Debian – Installation Fails Due to Debootstrap Error ‘Failed to Determine the Codename for the Release’

debiandebian-cddebian-installerintegritylaptop

So I'm trying to install Debian 9.0 to my laptop (UEFI) via DVD and everything worked fine except that the mousepad doesn't work (yet?) and that I'm getting this error:

Debootstrap error
Failed to determine the codename for the release.

at the step "install the base system" after the partitioning.

Any suggestions for what I should try to get it working?
This thread somewhat suggests that some change to my partitioning could solve this issue.
I selected "Guided – Use entire disk and set up encrypted LVM". Changing the 2 ext4 partitions to ext3 didn't help.
Any help is welcome!

Edit: I skipped to step "Check integrity of the CD" and it says The CD of yours is not a valid Debian-CD-ROM. Please change the CD. Note that during installation I connected to the Internet and that I used the same CD for the installation on another PC. Please help.

Edit: Related question of mine. I rebooted and did the integrity-check offline where it says: "Integrity test failed The ./pool/main/k/kde-l10n-de_16.04.3-1_all.deb file failed the MD5 checksum verification. Your CR-ROM or this file may have been corrupted."

Best Answer

This question is old but I just came across a working fix for this.

As it turns out, the issue was caused due to the USB drive being unmounted during the LVM setup process. It might've been a bad USB connector or USB drive.

There is a very easy fix for which you don't even have to reboot or re-do any of the setup again.

Press esc to enter the menu of the installer.
Select Enter a shell (or command prompt)
Run fdisk -l to find out the name and partition of your USB install drive
Run mount /dev/sdc1 /cdrom (replace sdc1 with your USB drive)
Run exit, then go back to Install the base system from the menu

It will continue to install as normal. All credits and thanks go to this guy

On Debian 10 busybox there is no fdisk command, so you can list disk and their partitions using ls /dev/sd*. Once you find your USB partition go to step 4.

Related Solutions

Debian – How to verify Debian ISO integrity

You need to verify that the hash matches the downloaded image, and then verify that the hash was signed by an official Debian key - as explained in this blog post.

Download your CD image, a SHA 512 hash, and the hash signature. It doesn't matter where you get them from, because of the signature that we'll verify below. But you can get it from debian.org.

Verify that the hash matches the image (neither of these commands should print anything):

$ sha512sum debian-8.3.0-amd64-i386-netinst.iso > my_hash.txt
$ diff -q my_hash.txt SHA512SUMS.txt

Verify the hash is properly signed. You'll probably have to do it twice: once to get the key ID, and again after you have downloaded the public key. The command output should look a lot like this:

$ gpg --verify SHA512SUMS.sign.txt SHA512SUMS.txt
gpg: Signature made Mon 25 Jan 2016 05:08:46 AEDT using RSA key ID 6294BE9B
gpg: Can't check signature: public key not found
$ gpg --keyserver keyring.debian.org --recv 6294BE9B
gpg: requesting key 6294BE9B from hkp server keyring.debian.org
gpg: key 6294BE9B: public key "Debian CD signing key <debian-cd@lists.debian.org>" imported
gpg: no ultimately trusted keys found
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg:               imported: 1  (RSA: 1)
$ gpg --verify SHA512SUMS.sign.txt SHA512SUMS.txt
gpg: Signature made Mon 25 Jan 2016 05:08:46 AEDT using RSA key ID 6294BE9B
gpg: Good signature from "Debian CD signing key <debian-cd@lists.debian.org>"
gpg: WARNING: This key is not certified with a trusted signature!
gpg:          There is no indication that the signature belongs to the owner.
Primary key fingerprint: DF9B 9C49 EAA9 2984 3258  9D76 DA87 E80D 6294 BE9B

Verify that the key fingerprint (the last printed line) is legitimate. Ideally, you should do this via a web of trust. However you can check the key fingerprint against the keys listed on Debian's secure web site (HTTPS).

Debian – Creating custom sized LVM partitions during installation (Debian)

LVM does make partitioning more flexible, but the Debian installer simply doesn't have the functionality you're looking for. But, you can always resize the LVM volumes post-installation.

For example, lets say you want the /, /home, /var, /tmp, and swap partitioning scheme but with a larger /home filesystem. What you can do is take the scheme as-is to complete the installation, then once you've confirmed all is OK:

Log out all users except root
Run umount /home
Run lvresize -L<SIZE IN GB>G -r /dev/path/to/home/volume
Run mount /home

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Debian – How to verify Debian ISO integrity

Debian – Creating custom sized LVM partitions during installation (Debian)

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