Erik Christiansen <dvalin@internode.on.net> writes:
At http://mirror.internode.on.net/ I was unable to find any debian iso,
They're under "debian-cd", not "debian": $ rsync -hhr mirror.internode.on.net::debian-cd/ | foldr grep -- .iso$ i386 netinst -rw-r--r-- 277.00M 2015/01/11 00:32:40 7.8.0/i386/iso-cd/debian-7.8.0-i386-netinst.iso -rw-r--r-- 485.00M 2015/01/11 02:22:46 7.8.0/multi-arch/iso-cd/debian-7.8.0-amd64-i386-netinst.iso I think this is an artefact of how mirror.ion does its mirroring.
and selecting i386 at https://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst#verysmall then selecting CDROM presents weird stuff. The first archive has a win32.exe in it! No iso.
#verysmall appears to be referring to the netboot (cf. netinst) media, for CD version of netboot look for "mini.iso", e.g. http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/wheezy/main/installer-i386/current/image...
But a quick google gave me https://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/debian-installer/ which at "netinst CD image" actually presented an iso, instead of leading back to the same weird stuff as at the netinst link in the previous paragraph, as the naming similarity threatened. Phew!
That should've been from https://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst#smallcd (cf. #verysmall you mentioned). #verysmall = netboot = ~20MB (d-i kernel, ramdisk & bootloader) #smallcd = netinst = ~120MB (that + udebs (installer modules))
The new "improved" installation methods being pushed, with their excess of instructions and complications seem an enormous step backwards. What's wrong with "whack it in and reboot"?
AFAICT your main problem was clicking "Tiny" instead of "Small" :-) All the methods you mentioned above aren't new; they've been available since at least 2009.