On Sun, Apr 15, 2001 at 04:34:13PM -0700, Sudhakar Chandra wrote:
>
> What do you mean by install it over the network? Do you mean that the
> installation is going to be done remotely? AFAIK, remote installation is
> not possible with any of the popular distributions.
Sorry for being cryptic. No this is not a remote installation. The machine is directly
connected to the internet via ethernet. Trouble is the the monitor is Fixed sync. ie
as soon as the machine powers up all I see is a flickering screen that can't be read.
I guess it can't be read until svgatextmode is started with correct modelines for the
fixed horiz and vert syncs of this monitor (which came from a Sun and requires an
adaptor to plug into the 386's VGA port)So I can't read the BIOS messages. But if a
handmade boot floppy is able to start svgatextmode (the svgatextmode docs actually
crack a joke at this) at the start I should be able to read the screen.
>
> If you mean downloading and installing the packages from the network after
> base installation, then you have no problems. You do not need the
> CVGATextMode modelines if you are not going to configure X.
So to see the base installation proceed, I need svgatextmode to be able to parse the
/etc/TextConfig at the start. How do I do this? Has anyone tweaked a Debian boot
floppy? Where do I put the binaries to run right in the beginning?
And also since this is a 386, I'm not sure if potato will be able to boot up, or will
it? This machine seems to have 4MB RAM but I'm not sure. Will Slackware be better for
this work?
TIA,
Indraneel
PS: Actually remote installation might be a good idea. RedHat does have this kickstart
thing, but I'm not sure if 4MB will be enough for RedHat. Or maybe start remote boot
by plugging in a floppy, that should be able to install even Slackware (with a lot of
tweaking all the scripts).
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