Ok, so I tried a third time, redownloading the image (debian-testing-amd64-netinst.iso / 14-Feb-2006 01:10 / 89M). This time I checked not only the image's MD5 but that of the burned data as well, just to be sure. Also I dded a few MB of zeros over the start of the target disk.
For whatever reason, this time everything went as planned. Just a few minor things, most likely related to the merging of d-i and base-config: - the timezone configurator suggests the tz Europe/Vienna based on the country I selected, which is correct. However there's no way to correct the guess if it's wrong - there's just "back" (to the menu) and "continue" (thus accepting it). Earlier installers had "Is this correct? yes / no / back" - the package manager configuration did not ask for additional sources but just used the mirror for the base install. Earlier installers allowed to select additional mirrors / CDs. (Of course I can edit the sources.list on the second console, but still.) - there's no choice to start dselect / aptitude / tasksel anymore, it just starts tasksel. Just deselecting all tasks doesn't help much as it installed a few packages anyway. Spellchecking stuff AFAICS. At least for expert mode I'd like more control here. - baseconfig choked a bit: it was looking for /cdrom/dists/sid, but the symlinks on the CD use unstable as the name. Can be fixed on the console. C.
