I've also run into exactly this problem installing woody on a diskless alpha, and can't find a workaround. The NFS server is this case is x86 woody (I've tried both user and kernel nfsd's). There are further details (and suggested fixes) at: http://lists.debian.org/debian-cd/2002/debian-cd-200205/msg00154.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-cd/2002/debian-cd-200205/msg00164.html