how to install Fedora 13 on my IBM X40 laptop which does not have a CD, a Floppy, a Network or a working USB. The only way I can write data on its hard disk is by removing it and connecting it via a USB rack to another laptop which runs Windows 7 64bit.
View 3 RepliesI wanted to avoid having to use my CDs, DVDs weren't an option, and I didn't have very large usb sticks. It seemed my only option for installing openSUSE onto my laptop was with some sort of network install/boot.
I ended up finding this really cool service, netboot.me. What you can do is download a very small image (<1MB) for a floppy, USB stick, or CD, and then boot off of it. Then you can either install pre-defined distros over the network (straight from the distro's servers), or you can make an account (by connecting your google account), and then make your own configuration. I managed to make a configuration for openSUSE 11.4, and I was able to completely install it, via only using one floppy disk and the internet!
My first step in the process was to download the floppy image. Since I was on a windows computer, I then downloaded rawwrite for windows, and I wrote the image straight to the floppy. After that, I restarted the computer and booted from the floppy. It loaded the image, then asked me to press a key or wait for 3 seconds. In order to boot from my configuration, this was the point where I had to press a key, and then choose the option of loading the custom configuration. The configuration I made has an ID of 434001 (which anyone is free to use). Unfortunately, according to their community, the gPXE "network stack" isn't very optimizied, so the initial two downloads took awhile (my speed was locked at 65 kB/s.)
It then began booting in the installation environment, which took about 15 minutes, although download speeds were now back at normal, faster speeds. I configured my installation, and let the package downloading begin!
Is there something weird about the FLOPPY DRIVE on F12? Nothing associated with it works & I can't get an icon for it. Also the FLOPPY FORMATTER no longer works. (mine is an internal drive)- I had some really miner quirks with it in 10 but it worked. I had some workaround launchers that I used until an upgrade semi-fixed it. (It would give a false error that it couldn't run but did. I just ignored it.)
I tried to edit FSTAB to cure a problem of my BACKUP drive showing up twice*** so while I was in there I added the stuff for the floppy & it still doesn't work. If I try to mount it manually, I get the error that /dev/fd0 doesn't exist.I tried to find some info on it & it SEEMS that there MAY be a bug but I'm not sure as the info is a bit confusing as to just what version & such they are talking about. And there was also the problem that all the stuff seemed to be OLD or not related to my problem.I why I quite hacking at my system, is that all my workaround launchers & the formatter say that there are GNOME things missing & they can't run. So I figure that there is something missing or screwy already & that I'd better ask BEFORE I make things worse or actually break something.With the fact that floppies are about gone, it's getting to be not that big of a deal but I still find myself having to use them for repair purposes (albeit, not as much) & it gets to be a bit of a pain to fire up M$ just to do something like this.
*** It appears that the one in FSTAB was the one I needed, so where would the OTHER one be so I can get rid of it? Or at least make it auto mount.
Unfortunately I have to use Win NT 4.0 everyday and in fact I am trying to create a system where I have many versions of NT on one disk. My plan is to store them in Linux and create a shell script to over write the first primarly partition which is ntfs. I am trying to install Xubuntu Koala on a logical partition and NT at the start of the disk. Grub is not loading NT well. I want to just use the NT booter and launch Linux from a floppy.
During the install there is an option to write grub to /dev/fd0 but it won't work for me. I tried both fat and ext2 formatted disks and I made sure they were present during the initial boot for auto mounting. I have verified that the floppy drive actually works.
How to install grub to my floppy.
I'm trying to install Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10 on a Compaq Evo N200. The problem is that it doesn't have a CD drive on board, and it only supports booting from USB floppy drives- not USB flash or CD drives. I have access to a flash drive, floppy drive and CD drive, all USB externals. I've tried a couple different floppy boot loaders with little success. I understand that it also supports network boot, so this might be an option. What is the easiest way to get UNR running on this laptop?
View 4 Replies View RelatedMy goal is to have a dual boot system with Windows and linux. When no floppy is loaded Windows should boot. When a linux boot floppy is loaded linux should boot.Windows (and its boot loader) are on hd0. I installed Fedora 10 to hd1 and had install put the boot loader on that drive. I followed the instructions in http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=150913 to make a boot floppy. But when I use the boot floppy the system brings up the grub prompt and stops.
View 1 Replies View Relatedto access my floppy from Fedora 11. It is mounted automatically,but when i try to open it by double-clicking, I just get "already mounted" message.I need to retrieve my old menu.lst which is on the floppy. It will then need to be edited to include Fedora.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI have and old IBM notebook which I use for work (due to the serial port), and I would like to install FC11 on it, the problem that it doesn't offer to boot from neither CDROM (since it doesn't have a built-in one) nor from USB. However, I have external DVD device witch connect through USB, and I have the notebook bootable floppy desk, how can I install FC11 using those?
