choose a distro&rev

[George VerDuin]

This "blank screen abort" has to be a weary topic by now.
I'm sorry, but I found a new way.

A couple weeks ago I thought T Neumann had the best idea with the 
walkthough he posted.
So I bought a pre-owned 3-yr-old 1U / 4-core / 64-bit opteron / 2-HD 
just to follow the doc exactly.
With Debian rev 6.0.7 booting from CD, the install ended with "Polling 
Network hardware"(sic).
The screen was not black, but the install froze with a blank screen and 
without explanation.

Google found some similar experiences, not solutions.
Rather than working thru the problem, I went around it by trying a 
Ubuntu 12.04 server CD.
It worked up to the point following network discovery, ubuntu could not 
access either HD.
Using a rescue OS, I found the HDs were so empty they were missing the 
partition table.
After installing a partition table on each HD, then Ubuntu finished the 
install.

I wondered if the HD issue was related to the debian abort, so I tried 
the 6.0.7 install again.
The debian installer locked up in the same place.
Now I wish I had another 64bit machine to substitute fai rather than CD 
for this totally empty HD case.
Reason #1 for this post is to suggest maybe adding this case into the HD 
partitioning test as the 17th?

Reason #2 is to explore fixing 6.0.7 release.
Yes I could take a little time out, but actually I'd rather keep my 
focus on fai.
What Debian releases are most favored as platforms for FAI 4 server?
Is success with my hardware and another release mostly "luck of the draw"?

If there is no "quick-fix" for my hardware, then continuing with ubuntu 
is likely my least-labor choice.
Installing fai-server on the new server hardware makes sense to me even 
without debian.
I would re-visit this issue on the next new machine.

Best choice?
Geo