Re: Help loading Debian

[Tony Godshall <togo@of.net>]

According to roach,
> On Saturday 02 July 2005 22:24, Jim Kern wrote:
> > This is my second attempt in a year to get Debian on my machine.  Why is it
> > so dificult.  I have downloaded the ISO image of the net install and burned
> > it to a CD.  Is this CD supposed to be bootable?
> 
> Yes.
> 
> >  Anyway when I insert the
> > CD in an i386 based machine it looks at the CD and returns not boot record
> > found.
> 
> That sounds like a hardware problem to me.

Or a misburned image.  The image is intended to be burned as
an image, but a common mistake is to burn a data disk
containing the image as a file.
 
> >  I have tried to look at your site to find a simple proceedure to
> > get this on my machine.
> 
> You should have looked on the CD. The instructions should be there.

Yes

...
 
> > I hope not but I feel I am helping you if I am
> > honest about it.  Anyway I hope you can point me in the right direction.
> 
> I'm sorry your having problems.
> 
> Here's a debugging list to get started:
> 
> 1. Are you downloading the netinstall iso from a reliable site?
>   A lot of mirrors are unfortunately broken.
> 2. Have you verified the md5sum of the CD?
> 3. Has the iso image been properly burnt?
>   Check to see if there is a single file or multiple files on the CD. It
>   should be the latter.
> 4. Is it in fact a CD? Some PC will not boot from a DVD. Stupid, but true.
> 5. Have you been able to boot any other linux distro with that drive, on that 
> PC?
> 5. Is it definitely a i386 netinstall iso?
>   If it's the wrong arch. it won't work.
> 
> If all else fails you can always try http://www.debian.org/distrib/floppyinst

That's a good list.