Hello, got a net install Sarge image off debian.org in mid January and I'm playing with it now.

Was going well for a little bit, partinioned the hard drive fine, installed the base system from the CD, then rebooted off the hard drive. Got the welcome screen, set up the clock/time zone, then it wasnted to do the apt config access method and this is where I got stuck.

I tried FTP with a few of the options (ftp.kernel.org, ftp.debian.org, and a few others). Same thing happened for about 5 of them, it just sort of hangs on the "Testing apt sources... connecting to ~~~~" and i have to ctrl^c out of it.

Then I tried HTTP and I get a more informative message to the tune of "Error: gzip:stdin:not in gzip format Failed to fetch http://~~~~~~/packages.gz Sub-process returned an error code (1) W: Couldn't stat source package list ~~~~~/test/main Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/~~~~~_Packages) -stat (2 no such file) may want to run apt-get update to correct problems, some index files failed to download." This happened for every different source I tried.

I'm thinking its a network connection problem. I went to a shell and tried to ping yahoo.com and that didn't work. The network cord is plugged in, the NIC works fine while using my other hard drive with windows on it(what i'm using right now), my LAN is up.

My NIC is an old generic Intel Pro 100 PCI card that did work in the Debian Woody distro I tried a few months ago.

Update: I ran ifconfig -a and heres the output...

eth0
link encap: Ethernet HWaddr XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
inet addr: 137.140.XXX.XX Bcast: 137.140.143.XXX Mask: 255:255:248:0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MUT: 1500 Metric 1
RX packets: 4022 errors: 0 dropped: 0 overruns: 0 frame: 0
TX packets: 0 errors: 0 dropped: 0 overruns: 0 carrier: 0
collisions: 0 txqueuelen: 1000
RX bytes: 312902 TX Bytes: 1370
Interrupt: 19 Baseaddress: 0xd800 Memory e8305000-e8305038

lo
link encap: local loopback
inet addr: 127.0.0.1 Mask 255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MUT: 16436 Metric: 1
RX packets: 0 errors: 0 dropped: 0 overruns: 0 frame: 0
TX packets: 0 errors: 0 dropped: 0 overruns: 0 carrier: 0
collisions: 0 txqueuelen: 0
RX bytes 0 TX bytes 0

Update again:
Should say a little something about my setup. Its just a regular desktop computer with an x86 processor. I live in a dorm, so my NIC plugs into the wall with the regular ethernet cable. I'm guessing theres a dorm router up the line from my wall

Anyone have a suggestion for where to start looking? I'm a bit new to these installations, but have gotten lucky once or twice =)
Thanks!

It looks like the network has configured ok. As root (at the command prompt enter su (super user) and it will ask for the root password) do apt-setup and select either http or ftp and it should then ask for which distro and the default is testing. Mostly just accept what it is throwing at you. I don't want to go further on my own system because it will mess up my own apt files. The file it will create is the sources.list which is in /etc/apt/.
From here on in it gets quite complex because you have to decide what you want. There is a semi-automated form which I think is also on testing called tasksel (do tasksel at the prompt) which will install most common things for you. Suggest having a read of the installation manuals you will find at;
http://www.nl.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

Another apt helper application I would strongly advise installing is listbugs (apt-get install listbugs) as this will tell you if the packages you have downloaded have any bugs and the degree of the problem then you can make a choice as to whether you want to go ahead with the install or not.

Thanks for taking a stab at it Tiger...

It does look like the network is configured right, and that seems like a huge problem to me. lol Even as root, I still can't ping yahoo, and apt-setup still can't connect to any of the ftp or http servers. There has to be some sort of network problem that I don't see.

I tried #ifdown eth0, #ifup eth0 and it looked really promising. My DHCP server returned an IP address for me, and it said "eth0 NIC link is up 10 mbps half duplex" but I still couldn't do anything involving the internet.


Any more suggestions to get my poor internet working? Or even some more network configuration files or programs that I can play with?

Can you check the command "route" I'm not really familliair with cable but it could be that you don't have a dns server at the moment. Have you tried with dhcpcd? Also if you know the address of your DNS server you can set it in /etc/resolv.conf Hope this helps a bit.

#route showed the following two lines. I hope i'm not posting any really sensitive information =|

Dest:137.140.136.0
Gateway: *
Genmask: 255.255.248.0
Flags: U
Metric: 0
Ref: 0
Use iface: eth0

Dest:default
Gateway: 137.140.143.250
Genmask: 0.0.0.0
Flags: UG
Metric: 0
Ref: 0
Use iface: eth0


I haven't tried dhcpcd at all, don't know what it is. Could you elaborate a little? It requests an IP address?

I just checked around on some school web sites, turns out the primary and secondary DNS Servers for my school match the two entries in my resolv.conf file. Maybe I'll try switching them?

Oh!!! I just realized something!

I put my knoppix CD in to try to compare configuration files and when I booted and launched konquerer it brought me to a "network verification" screen. This is a page I normally get when I start my computer up. My school assigned me a user name and password to be put in before any internet access is given. Can't believe I didn't think of that earlier....

Think that might be the problem? Maybe theres a way to trigger that authentication process without launching a web browser? I don't think I'll be able to install unless I can get passed that verification. Hmm, isn't there a text based web browser that I'd be able to run?

The problem is the gateway IP address is probably incorrect. Do you know if the addresses are assigned by dhcp? You an check to see if you can get through by going into /etc/network/interfaces and just rem (#) the current eht0 settings and then add the following;

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

You would also need to know the DNS of the isp and enter this is /etc/resolve.conf which would be available from the sysadmin.

and then as root do /etc/init.d/networking start (hint at each point like /e hit the tab and it will complete it for you)
Having said all this in many situations like this it is wise to speak to the sysadmin because they will tell you what services they run. They may use static addressing and give you an address and tell you the gateway and the DNS address.