Installing Debian onto a headless system over the Network

I've been reading and following the directions for installing Debian
onto a headless machine using the network.

The machine I'm installing TO is a small, embedded computing device.
It doesn't have any keyboard or mouse inputs, no floppy or cd-rom, and
it doesn't have a video card. It does have a hard-drive though. I'm
using a null modem serial cable plugged into my Desktop machine and a
terminal emulator so that I can get a console on the box. I have
successfully installed FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Gentoo Linux on this
machine using this method.

These are the directions I have followed so far for Debian.
http://www.debian.org/releases/woody...s-install-tftp


The Debian process is brilliantly simple. But once the Debian
installer starts, I never have the option to setup my Network card. It
lets me setup a swap file, partition the hard-drive, and that's it. I
can't continue from that point because I don't have any valid options
for getting the rest of the data needed for the installer. The only
media option available is the hard-drive and floppy. And since its a
new install, the hard-drive is of course empty. And the machine
doesn't have any options for adding a floppy drive even if I wanted to
do it that way. (http://www.soekris.com/net4801.htm)

Is there a boot time option I can use to specify that I have a natsemi
network card? And/or is there an alternative boot image I can use so
that I can download the necessary files from an NFS/FTP on my LAN (or
get them from the Internet during the install)?

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> Is there a boot time option I can use to specify that I have a natsemi
> network card? And/or is there an alternative boot image I can use so
> that I can download the necessary files from an NFS/FTP on my LAN (or
> get them from the Internet during the install)?

You should use netinst image (look for it on www.debian.org).
But I suggest to do it in other way: take out HDD install in regular PC,
install and configure debian. Next just move HDD to target machine. I'm
did it like this many times. It much easier.

good luck
Jarek