I want to install debian etch on my laptop .The laptop is from pointersystems
(m570au) and is an intel centrino 2.0hgz platform
Installation from cd don't work because after the initial bootup the dvdrw device isn't recognized by the debian installer (the etch netinstall)
neither is my eth card.
Now i have a 40 gb usb-hdd that i want to use to perfom an install from usb
I followed all the steps from the Debian GNU/Linux Installation Guide/4.4. Preparing Files for USB Memory Stick Booting, but it won't boot.
The usb-hdd gets recognized by the laptops bios and it is setup to boot from usb-hdd or other usb devices.
the dvd device is a Compal TSD80Y1 , eth device is a Marvell Yukom pci-e gb device.

With a kubuntu cd things will work so the support for the devices must be possible in the kernel i think.
But i'd prefer to have debian since i'm used to it and very satisfied with it (so far)
any help would be welcome.

So you formatted the disk with vfat, installed syslinux, created a syslinux.cfg, copied an iso to the disk?

Where is the point of failure? Does it attempt to boot to the disk? Is there an error?

There is to attempt to boot at all,
It seems to me like syslinux didn't write the mbr correctly.
also install-mbr didn't help me.

boot the netinstall disk again and at the prompt type: install24

My guess in you have the new sata/ide controller, libata in the 2.6 kernel in the netinstaller has a problem with it.
You will not have DMA on your drive so you will want to upgrade to the 2.6 kernel in the repositories. After installation, you will want to change all the references to the hard drive from hda to sda, these include:
kopt in /boot/grub/menu.lst # run update-grub after changing.
/etc/fstab

i installed debian etch AMD64 on my core 2 duo /intel dg965whmkr MoB based system using usb stick and is runing perfectly . i also faced cdrom failure issue . solution is USB booting.

please make it sure that u made your usb stick bootable( boot flag is set or not ) then unzip ur boot img to usb stick ad then copy net/businesscard image to usb stick . then enable usb boot in bios. restart ur box .. done ...

feel free to contact me if u need help

regards
Reju

Sorry for going off topic, but since this thread was opened long time ago...


about the TSD80Y1 DVD burner:

is it working 100% on linux ? (reading, extracting, burning...)
(planning to buy an USB boxed one.


MANY thanks for your experiences !