As nice as Dapper server edition is, it suffers from poor installation documentation. Everything is hunky-dory as long as you stick to the prefab menu options, but trying to do a custom installation is the path to madness.

It includes the Debian Installation Manual on the installation CD, warmed-over for Ubuntu, in the /doc folder. This is an excellent manual, but it doesn't cover the Dapper installation menu. Hitting the various F-keys after booting up the installation CD presents help screens listing a number of boot-time options that don't work. You don't even have a boot command line until you hit F6 "Other options" on the initial installation screen, which to me does not say "bring up boot command line". Hitting F6 once displays a number of default command-line boot options. None of the help screens say what these are for, or which ones are safe to change or delete. The Server Guide does not help with this either. Hitting F6 twice, again which is not documented, brings up a little "Normal mode/Expert Mode" submenu. This actually works, so if you want Expert mode use this. In Expert mode you'll have excruciatingly complete control.

According to one of the Help menus, you should have options like "expert", "server", and "server-expert" to enter on the boot command-line. Additionally you should have two kernels to choose from: linux-image-server and linux-image-server-bigiron. If I entered any of these and deleted the default options, the installer failed to boot with a kernel panic. If I added them to the default boot options, they were ignored.

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