[Debian-eeepc-devel] Installing from USB not working

[Ben Armstrong]

Michael,

On 04/06/2010 10:26 PM, Michael Donovan wrote:
> Just got an Asus eee PC 1005PE and my goal is to install Debian on 
> it.  I've tried following the guide on the wiki and am running into 
> problems.  I dd'd the debian-eeepc.img onto a usb stick from my Mac 
> running OSX 10.6.  From there I tried to boot from usb on my asus and 
> it does nothing.  I used to get a message saying "No Operating System 
> Found" when trying to boot from a USB but after trying a couple 
> different usb sticks I finally got rid of that message but things are 
> not much better.  I think it's an issue with how I'm putting the 
> installer image onto the usb but I can't say for sure.  As I said 
> earlier I just followed the instructions but maybe things have changed 
> for OSX 10.6?
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Let me know if I didn't give 
> out enough information.  I'm really excited to get Debian up and 
> running and start playing :)  Thanks.
>

While I agree it sounds as if you did botch the dd somehow, I don't 
think you'll get very far with debian-eeepc.img, since that is for 
Lenny, which is a network-based install and is quite a bit older than 
your system and therefore lacks any network drivers for your hardware.  
Not to mention the fact that it's i386 (32-bit) and the 1005PE is a 
64-bit capable machine, so you may be happier with an amd64 image 
instead of i386.  Please see:

http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC/Model/1005P

But this information is a bit dated (people with one of these models, 
please help update it? the page should be clear about what install 
method is recommended, and what issues remain to be solved ... xref to 
bug#s as needed).  I believe networking works fine for both 1005P and 
1005PE models using the current standard Debian Squeeze installer 
images.  The only remaining issue is with ethernet not showing up (due 
to broken hotplugging) mentioned in the footnote to atl1c here:

http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC/Models

Now, I understand that a patch was accepted and should be present in the 
kernel in those installer images that addresses this issue, but I don't 
know which models it fixes.  I understand that at least the 900A does 
not work with the current patch, but it might be fine now for your model.

After reading all of that, you should follow this guide (using the 
instructions for Squeeze):

http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC/HowTo/InstallUsingStandardInstaller


Ben