Installing DSL FROM HD Frugal No CDROM
Forum: HD Install
Topic: Installing DSL FROM HD Frugal No CDROM
started by: gigi1234
Posted by gigi1234 on Aug. 23 2006,18:53
Hey everyone!I am trying to install DSL (frugal) on an old laptop, 1.4 gig HD, 40MB RAM, Pentium I. I can only boot from the floppy drive. The machine is currently running Tiny Linux. I can use this system to mount a parallel zip drive and copy files to a HD partition.
I want to somehow install DSL from the hard drive, after copying the necessary files onto the HD via the zip drive.
I made an extra partition, hda3 FAT32, to copy the DSL files onto. I have tried copying the actual ISO and also the extracted files from the ISO. But when I boot up and try to run the install from the HD using the DSL boot floppy, I always am told that the filesystem cannot be accessed.
I am a little confused about what exactly I need to copy to my HD to make this work. And also, can the HD partition be hda3 or does it have to be hda1?
Please chime in I need your expertise and advice on this one!
If I ever get it work maybe I will write up a little howto to folks trying to cope with the no cdrom issue. Thanks!
Posted by u2musicmike on Aug. 24 2006,03:32
I just happened to be looking at the frugal lite script earlier and it had some good stuff that might give you some ideas:| Code Sample |
mke2fs /dev/$TARGET mkdir /mnt/$TARGET mount -t ext2 /dev/$TARGET /mnt/$TARGET mkdir /mnt/iso mount /mnt/$SOURCE/current.iso /mnt/iso -t iso9660 -o loop=/dev/loop0 echo echo "Installing the compressed image..." cp -r /mnt/iso/KNOPPIX /mnt/$TARGET cp -r /mnt/iso/boot /mnt/$TARGET |
You might want to run fdisk again and make your hda3 linux instead of FAT32. See first it wants to format ext 2. I don't know nothing about Tiny Linux but if you can mount the zip drive then try to mount the iso in a directory on the zip drive if it has room or on another partition. Sorry I am no expert on this and am new to linux also.
Posted by gigi1234 on Aug. 24 2006,18:16
I'll try reformatting that partition as ext2, perhaps that will help. I would assume you would have to have the permissions set correctly so the partition can be written to by the installer?
Posted by u2musicmike on Aug. 24 2006,22:42
I should have mentioned that you need the floppy dsl bootdisk to get this to work. If you search the forum on "poorman" you will find what I am talking about. The bootdisk looks for the Knoppix on your hard drive partition and boots up like a CD rom. After you have fluxbox up right click to pull up the menu and you can do a full install and not have to use a bootdisk everytime. Tiny Linux might do something with permissions but if you log as root you shouldn't have to worry. You might be able to have multi-booting if you set up grub or lilo right. I am sorry I can't tell how to do that though.
Posted by gigi1234 on Aug. 25 2006,01:33
You know, I tried making the target partition ext2, but it was a no-go. It will only work when it is FAT32, don't know why. I am stuck on command line.
I think my problems are mainly due to low ram (16 MB).
Yup, I am hoping to install to the HD as soon as I get an acceptable configuration happening.
BTW, I am now getting a weird BIOS error message. Could DSL have possibly messed with the BIOS?
Posted by u2musicmike on Aug. 25 2006,15:13
I am sorry that I'm not much help. If fdisk wouldn't work it almost sounds like your hard disk is messed up and that might be causing the BIOS error. I had a hard drive that I couldn't partition and I wiped it with a Window 98 boot disk and reformated then I booted up with DSL and partitioned as ext2. I haven't had any trouble from the hard drive since then. For that small amount of memory DSL needs swap space so if you have to take drastic measures with your hard drive remember to make a good 50M swap partition. You can do the hard drive install from the command line if you boot dsl 2 and look in usr/sbin for the HDinstall script but you really should try to fix the hard drive first.
Posted by dscott23 on Aug. 27 2006,01:02
I just found myself in a similar situation. I have DSL installed on a USB flash drive, and then it struck me that I might actually be able to get some use out of my old Pentium laptop. Mine won't boot from CD, and there's no USB support either. What I ended up doing (after some trial and error), was create a 100MB FAT partition (hda1), and this is where I extracted the dsl-3.0.1.iso image to. The rest of the hard drive I formatted as FAT32 (hda2). The only reason the first partition is not FAT32, is because FAT32 has to be at least 256MB (or something like that).
