Fresh 7.10 netinstall problems...

[Digby Tarvin <digbyt@acm.org>]

I hope there are some experts out there that can offer some suggestions
regarding a problem I am having installing Debian Etch (40r1-386-netinst
downloaded on 23/10/07) on a Dell Precision 410 MT...

Everything goes fine through the initial install, up to the point
where I have to reboot using the freshly installed kernel on the
hard drive.

I can log in after the reboot, and everything looks ok, but when I
then proceed to try and complete the install by adding other packages
like 'xorg', things start going wrong...

Either the package transfer fails after a few minutes with messages like
	E: Method http has died unexpectedly!
	segmentation fault
or dpkg falls over during the installation of the package, eg
	/bin/sh: line 1: 2284 Segmentation fault /usr/bin/dpkg_preconfigure...

I tried doing an 'apt-get update; apt-get upgrade' but the system did
not survive long enough to get the updated kernel installed.

It seems that the kernel used during the initial install was stable,
but the kernel it installed on the hard disk is not.

I tried adding 'nosmp' to the command line in case there were problems
with that, but it made no difference.


Any suggestions much appreciated.

For anyone who has read this far - here are some more details about
the target hardware:
	Model: Dell Precision Workstation 410 MT
	BIOS revision A08
	CPU: 2xPIII 450MHz
	Video card: 3DLabs Oxygen GVX1
	Ram: 1024MB
	Adaptec AIC-7890 BIOS DELL-V2.01.05
		SCSI ID 0	COMPAQ  DDRS-34560W ULTRA2-SE
		SCSI ID 1	SEAGATE ST173404LW  ULTRA2-SE
	Adaptec AIC-7880 BIOS DELL-V2.01.05
		SCSI ID 1   MATSHITA DVD-RAM LF-200
	Primary IDE1    ZIP drive

Regards,
DigbyT
-- 
Digby R. S. Tarvin                                          digbyt(at)digbyt.com
http://www.digbyt.com