Debian installer can't find the archive file
 

I need help installing Debian. I downloaded the ISO for it but I couldn't put it on the CD. I used WinImage and it said it couldn't write the file. So I extracted it to the hard drive instead and then copied it from the hard drive to the CD, and it worked, but it wouldn't boot. I got into the installer though from running boot.bat. It got to the part where it's going to start installing the kernel and it asked me where to copy the files from. I said CD. It said which one, hdc or hdd. I said hdc. Then it wanted to know what directory had images-1.44/idepci/rescue.bin and idepci/drivers.tgz in it. I told it to look for likely places but it couldn't find any. So I looked on the CD and found rescue.bin in dists\woody\main\disks-i386\3.0.23-2002-05-21\images-1.44\idepci and drivers.tgz in dists\woody\main\disks-i386\3.0.23-2002-05-21\idepci. So I went back into the installer and told it to look in dists/woody/main/disks-i386/3.0.23-2002-05-21. It said the installation media was already on /instmnt. It said it couldn't find the archive files in /instmnt/dists/woody/main/disks-i386/3.0.23-2002-05-21. I tried it as hdd instead of hdc too but it didn't work.

If you are using Mandrake, do you have k3b installed? If you can get k3b and you have a cdrw, then you can burn the iso onto a cd by using the burn image option. That will give you a bootable cd with all the folders and files extracted on it.

You could also try downloading the kernel, unzipping it and copying that onto a cd.

Hi,

I hope this will be to some help for you ( I found it on : http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handboo...?part=1&chap=2 )

To burn the downloaded ISO(s), you have to select raw-burning. How you do this is highly program-dependent. We will discuss a couple of popular tools on how to do this.

* With EasyCD Creator you select File, Record CD from CD image. Then you change the Files of type to ISO image file. Then locate the ISO file and click Open. When you click on Start recording the ISO image will be burned correctly onto the CD-R.
* With Nero Burning ROM, select File, Burn CD image. Set the type of file to *.* and select the ISO file. Older versions of Nero will tell you they don't recognize the format -- confirm here, it does recognize it but doesn't know it yet :) In the next dialog, set the following parameters:
o Type of image: Data Mode 1
o Block size: 2048 bytes
o File precursor and length of the image trailer: 0 bytes
o Scrambled: no
o Swapped: no
Now click on OK and then Burn (the CD-R)
* With cdrecord, you simply type cdrecord dev=/dev/hdc (replace /dev/hdc with your CD-RW drive's device path) followed by the path to the ISO file :)


yours
/tungsten ;)

I used WinImage when I tried to burn the ISO. When I tried to burn it to CD it didn't work but it worked when I wrote it to the hard drive. Then I copied it from the hard drive to the CD. So the files it says it needs are there on the CD but for some reason it says they aren't...

(I have used WinImage before to extract ISOs to CD and it worked OK)

Try Nero instead if you are burning on Windows. It has the option to burn image to cd and I use it when I'm in Windows. k3b works the best in Linux for me. Very simple to use.