How to install FC3 w/o cdrom or usb

[steve_dum at mentorg.com]

I finally sorted this out sort of...
The only thing that I found worked was to use the double load suicide approach.

1. Do a FC1 install (which would boot off the floppy).
2. copy the pxeboot kernel and initrd images from the fc3 dvd to /boot/pxeboot
   /images/pxeboot/initrd.img
   /images/pxeboot/vmlinuz
3. modify the grub config file /boot/grub/grub.conf to boot using
   these two files.
4. Do a full install - reformatting the disk on the way (and hoping
   for no hickups)

For both installs I did a ftp install, with the appropriate image mounted
on another local machine.

All in all quite a pain.  
If I had to do this more than once, I assume I could have booted the FC1
rescue image, copied the necessary files over and wrote out the grub boot
loader.  Quicker then the above, but lots more manual steps.  The above
solution was just a really slow background task.

steve

In message <57e4c0e00411191249686d5583 at mail.gmail.com>you write:
>Hey Steve,
>
>if you find out anything let me know,
>I'm having the same problem with a vtech pcmcia CD-ROM
>and an old IBM thinkpad 760XL laptop. 
>
>I got the Knoppix boot floppy images to work with it,
>http://www.luell.com/projects.html#knoppix_pcmcia
>This was the only boot manager driver that worked for me.
>
>but haven't figured out how to put FC3 on it as of yet.
>
>
>On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 23:10:44 -0800, steve_dum at mentorg.com
><steve_dum at mentorg.com> wrote:
>> 
>> In message <41998C11.6080501 at BitWagon.com>you write:
>> >> I am trying to install FC3 on a Toshiba Portege 7020CT Laptop.
>> >> It has a pcmcia cdrom and the boot disks don't boot off the cdrom.
>> >> It doesn't support booting off the usb either.
>> >
>> >See the README-en on FC3 disk1 for options including pxeboot.
>> >Google.com/linux for:  network aware grub boot floppy .
>> 
>> PXEboot was a good lead.  But for a one time boot, I would need to
>> generate a boot floppy that knows about the laptop's pcmcia ethernet
>> card and the pxeboot protocols.  I found the etherboot site which
>> solved everything except it doesn't seem to handle a pcmcia ethernet
>> card - it assumes the card is directly accessible.
>> 
>> >If the machine can boot an older version of Linux already,
>> >then boot FC3-disk1:/images/boot.iso:/isolinux/vmlinuz and its
>> >corresponding initrd.img.
>> 
>> No OS is loaded on it's disk.
>> It looks like a suicide double load is going to be the solution.
>> Build up a FC1 image for ftp access on another machine, install
>> fc1, then build up a fc3 archive, copy over vmlinuz and the initrd
>> image, have grub load them, and pray that the fc3 load goes ok, since
>> if it fails I have to start over at ground zero.
>> 
>> >If you are really desperate, then try  loadlin  from DOS.
>> 
>> No dos available.
>> 
>> >And the ultimate may be to transplant the harddrive temporarily
>> >to a "white box" machine using a 2.5-to-3.5 adaptor, do the
>> >install, then transplant the harddrive back to the laptop.
>> 
>> Knowing anaconda, it would would outsmart this by deciding not to load
>> some of the packages that would be 'necessary' on the laptop.  Leaving
>> the whole escapade for naught.
>> 
>> It would seem that unfortunately there remain some situations where a
>> floppy boot is still necessary.
>> 
>> steve
>> 
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>