Can anyone here tell me or point me to a guide on installing a proper Debian Sarge system through the debootstrap utility? I've tried the chroot guide located in
"man debootstrap" on Ubuntu 6.06 and with it plus some figuring out what steps I need at configure time, I managed to get a test system working.

I would use floppies but this iMac is the kind that doesn't have a floppy drive or a spare USB port to stick a drive into. Not even in the side of the keyboard.

I've looked over some other guides here but they seem to be for outdated distributions/kernels such as 2.4.18, and none of them seem to take into account Macs, OpenFirmware, or the yaboot installer.

You probably will encounter some problems going from Ubuntu to Sarge. Sarge is super old by most distro standards. That it part of its attraction in many ways, but I think the default kernel in sarge is something like 2.4.27 or so. You do have the option of 2.6.8 I think as well, but the default is 2.4.

If you're looking to make the machine a server, Sarge is all good, but if you're using it as a desktop/workstation, you'd have a much easier time and get current software with either Etch (testing) or Sid (unstable). It also would be closer to Ubuntu, which is based on Sid.

I'm sure you can do things the way you are trying, but are you avoiding the CDRom install for some reason? It seems this image from debian.org (sarge for powerpc) would be what you want if you stick with sarge - http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/...pc-netinst.iso

Peace,
JimBass

I have that image anyway, just no blank CD's which I can successfully burn it with (proper ISO image as contents of CD) at the moment. That's why I was asking about the network install.

I saw the "ZeroDiskInstall" entry on http://wiki.debian.org but apparently that only works for GRUB bootloaders and thus PC's. . . surprising considering that Yaboot makes provisions for ISO9660 filetypes.

I might just do a dist-upgrade to Etch once Sarge is installed. I'm not sure.

Yeah, that makes things tough. You can install grub to just about anything, floppy, cdrom, usbstick, etc. Problem is you said no floppy, and installing it to cdrom can't be done as you have no blanks. The usbstick maybe? Of course to install grub, I think you'd need something with grub, like knoppix, and that means another blank disk, unless you already have a live distro?

I don't know anything about yaboot, sorry. Did you try googling for just what you are trying to do? Dumping just "yaboot .iso" into http://google.com/linux gives this as the first result -> http://www.debian.org/releases/stabl...h04s04.html.en

That tells how to deal with yaboot, and getting things to work on a usbstick. If you don't have one of those, you're SOL. I see you say there is no USB slot free, but if you have a mouse connected through usb, unplug it and use its slot, as you don't use a mouse in the sarge installer. Or go to the store, spend the $2 or so and get a few blanks.

Peace,
JimBass

Ignore everything I previously said. . .Lol. I went with plan B and got a new blank CD, burned 31r2 on it with my other machine.

After going through the base install process, everything's fine so far.

Thanks for your help.

No problem, glad things worked out for you!

Peace,
JimBass