I had to install Debian Squeeze on a Dell R415 recently and ran into some issues. The Broadcom Network card was not picked up by the Debian netinstall ISO ( http://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst ). I thought about downloading the 4GB DVD in the thinking that it might have the drivers, but it doesn't. Debians official installation ISOs do not include any non-free (closed) firmware or drivers.

It is possible to add bnx2_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb (Broadcom Drivers) to a USB key and use it during the base install of Squeeze, however it was extra hassle. I thought about editing the netinstall ISO to include the Broadcom drivers. On further reading I came across: http://wiki.debian.org/Firmware

Debian has an unofficial “netinst” (network install) ISO with non-free firmware and drivers. Downloading the iso from: http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/ <br>Tried it on the new Dell Servers (R415) and it worked a charm. The network card was picked up and all sorted.

P.S. I used the “Expert Option” under Advanced Options, to install a Base install of Debian Squeeze. This allowed me to Manually create the partitions, create RAID, LVM and skip creating a standard user (as ldap may be used).