A lot of errors while installing (dselecting) bo

[Andreas Tille <e2od5@mlucom.urz.uni-halle.de>]

Hi,

I'm the one who frequently asks questions about installing :-(.

I had have many trouble while installing Debian on a NFS-Server
(see many many different postings in the past). Now I solved one
problem and got two further problems :-(.

For the guys who helped me solving my old problem:
I mounted only /var/lib/dpkg/methods/ftp/debian via NFS to
store only the *.deb files on the server and all the other
stuff from /var stay now on my local disk. This works up to
getting the next problem.

I tried to install /bo (/unstable) because I want to use TeTeX
and thought that after quite a long time of testing /unstable
will become /stable after some days. Many postings reported
that /unstable is quite stable.

I used the ftp-method. Is it right, if I selected
  [bo non-free distrib]
or should I use stable (in front of this list) too?

When installing the selected files I got many error-messages. Some of
them are:

1) at_3.0.deb:
     /etc/crontab  -> no such file or directory
   ... that was right, because at was the first package and cron
   wasn't installed.

2) The next stands as an example for an error, which occured at many
   packages:

   findutils_4.1-20.deb:
     unable to create `usr/bin/find': textfile busy

   Please don't ask whether other users worked in my box: I was the only
   one logged in and my only job was to install Debian.

3) As a consequence I got after failing to install such packages

     /usr/sbin/install-info: no such file or directory

   ... but this file exists

4) OK, some packages were installed but after a number of failing packages
   dpkg stops and I was asked if I would wish to delete ... Yes

   couldn't figure out type of at_3.0.deb
   Couldn't get info for: unstable/binary-i386/admin/at_3.0

   I got this message for EACH package I wanted to install (and got by
   dpkg-ftp in /var/lib/dpkg/methods/ftp/debian). For each stupid
   package regardless if it was successfully, unsuccessfully installed
   or skipped because dpkg was broken after a number of errors.

   And to recognize that it couldn't figure out/get info dselect needs
   TERRIBLY LONG TIME. Its a questions of MINUTES (I stopped the time
   for syslinux_1.30-2.deb: it was 2 Minutes and 25 Seconds!!). It seems
   me that the time it tooks dselect to figure out/get info is longer
   than getting the file by ftp.  So don't tell me please anything
   about the performance of my NFS-Server.

Does anybody think that it is a problem of the unstable tree. But if this
would be the case anybody would have reported such serious errors before.

Please help. I tried very hard, several days and I'm afraid I will go
mad with this stubborn box. I havn't any clue how to cope with this
problems.

Any help appreciated

    Andreas.