Lurker_pas wrote: > Then I tried archive.debian.org - failed. I would poke at this more closely. Why is this failing? I have a few obsolete Etch and even Sarge machines still hitting that archive and they are validating the archive okay. Seems to me that part should be working and that problem is probably the root cause of your trouble. If you figure that out you might be golden. You should be able to point your newer machines at the archive. All of the package versions will be older and so nothing will want to install. But updating should validate the release signatures. You may need to add the old key to your apt-key though. But the older installation would already have it. Can you debootstrap Etch? I would think that you could. It might be another way to validate your archive. Not as an install method for your machine but as a way to validate that you could install from your archive. I just tried an Etch debootstrap and it worked okay for me. debootstrap etch etch-chroot http://archive.debian.org/debian > If someone knows how to bypass this and install Linux on this old > laptop in a different way, I'll be happy to hear that. Still, I want to > know what is wrong with my current procedure. Another possibility would be Syslinux. The upstream Syslinux site is down for me at this moment making it hard for me to check docs but as I recall it still supports floppy disk booting and has a process to bootstrap a network boot from a floppy disk boot. And etherboot. The etherboot howtos are available now so I will pass those along. http://etherboot.org/wiki/howtos http://etherboot.org/wiki/removable Note that I haven't tried it yet. I just remember having seen it. But it looks like it might be a way for you to install over the network but bootstrapping yourself entirely from the floppy disk. Bob
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