. . was from the full 21-CD stable set, but apt-get update was run before installing the kernel source - a new kernel source was automatically downloaded from Debian and installed by apt-get install. A couple other packages were also downloaded. All the installing I did used CDs 1,4,5,10 and possibly 2 from the set so copies of those will be shipped with the machine.

I rebuilt the kernel because I never let a machine out without the ability to do so. My work often involves hardware that isn't installed by the distribution and/or configurations that are different. And there can be hardware changes later.

And if you haven't thoroughly reconfigured and rebuilt the kernel, do your really know and understand your machine?

In any case my .config is half the size of the distribution, my initrd is 1/4 the size and my kernel is a few k larger because I built in some drivers that had been modules.

In the past I've always built to boot without an initrd but that seems impractical now.

As for printing to a file, one of the software VARs I set up machines for requires the default printer to print to /dev/nul so it's not an option.

I did have a bit of trouble with NFS but not a lot. I notice Samba now actually requires users to be in the Linux group specified so force group isn't as convenient as it once was. I also noticed OS/2 works better with the Etch Samba than it did with the Sarge Samba.