[Techtalk] install linux with no floppy or cd drive?

[Caitlyn Martin]

--- Kristina Clair <kclair at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hey All,
> 
> I seem to recall doing this in the past, with lilo -
> setting up lilo to boot into a net install process 
> (of course I can't remember the
> details - maybe I'm making it up?).  Does anyone
> know if it's possible to do this with grub?

Yes it is.  This is how I did my install of Fedora
Core 2 to my Toshiba Libretto SS1010.  I did it again
when I rebuilt it with Fedora Core 3.   I actually do
have a PCMCIA CD-ROM for the little laptop but it's
not recignized as a bootable device so I had
essentially the same problem. It really is easy to do
ptovided you have enough space on your hard drive for
the  iso images or else have access to an NFS server
to do an NFS install.

If you're installing Fedora there is an image on the
first CD called bootdisk.img.  You'll want to copy it
to your hard drive via a network connection and then
mount it using the -o loop option.  Copy the files to
a directory to a directory off your /boot directory
and edit /etc/grub.conf.  

You'll probably have an entry in the file that lookos
something like this:

title Fedora Core (2.6.9-1.678_FC3)
        root (hd0,0)            
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.678_FC3 ro
root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
        initrd /initrd-2.6.9-1.678_FC3.img

I just added another just like it titled "Fedora
Intaller" with kernel and initrd entries pointed to
the files I just copied out of the bootdisk.img file. 
The next time I booted I had the Fedora Installer
entry in my grub menu and I was able to use it to boot
and then continue to install as I normally would.

This works for hard drive installations as well as
network installations.

Good luck!

All the best,
Caity



		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
The all-new My Yahoo! - Get yours free! 
http://my.yahoo.com