View 1 Replies View RelatedA while ago I made the jump from Mandriva to Fedora. I am very pleased with Fedora, but some things do not seem to be as easy as with Mandriva. Maybe I just got to find my way around and am not aware there are packages that will do what I want, so I think it is a good idea to ask here..Well - I have a multi-boot system. There are a few partitions to test out different Linux versions (like specialised music distro's with low-latency kernels). As a result the MBR gets overwritten by other installs now and then.In Mandriva it was possible to create a simple boot disk without any images - just a "link" or "jump" to vmlinuz etc. on the root partition from the main Linux system. I think only the MBR part was written on the floppy. It was very easy done in the control centre by choosing fd0 in stead of hda as boot medium.
This disk whas a life saver if the MBR was overwritten by another OS intall. I just put in the floppy and boot from that floppy strait into the standard grub menu and so I was able to re-create grub (by doing the same process but pointing to hda in stead of fd0 as boot medium).
Is there a way to create the same simple boot disc under Fedora 14?
I know that several people have answered this type of question before, but I can't seem to find the information I need to get it working for me. According to my research what I want to do cannot be done. However, i'm sure there must be a way.This is my scenario - I will try to be as accurate as I can be to make it easier for poeple to help. I have a Sony Vaio PCG-141C laptop, the half sized old ones. It has a usb floppy drive that I can boot from. I have also got a usb cd-rom drive but the laptop simply will not boot from it! I have got the F12 cd images downloaded and on a usb hard drive.
I want to boot from a floppy disc, to load F12 from the cd images stored on the usb hard drive. Now with Redhat 9 you could use a floppy drive to do just this. However, F12, does not support it.
Is there a work-around that I could try. I have already tried Smart Boot Manager, but it won't detect the usb cd-rom drive. I have Redhat 9 installed on the laptop, and can mount the usb hard drive from terminal. Could I start the install process from here with the images stored on the external drive??Is there anything I can do, or am I doomed to never get past this.
I am trying to write a floppy boot image to my floppy drive (as root):
Code:
dd if=boot.img of=/dev/fd0
dd: opening `/dev/fd0': Read-only file system
[code]....
I'm looking for a 1 floppy linux with a network and dd?
View 2 Replies View RelatedI am having a Promise TX4650 RAID controller & trying to create a driver floppy for installing the drivers. Also am using RHEL 5, I can create the driver floppy, but when I type "mount /dev/fd0 /media/floppy" I get error: "mount: mount point /media/floppy does not exist".Can I get the files in a format other than the ext2 floppy image, so that we do not need to use a floppy drive?There is a readme file inside the driver archive & you can use that as a reference.
View 2 Replies View Relatederror message:Unable to scan Floppy Drive for media changes Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI downloaded the ISO for the network install and burned and booted it just fine. It detected my network card and got a valid ip.When it goes to actually start to install it gives an error saying:cannot retrieve repository metadata and makes mention of some file called repomd.xml
I put the url listed into my browser and it listed all the mirrors and I checked a few of the mirrors to see if they were up and they were.What gives with this? Why doesn't the network installer find the repositories properly?
I have done a base install with CD#1 and can boot to a prompt and login with root. I cannot use the network. There is no system-config-network program for me to run. There is also no network-manager in chkconfig --list. There is a network item in chkconfig --list and I have turned it on and rebooted to no effect. Googling for base install has found me virtually no information to go on.
View 3 Replies View RelatedI run a laptop behind a server. Because I could not find the printer I disabled the firewall and now I can detect the printer, but when I want to select the printer the program hangs.
View 5 Replies View RelatedCan I do a network install using a USB as the boot media. I couldn't find the steps in the long installation help. It explains how to make a livecd boot USB drive but nothing for USB. Please make it clear with exact steps. [URL] says that I have to copy diskboot.img from /Images in install cd but there is no such file. There is a install.img should that be used instead.
View 4 Replies View RelatedIm trying to install fedora 11 full from the multiple cds and it fails on cd1 after fedora cant find a network connection and forces me to configure it via dhcp or manual ips."This requires that you have an active network connection during the installation process. Please configure a network interface"
"No Network Available Some of your software repositories require networking,but there was an error enabling the network on your system".my mb is an asus: a7n8x deluxe with a 3com and nvidia lan chipsets.
i want to install Fedora 13 on a x86 PCi want to boot from a usb disk, and install from a LAN http serverbut i got a faild as "Unable to retrieve the install image"i have tried to check apache log,access log:
Code:
10.0.0.105 - - [15/Jun/2010:18:44:20 +0800] "GET /fedora//images/updates.img HTTP/1.1" 404 298 "-" "anaconda/13.42"
[code]...
I have an F11 on an old box 686 athlon with an old nVidia Corporation NV5 [RIVA TNT2/TNT2 Pro] (rev 15) AGP. I am trying to do a network install upgrade to F13. I cannot get it to display the install menus from the network install disk. I get the initial screen with the install, basic video, repair, etc choices, but after I select the install/upgrade option, I see the CD drive read but the LCD monitor display never appears. The ready light on the monitor just keeps blinking and the display stays dark. Is there anyway of getting an error log to see what is going on?
View 3 Replies View RelatedToday I download a fedora beta iso file, then I try to install it following the steps I installed fedora 14. However, the install guide ask me to connect to network, if not , I had to exit installation. I just want to install fedora 15 from my local iso file. What's wrong?
