So, here's the arrangement: my laptop dual-boots a fully-operational Ubuntu and a minimal Debian. It used to only boot Ubuntu until I decided to start playing with it, so I used GParted to resize the Ubuntu. I split it in just less than half, then pade a second partition about the same size. The remaining space, aside from swap, is an extra partition, mounting at startup on both distros that hold files like music and document I want to use in both places. Ubuntu is sda1, Debian is sda2.

Now, the internet on my laptop is a bit screwy. This is a hardware problem which will eventually be fixed (I'm having it fixed as a Christmas present) but at the moment, the wireless has never worked at all, and I had to use a USB adapter. Wired internet works in Ubuntu (I'm using it now) but when I went to install Debian, it couldn't get to connect to the wired internet either. (This did work installing Ubuntu, but I was expecting Debian to put up a bit more of a fight anyways) So when the installation finishes, I have only a text login, and it says it has big problems with xorg.conf that I'm going to need the internet to fix, and am unable to connect to the internet in any way. It doesn't recognise the USB or wired connections.

But Debian, in and of itself, is there, and does appear to be operating. Everything seems to be in the right place. It boots properly. I can login as a regular user or as root. I can cd around and see everything seems to be in order, as much as can be expected, at least. So I was hoping that I could boot into Ubuntu and use Ubuntu's internet connection to finish installing and configuring Debian. So I boot into Ubuntu, mount the Debian partition, mount everything else it complains isn't mounted, and go to chroot into the Debian side, and it says:

"chroot: cannot run command `/bin/bash': Exec format error"

So I start looking into this. No one seems to have quite the same issue I do, but similar ones were created by trying to chroot from a 64-bit to a 34-bit install. So I check the kernel file I have for Debian. All good there. So I keep looking and find it can happen if there's a problem with bash on the side I'm trying to chroot into. I have no idea how to find out of this is true or what to do about it if it is, or if it's not, and generally have no idea where to go from here.

Any insight?

Why not start by posting information about your Wired NIC and we can work on getting you network access.

Can you post the output of lspci, from your Ubuntu side would be fine since it's the same information. Then we can address your issues., possibly both network and xorg..

Thanks for reading!
As you'll see, the card in question is Atheros, which, as I found out with Ubuntu, isn't great about Linux. But I tried every way available to install a number of different drivers for it, and all the installs went perfectly, but none seemed to affect the erratic behavior of the device (it would work just find when it was detected, but was most of the time not detected. Detection would come in and out seemingly at random, for example being up for a few hours, then gone for a few days, back in for fifteen minutes and gone, while I'm just sitting there using OpenOffice). With the USB device (also Atheros), it worked fine, and it worked fine for other people using wireless in the same place. The USB device is broken, now.

Anyways, here's the output from lspci:
00:00.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP67 Memory Controller (rev a2)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP67 ISA Bridge (rev a2)
00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation MCP67 SMBus (rev a2)
00:01.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP67 Memory Controller (rev a2)
00:01.3 Co-processor: nVidia Corporation MCP67 Co-processor (rev a2)
00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP67 OHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev a2)
00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP67 EHCI USB 2.0 Controller (rev a2)
00:04.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP67 OHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev a2)
00:04.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP67 EHCI USB 2.0 Controller (rev a2)
00:06.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP67 IDE Controller (rev a1)
00:07.0 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP67 High Definition Audio (rev a1)
00:08.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP67 PCI Bridge (rev a2)
00:09.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP67 AHCI Controller (rev a2)
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: nVidia Corporation MCP67 Ethernet (rev a2)
00:0c.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP67 PCI Express Bridge (rev a2)
00:0d.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP67 PCI Express Bridge (rev a2)
00:12.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 7150M (rev a2)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
02:05.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 05)
02:05.1 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 22)
02:05.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller (rev 12)
02:05.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 12)
02:05.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev ff)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)

I'm using that same Wireless card on my Acer Aspire One netbook and it works without any difficulties.. I alkso am running a much newer kernel than is in etch since I am running Lenny on the netbook with the 2.6.26-1 kernel

Let me provide the link I used for my configuration.
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianAcerOne...feb02fff61834b
Here is the detail on my install
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...52#post3362452

Feel free to respond with further questions.

I think I recognise that post from when I was trying to get it working on Ubuntu. Madwifi never worked, and I'd installed it by about three differen methods (through synaptic, manually downloading the tarballs, etc. Ndiswrapper didn't either. I go to the driver manager for them, and it keeps saying I don't have the hardware, it says I haven't got any kind of ability to connect to the internet at all. Then a few minutes later, it'll detect, and pop to life just fine and in working order. If it was the driver, wouldn't it never work?

This seems like it's a problem with detecting the physical presence of the device in the first place. It'll be totally undetected and functionally non-existant for ages--days, even weeks--then suddenly while I'm watching TV I'll hear Pidgin suddenly log in and lo and behold, it's working. When it registers as existing at all, it works perfectly, and is fully functional in every way. Other people have no problem using the same wireless signal. This'll keep up for an unknown quanity of time, sometimes days, sometimes minutes, then disappear again. Between the switches, nothing changes at all. I do not tinker with anything. I don't alter or update anything. Sometimes, I don't even touch the machine. It just goes in and out without anything I do affecting it in any way.

Kinda like a cat.

I've been fiddling away with this in the interim, trying to get the chroot working (even if my wireless got working, I'd still want to be able to say I managed this, and would like to finish anyways). I've read a couple places that for other people there might be a problem with /bin/bash itself, but I'm not sure, since I can log in over there and do some things. Am I on remotely the right track? I'd love to get this working.