Installing Debian etch with usb pen

alfmarius · 06-23-2008, 05:57 AM

OK, I feel I have tried everything, so now I'm desperate for some help.

After struggling many hours setting up/finding the correct etch image for booting from a usb pen to install etch, I made it work in the end!

So now I'm booting up debian (yeey!) and when about to configure the network I get the "ethernet card not found" in my face. Depressing. I've searched everywhere, but not found any help.

Details:

I downloaded:
ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/et...ia/boot.img.gz
and did a 'zcat boot.img.gz > /dev/sdb

booting from the usb, linux starts and i get the menu. I want to setup my ethernet card so i do a "Detect network hardware", and get the incredible "ethernet card not found". I tried to put another super-compatible NIC inside, but same message.

My two ethernet cards are (cut n paste from 'lspci')

Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82547EI Gigabit Ethernet Controller (LOM)
Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado] (rev 74)

...so linux know about the cards but cant find them..hmm

modprobe <just about anything i try> gives "FATAL: Module x not found."

Please, pick me down from the wall and help me

Alf

Randall Slack · 06-24-2008, 06:53 AM

not sure, but did you forget to add the install cd itself? it seems to me you only have the image to boot, but not the installation image

did this myself before and kept my notes as below.

Code:

make a debian installation usb

To download the installer we do as follows

$ wget http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/etch/main/installer-amd64/current/images/hd-media/boot.img.gz

and we will also need the same iso file as when making an installation cd

$ wget http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/4.0_r2/amd64/iso-cd/debian-40r2-amd64-netinst.iso

The exact mountpoint of the usb can be found with

$ fdisk -l

Assuming your usb is mounted as /dev/sda we can extract the boot.img.gz to the usb stick.

$ zcat boot.img.gz > /dev/sda

Then mount the usb.

# mount /dev/sda /mnt

when this is done simply copy the .iso to the same usb disk

# cp debian-40r2-amd64-netinst.iso /mnt

and then unmount the usb stick

# umount /mnt

alfmarius · 06-24-2008, 09:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Randall Slack

not sure, but did you forget to add the install cd itself? it seems to me you only have the image to boot, but not the installation image

Thats it

I got mine from here:
http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/...86-netinst.iso
..put it on the usb stick and voila!

A comment to this is that it seems strange to me that one have to download a 160 MB image to get the network going (yes for sure other things are in that image, but still). Why don't "they" make an image superstripped that just get everything off the net during install..

Thanks for helping mate!

Alf

Randall Slack · 06-24-2008, 09:51 AM

well....

luckily "they" already did, i suppose the 6mb mini.iso
http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dist...mages/netboot/
would have done the trick as well instead of the 160mb netinstall.

guess i could have pointed this out to you earlier but the possibility slipped my mind