Thanks again for your suggestions.
On Sun, 18 Feb 2018, Gene Heskett wrote:
Is the machine fully uptodate?
The netinst CD is freshly downloaded and identifies as << Debian
GNU/Linux 9.3.0 "Stretch" - Official i386 NETINST 20171209-13:03 >>. Is
there a newer CD?
On Sun, 18 Feb 2018, Brian wrote:
On Sun 18 Feb 2018 at 23:19:48 +0100, Roger Price wrote:
3. Load installer components from CD
[X] choose-mirror
Why? I've never used it. I don't know what it does. It's optional. Don't
select it.
Try a different mirror. With and without step 3.
On Sun, 18 Feb 2018, David Wright wrote:
.... And as Brian said, forget this option:
Installer components to load:
[ ] choose-mirror: Choose mirror to install from (menu item)
Work your way through the main menu …
...
… and don't think about mirrors until you get to this point.
│ Select and install software
I naïvely choose that component because I assumed it provided the "choose a
mirror" function. If that is not true, then the option needs to be renamed.
Choosing this component has the considerable advantage that it gets to the
problem much more quickly without having to specify users and partition disks at
each test.
I tried 11 other mirrors.
ftp.fr.debian.org ftp.ch.debian.org ftp.se.debian.org
ftp.fi.debian.org ftp.hk.debian.org debian.proxad.net
ftp.uni-stuttgart.de debian.mirror.lrz.de mirror.ox.ac.uk
opensource.nchc.org.tw debian.mirrors.easynet.fr
They all connect and then hang on "HTTP request sent, awaiting response...".
I tried ftp.uni-kl.de which gets as far as "200 OK" and then hangs.
I tried debian.mirrors.ovh.net which succeeds with retries. At the step "Select
and install software", the only option is [X] Standard system utilities.
Nothing else.
I choose the default linux kernel, and when finally I boot the new installation,
I get many ACPI errors and then fall into initramfs which offers me Busybox.
I tried again with debian.mirrors.ovh.net and saw on Ctl-Alt-F4
main-menu[346]: (process:4174): unknown udeb stretch-support
main-menu[346]: INFO: falling back to the package description for brltty-udeb
Is this a sign that something is wrong?
Later the installation hangs with the message:
in-target: Failed to fetch
http://debian.mirrors.ovh.net/debian/dists/stretch/main/i18n/Translation-en
Cannot initiate the connection to debian.mirrors.ovh.net:80
(2001:41d0:202:100:213:32:5:7). - connect (101: Network is unreachable)
[IP 2001:41d0:202:100:213:32:5:7 80]
There is no mention of IPv4 and I do not have IPv6. Is there some way
of telling the installer not to use IPv6? I have read
https://wiki.debian.org/DebianIPv6#How_to_turn_off_IPv6 but the
installer does not have file /etc/sysctl.conf
Roger