Installing sarge with etch installer?

[Daniel Nilsson <daniel@oden.homeip.net>]

Hi,

I'm preparing to install a brand new server which will be running
Debian stable (sarge) when everything is said and done. The
motherboard is however a pretty new model using an Intel ICH7R south
bridge for which I don't believe there is support in the standard
sarge install CD based on some other threads I've read. Basically I'm
suspecting that the SATA attached disks are not going to appear and I
since the system disk will be a SATA disk I wont be able to install
sarge that way.

So what I was thinking about doing was to use the etch installer which
has a 2.6.12 kernel in which I believe there is support for this SATA
controller but then select to install the sarge distribution. Any
ideas if this will work or not? I realize I will need to make sure I
don't get the standard sarge kernel later on, but maybe I can select
to use the kernel off the etch install CD? If not, I can always build
a custom kernel later. My issue is rather running the installer in
such a way that it will find the system disk off the SATA controller
while installing sarge from scratch. Any other ideas on how to achieve
this in most welcome. Netbooting is an option as well for example,
would that help?

Regards
Daniel Nilsson