Installing via Network without a CD (was Re: Disk Druid - Fedora flame #1)

[Aleksandar Milivojevic]

Aleksandar Milivojevic wrote:
> 
> So, you have several options listed above.  Go and play ;-)

Oh, yeah.  One option I forgot.  Take disk out of laptop.  There are 
(cheap) adapters to connect those tiny laptop IDE hard drives to normal 
IDE controller in your desktop.

If you have adapter, or you can borrow it from somewhere, or decide to 
buy it, from there on, you have two options.

1) copy install CDs to hard drive, return disk back into laptop, and 
boot with "linux askmethod" and choose "hard drive" when it asks you for 
installation method.  make sure not to destroy partition that contains 
copy of install CDs during installation ;-)

2) simply install with disk connected to your desktop.  you might need 
to boot off rescue CD once you return disk into laptop and edit 
grub.conf (or lilo.conf), fstab and/or modprobe.conf.  possibly also 
reinstall boot loader (grub or lilo) and/or rebuild initrd image.  if 
your hard disk is recognized as /dev/hda when in your laptop, and if you 
place it as primary master (/dev/hda) in your desktop, it should simply 
boot without need to touch anything once placed into laptop (provided 
IDE controller in your laptop isn't something very exotic).

To copy insatll CDs to disk, copy first CD as-is.  The remaining three 
CDs, copy only content of Fedora/RPM directory into existing Fedora/RPM 
directory (from copy of first disk).  Installation is smart enough to 
detect that all RPMs are present in single directory (and not split on 
multiple CDs).  If you have install DVD, it is even simpler.  Just copy 
hole thing to disk as-is.

-- 
Aleksandar Milivojevic <amilivojevic at pbl.ca>    Pollard Banknote Limited
Systems Administrator                           1499 Buffalo Place
Tel: (204) 474-2323 ext 276                     Winnipeg, MB  R3T 1L7