On Sat, 16 Dec 2023, K0LNY ?? wrote:
I'm trying to reinstall Debian onto my Asus that only has 4 GB internal storage.
I have a CD installer that I downloaded and used to install it onto an
external SD card on that computer a few months back.
Which one? Netinst?
You may want to grab the latest installer in order to get any bug-fixes
since the initial release.
There is not enough storage internally to copy the installation on the SD card
to the 4 GB internal drive.
Now while installing on the Asus from the installation media, I'm at the point
in the installer that it wants the mirror for the repository.
I select US and then I've tried both the FTP and the HTTP options and neither
work.
Do you get any error messages? "It doesn't work" is kinda hard to
troubleshoot.
I've tried it with and without the Ethernet cable attached, because I
successfully connected to my WIFI at the beginning of the install, and when the
WIFI possibly failed, I tried the Ethernet.
So I've been looking on-line and found a lot of entries for the sources.list
file, but nothing for this part of the installer.
I am wondering if it is because the version I'm installing from is 12.something
and now I think Bookworm might be using 12.4.
In general, it shouldn't matter as it's the same major release. But
getting the latest install image wouldn't hurt.
But it tells me I can edit the sources.list in console 4, but I don't know how
to get to a console in the installer.
You didn't say which install interface you are using.
If it's a text-based install, you can hit alt-f4 (probably the left alt
key) to get to console 4. You should then be able to check the state of
your network devices, look at logging, etc.
Note that the system that is being installed onto is mounted under /target
(or at least it used to be last time I had to dig into this).
Also, some shell commands will not be available in this mode.
If I could skip this part, I would, and just add a sources.list file later.
The problem is that the installer may not have all the packages you need,
and also it will want to grab the latest versions.
I believe there are ways to install without network connectivity, but I've
never done it so can't say how.
HTH,
Geoff.
