On Fri 20 Nov 2015 at 11:18:41 -0800, Ross Boylan wrote: > After booting the Debian 8.2 netinst iso I noticed a couple of oddities. > > First, I selected advanced and rescue, but this seemed to end up walking me > through the installer. I was expecting to be dropped into a shell. At the > screen that asked for system name I switched virtual terminals.
Ye of little faith; the top left-hand of the screen says "Rescue mode". Your expectations do not accord with what Rescue mode does to prepare the environment for accessing the installer's commands, Which should change - your expectations or the installer? It's a pity you didn't progress from the step asking for the hostname.