At this point, the next menu item presented should be “Initialize a
Linux Partition.” If it isn’t, either you haven’t completed the disk
partitioning process, or you haven’t made one of the menu choices
dealing with your swap partition.
You can initialize a Linux partition, or alternately you can mount a
previously initialized one. Note that dbootstrap will _not_ upgrade
an old system without destroying it. If you’re upgrading, Debian can
usually upgrade itself, and you won’t need to use dbootstrap. The
Debian 2.1 release notes contain upgrade instructions[2].
[2]
http://www.debian.org/releases/slink/i386/release-notes/ch-upgrading-
req.en.html
If you are using old disk partitions that are not empty, i.e., if
you want to just throw away what is on them, you should initialize
them (which erases all files). Moreover, you must initialize any
partitions that you created in the disk partitioning step. About the
only reason to mount a partition without initializing it at this
point would be to mount a partition upon which you have already
performed some part of the installation process using this same set
of installation floppies.
Select the “Next” menu item to initialize and mount the / disk
partition. The first partition that you mount or initialize will be
the one mounted as / (pronounced “root”). You will be offered the
choice to scan the disk partition for bad blocks, as you were when
you initialized the swap partition. It never hurts to scan for bad
blocks, but it could take 10 minutes or more to do so if you have a
large disk.
Once you’ve mounted the / partition, the “Next” menu item will be
“Install Operating System Kernel and Modules” unless you’ve already
performed some of the installation steps. You can use the arrow keys
to select the menu items to initialize or to mount disk partitions
if you have any more partitions to set up. If you have created
separate partitions for /var, /usr, or other filesystems, you should
initialize or mount them now.