Re: Diskless install

[Giuliano Procida]

Hi.

Jason Gunthorpe wrote:

 I just installed Debian on my 486 and thought I'd try to do it
 without disks. I got as far as the point were it wanted to install
 the kernel, but couldn't go any further. Is there any reason why
 there is no drivers.tgz and perhaps kernel.tgz?

There is actually a modules.tgz on the drivers floppy. However, the
way things stand at present is that a script on the floppy is run that
installs the modules. A similar comment applies to the kernel floppy
except that the script installs the kernel and system map instead.

[snip]

 The only things the Debian people could do to improve this is to put
 loadlin.exe on the ftp server and to modify the install so you don't
 need the two disks..

The boot-floppies package (which is used to create the boot disks) is
rapidly moving toward allowing floppy images (loop mounts) on any
medium to be used instead of actual floppies. It is not much further
to add loadlin as you did and boot the kernel directly. I suppose
things could be taken a stage further and the install could be without
any reference to floppies but this might be at the expense of a more
complicated and initially buggier install script. Maybe in the round
after this one.

 I was also thinking that with a iso9660 fs driver in the kernel a
 CDROM install could be done with either 1 disk or none! Even if no
 cd driver was in the kernel, by copying the files above from the cd
 to the dos partition an install could still be accomplished.

Exactly so. The ideal is to boot off CD ROM but this cannot be
achieved in all cases; the next best thing is booting off a single
floppy or via loadlin from the harddisk with all the other files
available from some mountable medium (DOS, ZIP drive, nfs?, ...).

Giuliano.

Diskless install

[Jason Gunthorpe]

Hi,

I just installed Debian on my 486 and thought I'd try to do it without
disks. I got as far as the point were it wanted to install the kernel, but
couldn't go any further. Is there any reason why there is no drivers.tgz
and perhaps kernel.tgz?

For those who are interested I have got it down to a two disk install.
What you do is download linux, root.bin, base1_2.tgz and get loadlin.exe
(loadling package is where I got it from). Then you put the 3 files on
a dos partion and run:

loadlin linux root=/dev/ram initrd=root.bin options

Linux will load and run just like if the rescue disk was booted (cept
faster ;) Then alt-f2 and run

mkdir jnk
mount -t msdos /dev/sda1 /jnk  -- sda1 is your dos partition

The install will find the base1_2.tgz file by itself and everything will
go very smoothly till it wants to install the kernel, you need the rescue
floppy (Arrg) and then the drivers floppy (Arrg some more).

The only things the Debian people could do to improve this is to put
loadlin.exe on the ftp server and to modify the install so you don't need
the two disks.. 

I was also thinking that with a iso9660 fs driver in the kernel a CDROM
install could be done with either 1 disk or none! Even if no cd driver was
in the kernel, by copying the files above from the cd to the dos partion
an install could still be accomplished.

Thoughts?

Jason

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Date: Sat, 1 Mar 1997 17:26:11 -0800 (PST)
From: trio [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Scott Stanley [EMAIL PROTECTED]
cc: Debian-User debian-user@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: Mail list problems??
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On Sat, 1 Mar 1997, Scott Stanley wrote:
 Every time I post to the debian user mail list I am getting 5-10 error 
 messages saying the mail could not be delivered.  Although, I do get a 
 copy of the mail sent back to me from the list.  I am wondering if this 
 is related to the problems with the mail list, or if I am the only one 
 getting these errors

   Here's my me too because i wanted to verify that the same thing 
happened to me this morning. I realize it will happen again as i respond 
to this, but i think someone should notice and fix this.

   Thank you for pointing it out and thank you to whoever it is that 
fixes these things.

...
universero trio... [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://tio.net/~trio
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