Re: software part of installation process

[Charles Blair <c-blair@uiuc.edu>]

   Thanks to several people, in particular Andrew Sackville-
West and Chris Lale, for their detailed advice with several
previous installation problems.

   I am installing Debian on an HP Pavillion machine that
does not have a network connection.  I was planning to use
an "official" 15-CD set that has "Debian 3.1 Rel R4" printed
on it.  The installation program did not recognize my hard
disk (I think it is a "Sata" device).  However, I was able
to create a "netinst" CD on another computer which allowed
me to partition the hard disk and install a base system, but
the absence of a network connection meant I had to go back
to the CD set for further work.

   (1) I have been able to use "aptitude" to do some further
installation but am not sure it is fully functional.  The
display at the top of the screen says 

"Actions Undo Package..."

but alt-A, alt-U, etc on my keyboard don't do anything.

   (2) I understand the normal installation process includes
an automatic installation of X that tries to automatically
figure out configuration of my hardware.  Within "aptitude,"
I have chosen "Tasks", "End-user", and "Gnome desktop
environment", followed by typing "g".  This seems to have
installed packages, but I am still getting the
character-based login prompt, and "xinit" and "startx" don't
do anything.  I'm really hoping I can get an idiot-proof
process to do this work for me!

   (3) When I've tried to install gcc-3.3 or gcc, I get a
message that libc6-dev is broken.

   (4) I confess to having a separate Windows XP partition
(/dev/sda1).  On previous Debian machines, I have used
mtools to take files back and forth between the two
systems.  Is this still safe?

   Many thanks for past and future help!