Debian 3.0 Installation Hangs at "Configuring Locales" screen
 

Hi, folks. I ran a search but didn't find anything about this, so here goes:

i'm doing a clean installation of Debian 3.0 Woody onto a clean hard drive. All was going great until I got to a screen called "Configuring Locales." No matter what I do, I cannot get past that screen. Doesn't matter if i select US English locales, or if I leave everything blank, hitting "Enter" doesn't clear the screen, nor does typing "OK". I notice the "Ok" text at the bottom of the screen is not highlighted like it is on the other screens.

I've rebooted at that point three times. Once with the installation CD in, and it repeated the whole post-partition install.
Another time I rebooted without the CD and got:
"Kernel Panic: VFS: unable to mount root fs on 03:05".
Another time I rebooted with the emergency floppy disk and it asked me to insert the installation CD, and 'round I went again. Each time I get stuck at that screen.

The only packages I selected were for X, Desktops, and C/C++ development. I did not use Deselect. Every time I have to go through the installatioon, I have to select the packages again (wierd, yes?).

I am able to escape from the installation by hitting "Alt-F2", and I can log in as a user or as Root, but I don't know what to do after that. I don't have Internet access on the box I'm installing on, so I hope whatever I need will be on the installation CD. And I only have one disk, not the series. Any suggestions?

TIA,

Siri Amrit

Well, I was able to get past the "Configuring Locales" screen by not selecting any packages at all. Then I was able to start configuring the X-window-server.

Configured keyboard, mouse, started answering questions about the monitor, and it hung again! This time at the screen that asks for video display selection, e.g. 800x600, etc.

I can choose the Advanced or Medium options, same result: I get stuck at that screen and can't get out of it. I have the specs for the monitor and enter in the values correctly. I'm not using a frame buffer, and I selected the "nv" drivers for my video card. What else?

After the third time I got stuck there from booting with "rescbf24", I rebooted without any boot floppy or installation disk. The boot was fine. Took me to a login screen, where I logged in as root and typed "apt-get install x-window-system".
This took me through the exact same routine, and again I got stuck at the same configuration screen.

Any ideas? And can anyone suggest a graceful way to exit the installation program without rebooting?

Thanks!

Siri Amrit