I've just realized that I never have to burn another stinking Debian installer CD.

Why bother, if I can just boot into Knoppix and run debootstrap.

Just look how easy the process is:

  1. boot into knoppix.
  2. mkdir /1
  3. mke2fs -j /dev/sda1
  4. mount /dev/sda1 /1
  5. debootstrap sarge /1 http://ftp.debian.org/debian

Of course this will not boot, so I will have to build the kernel. But I would do that anyways right after I rebooted the first time into any install anyway.

I also would recommend that you glance over the HOWTO - Install Debian Onto a Remote Linux System, which is relevant because it talks about debootstrap.