On Wed, 2004-06-16 at 13:58, John Seago wrote:

This time I gave it the name debian.test and got a different set of screens and questions and got further than before, the log-in screen did not appear and as it failed I was asked if I wanted to configure X myself. I've done this X Server before so I know I got it right, however if returned a fault telling me "host name lookup failed" and would not start the X server.

I do not understand why a failure in networking, particularly as there is no network, is so important. However i got further this time, and its keeping me busy, the challenge continues onwards and upwards.

Well X works over a network even when it's just on one computer. I think basic network support was first added to linux by the XFree86 developer so he could get XFree86 running on Linux. Have you tryed giving your computer just a hostname and leaving the rest blank(just call it Debian)? Also what does your /etc/hosts look like? Are you missing localhost by any chance?

(When I get this right I've got the CD's for the HURD somewhere, so I won't get bored).

I didn't know how to use grub last time i installed Hurd sop i was left typing a quite long boot command, it wasn't fun after the 10th boot so i hope you know your way around grub ;). Hurd is quite unusable(got X but no GNOME/KDE) after install unless you want to develop GNU/Hurd software, but its still fun to play with ;).

Dennis