rik: it's kinda odd that hal installation needs a running dbus when it's in installation phases, because it's not getting run either, cos of the fake start-stop-daemon. If this was a system that was installed using Debian installer, there would be a fake start-stop-daemon as well to avoid starting processes in the installer environment. I didn't have this problem personally, so it might be an update in sid that acts oddly?

If you have a chance, I'd love to see what error you got through the installer, including what OS2007/2008 and tablet type you're using.

In the "first" non-alpha release we would probably have default release set to lenny so we won't run into the odd issues along the way. Is /mnt/initfs in your fstab btw? That might explain the firmware issues. If you can, make a bug report with the output of "dpkg -l" (chrooting in should do the trick).

Bugs for NIT-Debian installer goes to http://trac.tspre.org/projects/nit-debian if you run into any, or have ingenius ways to do things with NIT-Debian and want them in the NIT-Debian base packages.