As for formatting, I have a 2.5" USB HDD enclosure that I put the laptop hard drive in, doing the actual formatting through my Ubuntu system.
Put the hard drive back in the laptop, booted up with a floppy (bootfloppy.img), and once everything loaded, I mounted hda2, ran "install to Hard Disk", and directed it to install to hda2. DSL reformatted hda2 as ext2, and everything's working fine. Currently this leaves the 100MB's or so of hda1 unused, but I'm not really concerned. It's an old system, and I'm happy I can get some more life out of it.
Hope this helps. Good luck.
D.
Posted by gigi1234 on Aug. 27 2006,02:02
I have done something similar-created a partition (FAT) to copy the files from the iso to, then use the DSL boot disk to boot from HD. It does work, but with no X since I have low ram.I am trying to install to the HD now and I am having trouble with GRUB. Something is messed up about my MBR I think but I don't know much about these problems.
The install fails here: tempnam: No such file or directory /sbin/grub-install: line 361: cannot create temp file for here document: Read-only file system.
What gives?
Posted by gigi1234 on Aug. 27 2006,02:03
Oh yeah, you can make that left over 100MB into a swap partition, no?
Posted by dscott23 on Aug. 27 2006,20:05
The "Read only File System" warning might indicate the issue. The permissions for the drive may only allow writing by a certain user (root perhaps). I had issues like this when formatting through my Ubuntu system. If I formatted ext3, I couldn't write to the drive afterwards, but with formatting FAT and FAT32 I didn't have these problems. I don't know what you've used to format the drive, but maybe you can try a different program. I'm no expert at this myself, but it appears to me the installer is trying to write to the drive but simply isn't allowed to.
And ya, the 100MB's as swap is a good idea.
Posted by gigi1234 on Aug. 27 2006,20:13
I have been using cfdisk or fdisk. For some reason it only works when the source partition is FAT32. If I make it ext2 then it doesn't get recognized by the installer. This is weird to me. I thought of the permissions issue, but that isn't something that you set in cfdisk, is it?
Does it matter which ISO you use? I am just using current, but maybe I should be using embedded instead?
I am also having bootloader issues...
Posted by dscott23 on Aug. 28 2006,01:06
I can't say for certain that permissions are set in cfdisk, I'm not that familiar with it.I used the current ISO, but you may want to try the "syslinux" iso, I believe it's for older systems that won't boot with the regular iso.
If you're having bootloader issues, perhaps that should be solved first. You mention that the computer you're trying to install DSL on is current running Tiny Linux. Are you looking to keep Tiny Linux on the system, and have a dual boot with DSL? If not, I would suggest completely deleting all partitions on the drive, creating new ones and starting from scratch. Unless you're looking to keep both OS's on there, in which case I would do some searching around for help on repairing a broken bootloader. I don't know that much about bootloaders at this point.
D.
Posted by JBHoren on Aug. 28 2006,22:23
gigi1234 -- after creating the ext2 partition, did you remember to create a file system on it? If you didn't (as root) run: "/sbin/mke2fs /dev/<partition>" and then retry your installation.I have an old Compaq LTE 4/75cx, on which I'm going to install DSL. It's got a 1.44MB floppy drive and a 310MB hard drive; no CDROM or USB.
I created a Linux boot floppy, using Tom's Root Boot, and booted the "beast" from it (with 16MB RAM, it loads into ramdisk). Next, I used fdisk to partition the hard drive.
I created a 65MB partition (/dev/hda1), and a 260MB partition (/dev/hda2). Although the first partition will end-up being swap space, for now I created a file system on each partition (ext2 for hda1, ext3 for hda2).
As soon as I get that old network card I bought on eBay (one supported by the drivers from tomsrtbt), I'll copy the dsl-3.0.1.iso image onto hda1, run frugal_lite.sh, and do an installation onto hda2. THEN I'll run mkswap on hda1, and edit /etc/fstab to reflect the change.
I like the suggestion of "u2musicmike" about mounting the iso image as a loop-back file system and then copying it over onto the main partition.
