Then mount your disk the way it would be for a chroot. You know "/" is mounted on "/target", "/boot" on "/target/boot", "/usr" on "/target/usr", etc...
then run "debootstrap" with the proper switches (Mephis has debootstrap).
Then once installed, "chroot /target /bin/bash" and continue installing base from there. Once you do the base plus a few (like openssh-server, a kernel, grub... etc), exit from the chroot and then do grub-install --root-directory=/target /dev/<bootdevice>. Where bootdevice should be something like /dev/hd(a-j) or /dev/sd(a-j)
then setup a nice stanza for grub to boot from and then finish up from there.
And, Debian testing and unstable just went pthreads only. No longer supporting non-pthread (or Linux Threads as they call it). Libc 2.4 and after eliminated it.