almost 27 hours since I started the reinstall, but it seems to be all there.

It is a loss of time to start installation from scratch.

If you were able to boot into a command line, you were fine. Just running apt-get -f install would have finished the installation. And it still will do if the install breaks.

If that, for some reason, failed, run tasksel from the command line, choose the tasks you want your machine to perform and continue.

jlinkels