Having bought a netbook (Medion akoya mini E1210, a version of the MSI Wind U 100), I wanted to run it with Free Software, naturely.
As the daily builds of the debian installer immediately rebooted, and the used kernel 2.6.24 neither gave a working ethernet nor did give me any drives after install (udev gets aborted by loading of r8169), I had to use the Lenny Beta2 install media and install a 2.6.25 kernel by hand.
Steps required until the installer uses a newer kernel:
Download hd-media boot image, ungzip it and transfer it per dd to a 256MB sd card.
Download the netinst iso per jigdo and copy it on the mounted sd card (which now carries a FAT filesystem).
- Get the newer kernel from unstable $MIRROR/debian/pool/main/l/linux-2.6/linux-image-2.6$VERSION.deb
- ($VERSION was 2.6.25-2-686_2.6.25-6_i386 but this will change as unstable gets updated). Boot the akoya mini from the sd card by pressing F11 and chosing Generic-Multi-Card.
- I started an expert install but this may not be needed.
- Skip network configuration, continue everything until the base system (including kernel!) is installed.
- Change into a debug shell by hitting Alt-F2 and activating it by enter.
- copy the kernel deb from the sd card to /target.
- chroot /target
dpkg -i <name of kernel deb>
- Finish installation, boot into the working system!
Many thanks to Frans Pop who told me how to achieve this!
What's left:
- There is no free software module yet for the wireless LAN, will investigate into getting this to run!
- I could and did not accept the Windows XP EULA and am still waiting for refund instructions.
- battery display, suspend etc.
webcam and other tips can be found in the MSI forum.