Now you are ready to reboot and install the base system onto the Zip disk. So, go ahead and put the modified rescue disk into your floppy drive and place the Zip disk into the Zip drive, then restart your system. You will need to make sure that your computer is set to boot from the floppy drive first, you can check this in the BIOS when your computer first boots up. The rescue disk will do its thing, and then you will be prompted to insert the floppy with the root.bin image. Do this, and press enter. After a little while your computer will present you with the familiar (or not so familiar) Debian installer screen.
Note: very few of the steps in the installer are required, so don't feel like you have to go through each and every possible step.
First we need to format the zip disk. So choose "Partition a hard disk" from the menu. You should see an option for /dev/sda. If so, great! If you don't see /dev/sda as an option, the kernel did not recognize your Zip drive as a scsi device. Make sure you see the following lines when your computer boots:
scsi0 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices
scsi : 1 host.
Vendor: IOMEGA Model: ZIP 250 Rev: 51.G
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 00
Detected scsi removable disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
scsi : detected 1 SCSI disk total.
If you didn't see these lines, go back and make sure that you added the ide-scsi support to the kernel.
If you do have an option for /dev/sda, choose it and you will be presented with the cfdisk program. If there are any current partitions on the zip disk, delete them, until all you are left with is free space. Now, you will need to create two partitions on the zip disk, one for the root filesystem, and one for swap. Make the root partition first, and use all but about 10-15M. Then use the rest of the remaining space for the swap partition. You will need to change the type of the smaller partition so that linux recognizes it as swap. To do this, highlight it, choose the "Type" option, and change it to type 82 (Linux Swap). The first partition will need to be flagged as bootable, otherwise cfdisk will complain. Note: this will not actually make the zip disk bootable.
Once the partition information is the way you like it, choose 'Write', and when it is done quit out of the cfdisk program.
Next, choose "Initialize and Activate a Swap Partition" from the menu. /dev/sda2 should be one of the options, so choose it and if you want to do a bad-block check go ahead. The installer will inform you that all information on the partition will be erased, which is okay, so select 'yes' and press enter to proceed.
Next choose "Initialize a Linux Partition" and select /dev/sda1 from the menu. Do the bad block check if it makes you happy, then tell the installer to wipe it clean and initialize the partition (press enter). When finished the installer will ask you if you would like to mount the root filesystem on this partition, choose 'yes' and press enter to mount the partition.
Now choose "Configure the network" from the installer's main screen to give your machine a hostname and configure the network if you aren't using dhcp.
Now choose "Install the Base System". The installer will ask you which medium contains the base system. If you have a Debian cd, select 'cdrom' and press enter. If you have it on floppy disks, choose '/dev/fd0'. It may complain that it couldn't mount the cdrom device, this is okay, don't panic. If it doesn't recognize your cd, choose 'cancel', and go back to the main menu. Scroll down to nearly the bottom of the list, and you will see "Execute a shell", choose this option. You will be presented with a shell. To mount your cd, type the following at the command line:
mount -r /dev/hdc mntChange /dev/hdc to the device your cdrom is. This will mount it as a read only (-r) device on the default mount point (/mnt). Now type exit, and you will be returned to the menu. Choose "Install the Base System" once again, and this time when it asks for the medium you want, choose 'mounted'. Then you will be asked for the directory that contains the base2_2.gz file, there will be a button you can use (<...>) to browse the filesystem. Select this, now you see another menu, choose:
mnt --> dists --> potato --> main --> disks-i386 --> current
and press enter. The installer will then ask how you want to specify the location of the file, choose "list" and it should find the folder. If it finds the files it wants, press enter and it will install the base system.
The next step is to configure the base system, which basically consists of choosing your timezone from a list.
Once you have configured the base system you are ready to reboot, so choose "Reboot the System" from the menu. Place the boot floppy (not the rescue one) into the floppy drive, and if all goes well, your new Debian GNU/Linux zip disk should boot fine. Then you just need to go through the steps of establishing a root password, creating an account for yourself, and installing any other packages that you desire.