I formatted mmcblk0p4 as ext2, mounted it as /opt (using Millhouse's "nupdate.sh" script, I confess) then downloaded the Debian tarball, checked the md5sum, and untarred it to the root of the partition. It all went smoothly, I checked and rechecked, yes, I had formatted the right partition, yes, I had untarred everything...

I then rebooted and chose my new Debian install from my boot menu...

My N800 has been sitting at the "Booting from mmc4 (mmcblk0p4 ext2)..." screen for 20 minutes or more.

I'm going to kill it, I think; any ideas what might be wrong?