Hope this helps (and will work for me, too!)
I have my eye on an 810MB drive... but then, there's a 5GB out there, as well (both going for peanuts)... and also a wireless card... all so that I can run Linux on an old Compaq 4/75cx... LOL
Posted by gigi1234 on Aug. 29 2006,01:09
JBHoren:At first I wasn't clued into creating the file system, but then I realized this could be one of the problems. But, even taking care with that I am still having issues with X and the bootloader.
Your scheme sounds great. Why ext2 for hda1 and ext3 for hda2? 310 MB HD? Wow that is slim, for sure. Makes me feel I;ve space to burn!
What kind of netcard will work with TOMSRTBT? I tried that option, but could never get the ethernet connection going.
By contrast, when I run DSL fromhd it automatically configures the DHCP connection-no worries.
I am waiting for some Ebayed RAM to arrive. Plus I have to straighten out the bootloader problems.
Keep me posted on your progress-let me know how it turns out.
I know it is a little strange, and maybe a waste of time, but I love trying to do something useful with old decrepit systems that nobody else wants.
Thanks so much for your input!
peasn^^^s
Posted by Sammy95 on Aug. 29 2006,23:46
Hello everyone..This was interresting stuff.
I also have a old laptop that I really want to install a up to date fully working copy of Linux onto.
It's a small Toshiba Libretto 70CT, MMX120mhz 32Mb RAM, No USB, No CD
(< It looks like this one >)
Currently it has Win98 & Red Hat 6.2 installed.
Win98 works okey with network access through the PCMCIA card.
I just got one extra 16Mb (total32Mb) today, and the computer is running much faster than before, so I guess 16Mb more make a difference when You only have 16Mb as std.
However the partition with Red Hat doesn't work 100%. No network, and the graphics is not so good.
I also wonder about if You think that DSL will work nicely with X with only 32 MB RAM?
My main problem is how to install it without any CD, and then I found that You are just talking about the same issue here.
Nice, maybe we are able to work it out. However I am not an expert (stupid) with Linux, and really don't think I will be of very much help, but I sure want to try (2 learn)
I have a spare HD that I think I will use, since I don't want to mess up the one that already is running 95% okey.
Sammy
Posted by gigi1234 on Aug. 30 2006,01:07
Keep us posted. You can either try to do the "poorman's" installation with a network card, or maybe you can find an old zip drive that you can get mounted. Using a spare HD is a great idea.
Come back if you have any specific questions.
DSL w/X is supposed to work with 32 MB, but I haven't been able to check it out yet. I am waiting to receive some extra memory.
Good luck!
Posted by dscott23 on Aug. 30 2006,02:22
It will indeed run with 32MB RAM, that's what my old laptop has. And it even has 1MB of video memory. I'm shocked it can do anything at all ;)
Posted by Sammy95 on Sep. 01 2006,23:03
YES It's working!!! I now have DSL up an running on my Libretto 70CT.
I was searching on Google for how to do this, when I suddenly stumbled into
this webpage: < http://www.ottaky.com/lib70ct.php >
That was where I found the solution.
I looked in the closet and found my old Toshiba Satellitte and installed DSL from there.
Then moved the disc and everything booted nicely on the smaller 70CT Libretto.
Quick, easy and working...
Maybe You also are able to use the same speedy workaround... ?
Sammy95
Posted by brianw on Sep. 03 2006,22:36
With an old Panasonic CF-25 I installed with a zip drive by installing dsl on the zip drive using another system then used the floppy and booted with dsl zip so it looked on the pp port for the sip drive. This cf-25 is a very slow machine (p133 with 24M ram but runs like a 486 it is so slow). With the cf-25 (and most compaqs) you need a boot floppy to get into the setup. I have found that with the cf25 almost anything will cause the bios to require you to enter setup (all I have to do is enter the setup then exit and everything is fine again) by demanding that I press F1 every boot. If you are having boot issues it may be just that you need to run the setup and save and exit (without making any changes).
As for network cards I have not found one yet (mostly old pcmcia, nics, and an smc usb device) that didn't work (although in another thread I did see an smc usb that did not work correctly (I think mine is the 2202 and the one that did not work was a 2206).