How can I get sarge running X on an pretty much fresh system? I've tried myself and ended up getting a handful of errors ...

Please could you tell us what the errors are.

After I type startx:

hostname: hostname lookup failure
Using authority file /root/.Xauthority
Writing authority file /root/.Xauthority
xauth (argv):1: bad display name "blue:0" in "list" command
Using authority file /root/.Xauthority
xauth (stdin):1: bad display name "blue:0" in "add" command

/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/xserverrc: line 2: /usr/bin/X11/X: No such file or directory
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/xserverrc: line 2: exec: /usr/bin/X11/X: cannot execute: No such file or directory
giving up.
xinit: No such file or directory (errno 2): unable to connect to X server
xinit: No such process (errno 3): Server error.
xauth: (argv):1: bad display name "blue:0" in "remove" command

Login as root and run
tasksel

select Desktop environment
If you installed Debian from net, it will download the packages and install X. If installed from CD, insert CD.

select Finish

run startx if does not start
run
/usr/bin/X11/xf86config
follow the instructions and do a startx
try a reboot

tasksel does not list Desktop Enbironment as one of its options ...

Do you have the "x-window-system" package installed?

It's not listed as a package

If your network connection is configured and your /etc/apt/sources.list is OK (you can set up the sources.list with "apt-setup"), you can install new packages by downloading them via network. Aptitude is a nice frontend for apt-get.

In order to get X up and going you need to install the "x-window-system" package and an X environment (fluxbox, windowmaker, kde, or gnome).

My network isn't even working I think. I have a USB and PCMCIA network cards. The PCMCIA one flashes it's lights when inserted, indicating that it's not ready, but the USB one seems to function ok on the outside. However, when I try to use the network through the USB NIC, it doesn't function properly. What I'll probably end up doing is downloading the deb file and burning it to the multisession CD I have with some other linux stuff, then mounting it and installing from there. I bet it's gonna have some dependencies though ... but hey, I'll give it a shot. I think I'm gonna leave the NIC problems in another thread.

Where can I obtain the x-window-system package?

If tasksel does not list desktop env, then it is possible that it has tried to install it sometime back and crashed, but it has marked the task "Desktop" as installed.

run
tasksel -n install desktop

run "tasksel --help" for more options

Even I had faced the same problem, then i was a novice and had restarted the whole installation process. But you are lucky.

When I try tasksel -n install desktop, it says E: desktop: no such task.

I'm starting to think that the X window system is on the 2nd cd or something ...

apt-get install x-window-system

make sure /etc/apt/sources.list contains an entry that points to your cd

apt-setup

Provided you have Sarge installation CD(s) that contain(s) more stuff than just the base system, the solution that utanja suggested seems optimal. However, if you installed Sarge from the beta installer (110 MB CD image) that only contains the base system (and nothing else), then I suggest you try to get your network connection working.

You see, the "x-window-system" is a "meta-package" that installs lots of other packages, so downloading them separately might prove out to be a quite difficult task. That's the beauty of apt-get -- it automatically downloads and installs all the packages that are marked as dependencies. But you need a working network connection (or a set of installation CDs) to use this dependency-resolving feature of apt-get.

Right. I use apt-get a lot for this kind of stuff. I just haven't been doing it this time because the network wasn't working. I'm gonna get the second CD and see what I can do with it. Guess how? Through DSL Live CD, mounting hda1 and using jigdo