Admittedly, I'm a rank newb with Debian: this is my first install attempt. But neither latest daily build debian-installer CD (tc1), nor sarge-i386-{1-3}.iso CDs, are able to complete the base system install on my i386 box. At about 22% into the install, it's failing with the following error:

"Base system installation error"
"The debootstrap program exited with an error (return value 1)"

The last entry in tty3 is:

"tar: ./usr/share/man/man3/Locale::gettext.3pm.gz: Invalid argument"

I've tried Expert mode in d-i, and with kernel 2.6.x, and I get the same error. I'd like to stick with Debian, but I'm itching to get a working Linux install in place, and so far debian-installer/sarge just aren't cutting it.

I'm loathe to go with Woody, given its ancient collection of modules, XFree, KDE, etc. Am downloading Mandrake 10.0 as I write; please help me stick with the righteous.

thanks,
ps

I don't mean to hijack this thread, but I'm also a Debian newb and I want to install sarge on my desktop (which is one year old). I used Mandrake 10.0 for a few months but I want to try something different. My specific questions are:

1) What is the 'best' way to install sarge onto my machine? Internet install? Full-CD install? Other?

2) What are the best/most helpful installation guides out there for Debian?

3) I want to keep a small partition of my hard drive with WinXP on it (I know I know, but its just until I feel safe with my new internet connection working in Linux). Is this particularly hard to do with a Debian install?

4) Any further advice to help me achieve a relatively easy and painless installation of Debian sarge is appreciated.


Thanks! I look forward to checking out a new distro

1.
can you try to install debian over another machine (nfs/ftp?). i had that prob once with woody and it turned out to be a cdrom-read (hardware) failure. installing it from another machine with a good scsi-cdrom in it worked allright.
anyway your message rather points to a failure in the script (change the language settings just for installing the base might also help)- so you maybe should try install via floppy/harddisk or get another version of the base-install.

2.
i would try the cd's for first install. if you don't have any ftp will be a good choice too.

i never used a guide for installation but for tuning the system afterwards there are good howto's and guides out there (sag/nag/...).

no prob. keep one free ore install m$ before installing linux.

should really be no problem ;-)

sl mritch.

Dude: your highjacking of this thread isn't going to help me get support with my original problem. Start a new thread, please.

mritch, thanks for the help...my last reply was directed to poster ROOts (the thread hijacker). Your reply was intended to help with the original problem; I appreciate that. Vielen dank.

Well your thread seemed appropriate for my query because you are having trouble installing sarge and I'm about to install sarge myself. So in other words, I wanted to get advice so I can try to avoid running into the problems youa re having. Its not thread hijacking per-say, more like thread hitchhiking

Thanks for your advice mritch. I actually wanted to do the minimum CD/net install because I already have Windows up on my machine at home and I don't want to have to juggle around 7 CDs. If that install usually causes more problems for people (does it?) then I will do the full CD install.

pgsirois > can you run Knoppix normally? what kind of special or very new hardware do you have?

I remember as I was installing debian with the new test1 candidate that I canceled at one point in the install because I was having a couple issues and there was an option to test the cd medium. I ran this test and it checked out ok thankfully but you might run the test and see what it does for you. Have you checked out Munjoy or Mepis. I know it's not true debian but you could make it that way in no time. Munjoy is pretty new but looks like it might be promising. Hope this helps a little for the both of you. heheh.

Can you install Woody?

The reason I ask is because as others have suggested you may have a bad disc with sarge, or bad hardware. I had errors like that once and it was because there was one package on my install disc that was not readable. Bad cdr and there was an error on it that made the disc garbage. I burnt another and it worked then.

If not you can install woody and then upgrade to sarge with apt-get. There is a dist-upgrade option you can use to make woody into sarge. If you can install woody and not sarge that is what I would do. You can use apt-get to upgrade your kernel and your system to use the latest kernels and sarge packages, or even sid if you'd like to go that way.

IMO that is one thing that makes Debian so awesome. No matter how old your install disc or version you can upgrade it over ftp to all the latest and greatest packages. No need to reinstall when new versions come out, dist-upgrade and you're there.

http://www.nl.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ I just did the beta4 and it works great,but you will need a fast connection,and just go with the base install and apt-get what you want so you don't end up with alot of stuff you will never need,you can allways apt-get it later,good luck