PurpleGuitar Posted June 17, 2004 Report Share Posted June 17, 2004 Greetings I have a laptop computer with a broken CDRom drive and no floppy drive. It has Mandrake 9.1 on it now, but I want to upgrade it to 10.0. All the instructions I have seen for installing a new system involve booting either from CD or from floppy, but I can't do either. How can I install a new Mandrake system over an existing one? (I have previously used network installs, and I'm familiar with those, but I don't know how to start one without a boot floppy.) Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hirogen2 Posted June 18, 2004 Report Share Posted June 18, 2004 I have a laptop computer with a broken CDRom drive and no floppy drive. It has Mandrake 9.1 on it now, but I want to upgrade it to 10.0. All the instructions I have seen for installing a new system involve booting either from CD or from floppy, but I can't do either. How can I install a new Mandrake system over an existing one? (I have previously used network installs, and I'm familiar with those, but I don't know how to start one without a boot floppy.) Do a live update, but be sure not to fux0r anything vital up, because otherwise you're stuck. (Includes: Kernel, Glibc, Internet connection programs like ppp, if applies). It works the following way: In whatever install frontend your distro uses, choose the new '10.0' tree as installation source, then go into the package selection dialogs and choose all packages for reinstall. That's at least the way it works with SuSE. Of course, there is also a way for the real pedantic ones. It's less comfortable but provides maximum safeguard: Download the necessary RPMs (or whatever appropriate) and install them by hand: rpm -Uhv xxx.rpm If it requires additional packages, add their filenames together with xxx on the command line. That way, you can only fsck up one part at a time. (Well, not always). Because some of the new packages require other packages or dropped dependencies, one might need to use the --nodeps flag (rpm), but don't wonder if afterwards an application doesnot work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
somedude Posted June 18, 2004 Report Share Posted June 18, 2004 You could try to format a USB key as bootable and use it as a floppy, if the BIOS can recognize it. This way you could attempt a hard drive install. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hirogen2 Posted June 19, 2004 Report Share Posted June 19, 2004 Another solution (which ALWAYS works) is to insert another HD into the system, and stuff any BOOT ISO onto it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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