Hi, I'm trying to install Debian Etch from floppy and local mirror. It fails with message:
"The specified Debian archive mirror is either not available, or does not have a valid Release file on it. Please try a different mirror." Before I get bashed for this question, I'd like to explain that I want to install Debian on a very old laptop (Celeron 300MHz, 64MB RAM), which doesn't have a CD/DVD drive, doesn't boot from network, doesn't boot from USB and I can't remove its HDD. That's why I decided to use Etch, as it still had floppy install images. Before I tried installing it on a real hardware, I decided to test everything on a virtual machine. First I tried a regular mirror over http - failed (I understand that, etch is archived). Then I tried archive.debian.org - failed. Then I created a local mirror on my bigger Debian machine using apt-mirror. The installation failed again with the same message. During several failed attempts, I created symbolic links "stable" and "oldstable" to "etch". Then I spied a little using wireshark. The installation requests the release file "/debian/dists/oldstable/Release" - which is returned with HTTP OK. Then it requests "/debian/dists/etch/Release", which also finishes with a successful file transfer. Still the same error. No other files are requested from the mirror. I assume it's not a network or file-naming problem. What else can be wrong? Corrupted mirror? Invalid signatures? The beggining of the release file is as follows: "Origin: Debian Label: Debian Suite: oldstable Version: 4.0r9 Codename: etch Date: Sat, 22 May 2010 14:22:09 UTC Architectures: alpha amd64 arm hppa i386 ia64 mips mipsel powerpc s390 sparc Components: main contrib non-free Description: Debian 4.0r9 Released 22nd May 2010 MD5Sum: 88e31747739f3ea9445fe543b21061b5 10910068 Contents-powerpc.g" I mirrored main contrib and non-free, only i386. The VM is Virtual Box, configured for 32bit Debian with floppy, small HDD, bridged network and 64MB RAM. My mirror machine is 64 bit Debian on Core2Quad processor - Linux StrikeNoir 2.6.32-5-amd64 #1 SMP Tue Jun 14 09:42:28 UTC 2011 x86_64 GNU/Linux The old laptop is Twinhead with Celeron processor. 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. Please help. Best regards, Michal Kurowski -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1315594657.2806.35.ca...@strikenoir.home