it seems that my debootstrap wasn't complete (apt-get wasn't there), guessing that's why mount chokes. Will keep trying. Corrupt ext3 fs happened the first time,

2008 is way too unstable for this. I'm using mistral (2006) now. I've had every kind of corruption

I'm still making progress, will post an improved version of your forum post instructions on the wiki as an alt method (works much better for me)