SaddleTramp wrote:I may be narrowing down the problem...nVidia Debian way (the link you left up there) installs fine...somewhere along the way some updates were added (including the kernal from 2.6.26-1 to 2.6.26-2)
That is correct. There was a kernel update sometime yesterday or early this morn. I just got it this morning myself.
SaddleTramp wrote:and it wasn't done by me LOL...
Maybe when it went to bring in the kernel headers it also brought in the new kerel after it saw that the only kernel headers were for the new kernel. That is the only way i can think of that would have caused the kernel to get updated without invoking "aptitude safe-upgrade" (the equivilant of using the update manager).
SaddleTramp wrote:but the repos were updated also (somehow, I don't know how yet, all Debian including from sid, were added and marked, which is maybe where all the dist updates/upgrades came from)...and since I wasn't aware yet enough to watch for that happening, it took hold and this is where the Internet connection went to #$#@...
Maybe im understanding you wrong but you mean your sources.list got changed from squeeze to sid/unstable?
The only other thing i can think of is that aptitude keep-all that we did before didnt stick and when it upgraded the kernel for some reason it removed the packages that it wanted to remove before. When i get a chance ill read up on the aptitude manual and see what the difference between "hold" and "keep-all" is. We may need hold instead.
SaddleTramp wrote:it shows I'm connected, but iceweasel can't find anything and if I try to reload the repos, I get all those "can't resolve" errors...
I wonder if maybe something that it pulled in messed up /etc/network/interfaces. I use a wired connection but i know i have to comment out everything but the local loopback interface otherwise nm doesnt work right (always shows me as disconnected when i am actually connected) now yours was the exact opposite but its still a possibility.
SaddleTramp wrote:I'm also keeping in mind that some of this is being pulled from 'Squeeze', so some of the problems may be coming from there too (the mix of Lenny & Squeeze pkgs)
I assume you mean a mix of squeeze/sid "unstable". We should be pulling from squeeze "testing" as we did a full upgrade to testing (2nd step). With only a few packages from sid (our final set of nm packages).
SaddleTramp wrote:I'll be installing into another partition also, and what that will let me do, is if things go snaky after the nVidia install, then maybe I can bind the partitions together and work from the workable Debian install that still connects to get the pkgs straightened out in the broke install...will keep ya (ya'll) posted...
Very good idea. Thats what i actually do with my vm. I have 3 i386 and 3 amd64 (plus my real i386 and amd64 installs that are on the usb).