If system blows up don't use an old Debian install disk to install if they don't have a fairly complete set of packages on them. Download a new Debian installer and use that. Also, when switching Linux distributions, carefully consider differences in how they organize the system.

Ran into several bits of weirdness because the Debian installer I had handy was at least 1 if not 2 versions out of date. The installer couldn't pull down and install the packages correctly because it ran into core packages that require special handling to configure and update correctly, and the installer I had didn't handle them. Luckily this happened late enough in the install cycle that I could bail out of the install, boot the system and manually install the packages.

This was an interesting challenge itself because at this point I didn't have a full set of the base packages installed. The package tools kept trying to remove kernel package because it was missing dependencies. Luckily the kernel package has a safegaurd in it that warns that removing your last kernel package is almost always a really bad idea and gives you a change to prevent it.

The cause of the system blow up was a small difference in how Red Hat and Debian organize the system. At the disk partion level Red Hat uses a /boot partion to contain the minimal system files required to boot and a / partion for everything else. Debian uses a / and /home partions, with /home containing home directories for users and / has everything else.

Either setup is resonably sensible. But when I swiched the Debian installer made /boot the / partion and / the /home partion without resizing them. Red Hat however had sensible set the /boot partion for only a few gigs, and Debian eventually ran out of space for the / partion, right in the middle of synaptic doing a system update. This blew up about half of the packages on my system, which resulted in all kinds of weirdness.

I managed to get the system to boot in recovery mode and fix things up enough to get the system running. But when I looked at what would be involved in fixing it, I decided that doing a reinstall would be faster. Little did I know.

Jay