Install without a CD-ROM

Forum: HD Install
Topic: Install without a CD-ROM
started by: fishsoft

Posted by fishsoft on Dec. 25 2003,13:10

Hello

I'd like to install Damn Small Linux

but I have an old computer without CD-ROM drive. I also can't burn the ISO image to a CD because I don't have a burner...

Is it possible for me to install DSL?

:laugh:

Greetz Berry

Posted by rob.rice on Dec. 28 2003,05:44

go to the junk shop get an old computer with a working harddrive
you may be able to get a 2Gig harddrive for around $10.00 this way
I found a hp vetra 300Mhz 128 Meg ram 6 Gig harddrive 40x ro cdrom for $10.00
( hay you might find a better computer at the junk shop than the one you have )
get mulinux get on the net with mulinux put the harddrive from the
junkshop computer in your computer downlod to the sconed hard drive
install to the first harddrive with mulinux
mulinux is the smallest linux that has all the tools to get on the net you will need
about 5 floppys to do this (good floppys so get about 15or 20 floppys so you
can find 5 good ones )

Posted by davide on Dec. 28 2003,10:17

maybe there's an easier way.
if your pc i at least a 486 16m ram, then you may try this.
BUY a version of dsl fron john's site.
wait for the copy to get home.
else..copy a cd from a fried that has it..or ask a friend to download.
ok, once you have the cd/business card yo must a have another pc available (the one you're posting from?maybe?) with cd rom.
fom then on... mųove you old pc harddrive to the better pc and follow the instruction for poorman's install.
you'll fin plenty of hint in this forum. use the search field to browse the topics. it's easier than it sounds.
good luck

-> to rob.rice
you really can find such an hardware for 10 dollars?
Well, you're lucky. I live in Italy and such an old pc wouldn't be sold for less than 70-80 euros (=dollars).I suppose that in the rest of Europe price is likely to be the same, + or -
I'm impressed.

Posted by Dany on Dec. 29 2003,02:48

Hi,

I was able to install damn small linux on a pretty old SLIMNOTE 6100TX laptop by installing from a dos partition on the harddrive, the laptop only has a cyrix pentium1 clone (66Mhz), 16 mb ram, 512mb hdd, no cd drive, 3.5" diskette drive and no network card.
Since i got this computer for free and didn't wanted to buy/build a null modem cable or get a pcmcia network card i decided to go with a diskette intallation :-)... what i did to get dsl linux up and running was the following:

1. with a dos boot disk i created 2 partitions with fdisk, the first one 448 mb, and a second one of 64 mb, i formated the second partition with dos.

2. i then used a program that splitted the KNOPPIX file into chunks of 1.44mb (around 36 of them!!) which i copied using a diskette to the dos partition on the laptop and join all these segments together to reconstruct the original file (you can search the web for an utility called split.exe that allows you to split and reconstruct a file in specific sized chunks in DOS).

3. i created a dsl boot disk.. booted the laptop using this disk.

4. once the machine loaded dsl i used cfdisk to delete the 400mb partition and create 2 partitions 1 linux, 1 linux swap (64mb)..

5. then i did a dsl-hdinstall...

6. get disk out of drive, reboot and voila!! a dsl hardisk install without cd rom :-)..

..actually i spend a lot of time at step 5 since dsl-hdinstall would hang the computer when copying the files to the hdd.. so i had to modify the /usr/sbin/dsl-hdinstall file to use ext3 instead of ext2 (that got me further on the process without hanging), then i had to change the lines that create a gzipped tar of the /KNOPPIX directory to actually use: cp -dvpR for each of the main directories found on /KNOPPIX one by one (since for an unknown reason doing a tar o cp -a for all the contents on that directory at once would completely trash the system on that old laptop)..

hope this helps..

Dany

p.s. damn small linux rocks on that old machine :-)..

Posted by RoGuE_StreaK on Jan. 04 2004,04:52

Cool idea, trying it on my Toshiba T4700CS (DX2/50, 8MB RAM, 200MB HD), but I'm having some major problems installing.
I partitioned the drive to 150MB and 53MB (for some reason it registers as 203MB...), then copied the CD to the 53MB partition using 34 disks with slice.com (well, 34 for the KNOPPIX file, 2 for the rest)

Then I made a boot disk, and this is where it all comes to a halt:

boot: hit enter
loading vmlinuz
loading miniroot.gz
"you passed an undefined mode number" etc -> continue
uncompressing linux..ok, booting the kernel
welcome to...

then stalls (LCD flashes "A" and "arrows", don't knwo what they mean) at either "detecting CD.." (or similar) or "accessing KNOPPIX CDROM at /dev/hda5... "

Any thoughts on what is going on, and how to get by? I'm guessing from other posts that the laptop should be kinda OK to run DSL?