When I am doing a netinstall of "Etch" AMD64, I only select one package to install after I set up my APT sources. The only package is "Base System". Everything else including "Desktop Environment" is de-selected. When it tries to install the base system - I got an "aptitude failed" error message.

I got this the past 2 days in a row and I don't know what is wrong. There are only 4 sources on the east coast for AMD64 and I am selecting the "csail.edu" source that shows up 1st.

Anyone know why this is happening. I think the package that fails is python and when I rebooted my machine, I get a whole bunch of errors while booting into my system but it evenually does load fine as I am posting from it now via Firefox.

Try from a root command line aptitude update && aptitude dist-upgrade

Here is what I see. I had to break out the digi cam so please don't laugh...

Source

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If I saw correctly, in your sources.list you have enabled both Etch (testing) and Sid (unstable) repositories. When you mix these branches you'll probably end with a lot of unmet dependencies, as I believe your case.

If you want to have only Etch, comment the lines that points to Sid (unstable).

It happens with either one and or both. If I just have 'Etch' repos, I get the same thing and if I just have 'unstable', still the same issue. I just happened to screenshot when both were un-commented.

- Carlos

you should never mix like that, unless you know exactly what you are doing, and are setting your pin priorities.. http://jaqque.sbih.org/kplug/apt-pinning.html
http://www.argon.org/~roderick/apt-pinning.html

If you never set the pin priorities it's really uncertain as to how the system chose which tree to install packages from, and may have put your system in an unusable state. I don't know of any easy way to tell exactly what the current state of your system is...

I would recommend you re-install and choose either testing OR unstable for your sources, but not both

As I explained, I did reinstall with just Tesing or Unstable and not both.

I will try again, and hopefully see if it works.

I've never had the installer work with either testing or unstable as the source try using stable do the base install then change the sources.list and do a dist-upgrade to the branch you want.

So let me try this and please try to follow along and let me know if this is good or if I need to change this install method.

After I set up APT in the Net Install to use "only" testing repo's. I should then not install anything from this screen, right?

Then I get to a bash shell and start to update my system...

Can you guys tell me if I am missing anything from my list below:

- apt-get update
- apt-get upgrade
- apt-get dist-upgrade
- apt-get install linux-image-2.6.15-1-amd64-k8
- apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.15-1-amd64-k8
- reboot and load the OS in the new kernel
- apt-get install shh
- apt-get install bzip2
- apt-get install x-window-system kdm kde-core
- start kdm

That sounds about right, although you might start with stable at the net install. Then when you're done, nano /etc/apt/sources.list and change it to testing (not sure why it would matter, but the guy above said he had to do it that way). Then apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade.

Thanks. I will give that a shot on this AMD64 system!

If I'm not mistaken I don't think you can do a stable install when you are running the AMD64 kernel.. I think the default option is testing.

Your setup looks fine. I was more concerned that you had both repositories uncommented and had done an apt-get update which would have done who knows what to your package list and could have been the cause of apts inability to resolve dependencies for the package you were trying to install.

and the final command would be
/etc/init.d/kdm start

That's a pretty bare system but theres nothing wrong with that..

Yeah - Testing is the only option and what I want for Debian so that's fine!

Thanks all!