View 3 Replies View RelatedDuring the installation process, configure the network installation process requires, as a result of my wireless network card can not be drived, It is not possible to continue with the installation,please help me.
View 5 Replies View RelatedDoing a fresh F12 install on a Dell Vostro 430. Machine needs to have 2 Network adapters for our setup.The install seems to go just fine but the on board network adapter doesn't appear to get detected/configured. If I look in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts all I find is ifcfg-eth0 and ifcfg-lo. Looking carefully at ifcfg-eth0 I see it's the second card that I've put in the machine.As a test I removed the second network card and did another fresh install of F12. This time in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts all I have is ifcfg-lo. When I go to system>Administration>Network Device Control I see no network devices displayed.
Is this an issue others have seen with F12 or is it possible my on board network adapter has an issue?BTW I did check the BIOS to be sure that Onboard Lan was enabled and it is.output from "lspci -k " with both cards installed on machine (I only listed Ethernet controllers)
I want to move to this system after bad experiences with windows. I have also a particular problem. An old laptop is probably able to handle just linux at this point of its life.
The cdrom is gone, the bios doesn't have usb boot support, there is no floppy or pxe network boot ability, so I was wondering what other way I can have to install linux on a barebone hd (nothing on it).
The only Idea I had was to copy some files on the hd via a ide cable adapter, connecting the laptop hd to the mobo of a desktop. I did the same in the past to install xp: I used msdos 7 to boot the machine and then launch the xp setup from withing the hd (copied before the installation files).
So my question is, can I do the same with linux? in such case, of course I will have a hd formatted with fat32 to boot in msdos, and what files should I copy on this partition to launch the installation?
I just brought up FC12 on our VSphere to begin testing..The nic did not configure properly for some reason.. I was able to go to command line, and do an "ifup ifcfg-eth0" and DHCP got an address. Go into GNOME - System-Administration - Network , or system-config-network the "Activate/Deactivate" is greyed out. Also, GNOME - System-Administration - Network Device Control show NO device..
View 1 Replies View RelatedThis is what I am trying to get for my dinosaur, Compaq Presario 5050. But I have never booted linux through floppy disks before, so I haven't a clue what I am doing.
In the read me from the site I linked above, it said they need to be 1.44 M and DOS formatted. Both are 144, and I went to my computer (in XP) and right clicked on the floppy, format, and create bootable DOS disk. But this fills the disk up with files, and even when I deleted them all, it said there was not enough room for one of the two files I am supposed to copy on to it.
So, how do I make the file fit onto the floppy, and how do I write the image file to one of the floppies? In DOS? I can use linux too, if necessary. (if it's easier)
This is another one I am looking at, but basic linux looks easier to install.
i'm doing a fresh network install of f15 from a usb stick. the installation has now been stuck on the "retrieving installation information for fedora 15 - i386" stage for over an hour. on previous releases this stage has only taken a few mins. i can see from my router that there have been thousands of packets sent and received from the laptop. i've searched all the normal places but can't find anyone else reporting this. does anyone know if this is a known bug (and if there is a fix) or if this stage takes significantly longer in f15 to any previous release ? cheers.
---------- Post added at 07:54 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:12 PM ----------
finally got to the next stage after nearly two hours. no idea why it took so long.
The system is 11.1 32 bit and used to work ok
All the drives function and mount normally under Parted Magic.
Sometimes a cd will mount after 15 mins or so but if it is ejected it will not remount. after that event the dmesg output is 3 times as long. As it is 35K chrs long it is too long to post!
I have changed hardware and cables with no effect.
I have run the repair option on the install disk. I get a cannot find floppy error
It also reports cups, hal, ntp & postfix as errors but if I select repair it still returns the same next time I run the repair routine.
It also says the bootloader is faulty if I select repair I go into an infinite loop so I exit with skip. Anyway the system boots ok and runs just fine apart from the cd/fdd/usb problem
I scored a Dell poweredge 6300 from a local pawn shop. It has the capability to boot from cd-rom, but apparently not with isolinux, which is what the debian installer cd uses. I was able to boot to UBCD411 (Ultimate Boot CD, which uses syslinux), but didn't see any option to boot to a CD (maybe I'm missing something here?). I tried using the boot floppy from this site. I didn't expect it to work (it's from the Woody era), and it did not. I got a message that says SYSLINUX ver.XXXX CBIOS boot failed. I went to [URL].. and looked for a boot floppy image for Lenny, but apparently it doesn't exist. I did however find the boot floppy image for Etch.
To be honest, even if I did find the Lenny floppy boot image, I'm not sure how to use it to point the system to the installer CD. So, I have two questions:
1) Does anyone know of a boot floppy image for Lenny, or if I could use the Etch boot floppy image?
2) How would one boot from floppy, then point the system to the installer CD?
System info:
(4) Xeon Pentium 2 processors 500 Mhz
(6) UltraSCSI hard drives
(1) SCSI cd-rom drive
(1) SCSI dvd-rom drive
(1) Floppy drive
(1) 10/100 NIC
I'm open to any other suggestions as to how I could install Debian Lenny on this machine.