On Thu, 2004-11-25 at 11:41, Ken D'Ambrosio wrote: > Hi, all. I've got a machine I want to install Debian on. So far, so > good. Now the bad news: it's in California, at a hosting service. > It's running RH (Fedora). I can get the hosting service to install > Debian for me, but it'll cost me $150. Can anyone think of a > mechanism by which I could install Debian from a RH box?
I'm not up on the various ways one can install Debian, but you could do this with Gentoo easily enough; perhaps there is a parallel method for Debian? The key is to create new partitions for the new install - you won't be able to install "over" the existing RH install remotely. http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&chap=0 I suppose that one could ... 1. Create a fairly minimal Debian install locally, on any convenient partition, to form the basis for your target system (you can flesh it out later, once it's up & running on the target box); 2. Configure the networking on this local install as would be correct on the target system (as to IP address, gateway, resolv.conf); 3. Install sshd & configure it to run at boot time; 4. Edit /etc/mod{ules,probe}.conf to load the correct module for the NIC on the target system; 5. Edit /etc/fstab to reflect where the various partitions will live on the target system; 6. Shut it down, reboot the box to another Linux (either one installed on that system or one on a livecd/rescue disk, doesn't matter); 5. Tar up the entire Debian installation into a single tarball; 6. Use scp to get the tarball onto the target box; 7. Ssh in and create the new partitions, mkfs 'em, and mount them as /mnt/debian (this will be Debian's root partition), /mnt/debian/usr, /mnt/debian/var, etc.; 8. "cd /mnt/debian && tar xzvf /path/to/tarball.tar.gz"; 9. Adjust the RH bootloader config to add an entry for the Debian kernel & root partition, and make that the default option (if RH uses lilo, don't forget to run "/sbin/lilo -v" after editing /etc/lilo.conf <g>); 10. Reboot, ssh in, re-configure the bootloader from the Debian install (thereby rewriting the RH-created MBR with one created from Debian); 11. Reboot once more, ssh in again, and take it from there. I hope I haven't left anything out ... who knows, it just might work! ;) HTH! -- Bill Mullen RLU# 270075 _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
