How do I do a update/reinstall whitout cdrom or floppy

[Guest bolanski]

I need help on how to reinstall my system whitout the use of a floppy or cdrom drive. I have a notebook compaq and the modular cdrom bay is broken.

 

I have a complete RH system on it now but I want to do a new fresh Mandrake install or a reinstall RH9

 

Is it possible to start a network install whitout a boot disk /floppy or crdom) cant I just download some files and start from my working (but kinda messed up) RH 9 system.

 

Further info about the system is:

 

Only on hardrive Hda with /boot, / and swap

No working cdrom NOT bootable from USB cdrom or floppy.

Grub on MBR

Working network card.

I can set up a nfs server on an other computer for the network install if needed, but i rather just do it over the internet.

 

Can this be done?

 

/Andy

[Ixthusdan]

If you have the space on the drive, I would try to do an iso install from the hard drive. Do a search here, and you will find instructions on how to do it. You can download the iso images from over the network. The only time I have ever installed linux over the network, it required a floppy boot in order to set up communication. I think an iso install is your best bet.

[pmpatrick]

Doesn't an iso install from the hard drive require a floppy as well?

[Ixthusdan]

http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php?t=1748

 

You are correct. You need a floppy.

[Guest bolanski]

I cant get the machine too boot on cdrom or floppy since the modular bay is for both the cdrom and the floppy and its busted (its the same port)

 

I cant even get a usb floppy to boot. It feels kinda sillly that i have a Rh9 install (somewhat busted) and i cant start a new installl from it.

 

I would like to get somekind of way to start a kickstartfile or the iso running from my hda and then go into network installl http, ftp or nfs.

 

im really a newbie so all help is welcome.

 

 

/andy

[Ric]

this is probably no use at all but there was a threed on the cooker mailing list about getting a lilo entry to point to the hd.img to boot from the hard drive, but u will have to go routing, it was about a month before 9.1 came out if that helps

 

Ric

[pmpatrick]

You say you can't boot off a usb floppy if I understand you correctly. Have you checked your setup BIOS to make sure that legacy USB is enabled? It has to be enabled for the BIOS to use a usb device during boot up. Also, in the boot sequence part of the BIOS which designates the order in which the system will look for a boot device(most people set the order floppy, cdrom, hard drive), is there an entry for usb device? If so you might be able to move the usb device up in the order before hard drive and boot off it.

[Guest bolanski]

I have these settings for booting:

 

cdrom, floppy, network card and harddrive.

 

the cdrom and floppy are modules using the same bay (i dont have the floppy bay since i have the cdrom version and the floppy is an extra option, but still the bay i broken so it wont do much good to buy the floppy)

 

Its a 1.5 year old compaq evo n150 notebook. I got it totaly replaced about 6 months ago for the same non working cdrom issue. The bios is wery simple not much to fiddle around with.

 

Isent there any way to start a linux install from whitin a linux system? mabey I could get a usb cdrom working but do I have to reboot and boot from cd then Im fried.

 

/andy

[pmpatrick]

If the usb floppy doesn't work I doubt a usb cdrom would work. If you have a friend with a usb cdrom you could borrow, give it a try but I wouldn't go out and buy one. I don't think you can run the mandrake install routine from within a running linux red hat but I think I've figured aout a way to install off your hard drive without a floppy or cdrom. here's what you'll need:

 

1. Disk space to accomodate both Rh and Mdk. You don't know if mandrake will run properly on your computer till you install. If you install Mdk and blow off Rh and if Mdk doesn't work, your laptop will be a useless pile of junk since you will have no way to reinstall red hat or any other OS without a working Os with network capabilities.

2. Access to a computer with a cd burner and windows. You'll need to burn at least CD1 on this box and then create a boot floppy for either a network or hard drive install using CD1. The program for creating these boot floppies contained in CD1 uses windows to run.

3. Network access to another computer through your current red hat. What you are going to to do is copy the the files on the boot floppy you made above to a location in your current red hat on the laptop.

4.Knowledge on how to configure grub. Grub is the default bootloader for rh and is what I assume you currently have on your laptop. You are going to have to create a new entry in grub to boot with the info from the boot floppy that you copy per 3 above. I use lilo and the method I am about to describe worked with lilo. It shoul be translatable to grub but I don't know how to do it in grub as I have no experience with it. If there are some grub gurus on the board, I'm sure they can help you with that.

 

Let me give you an overview of what we're trying to do. The mandrake install routine is designed to run from boot which is why you'll never be able to run it from within red hat. Essentially, you will have to simulate booting of a floppy from your hard drive. For any linux to boot, it needs a bootloader. The common ones are lilo and grub. Linux boot floppies use a special boot loader called syslinux which creates a file on the floppy called

ldlinux.sys. What the boot floppy does is load a mini linux system into a ramdisk which then runs the install program. After the floppy is done loading this, it has no further function. Everything is in the ramdisk.

Any linux bootloader minimally needs three pieces of info to boot:: the compressed linux kernel to use typically refered to as vmlinuz, an initrd which sets up the file system and the location of the of the root directory. This info is passed to the bootloader through a text configuration file. In lilo, it's called lilo.conf. In syslinux, it's called syslinux.cfg. Look at the files on boot install floppy and you will see a vmlinuz(the compressed linux kernel) an initrd(on the hard drive install floppy I used it was called hd.rdz) and a syslinux.cfg. You already have a perfectly good bootloader on your system, grub and all we need to do is create a boot entry in grub to boot the vnlinuz and initrd from the files that you copied from that floppy to your hard drive. Here's how I did it in lilo on my box:

 

First I created a hard drive boot floppy using CD1 in wndows. I booted back to Mandrake and copied the entire floppy contents to directory in my home directory called floppy. Then I took a look at the syslinux.cfg file from the floppy to figure out how to trnslate it into lilospeak. here's the syslinux.cfg file i worked with:

 

default linux

prompt 1

timeout 72

display boot.msg

F1 help.msg

F2 advanced.msg

F3 boot.msg

label linux

kernel vmlinuz

append initrd=hd.rdz ramdisk_size=128000 root=/dev/ram3 automatic=method:disk acpi=off vga=788

label vgalo

kernel vmlinuz

append initrd=hd.rdz ramdisk_size=128000 root=/dev/ram3 automatic=method:disk acpi=off vga=785

label vgahi

kernel vmlinuz

append initrd=hd.rdz ramdisk_size=128000 root=/dev/ram3 automatic=method:disk acpi=off vga=791

label vga16

kernel vmlinuz

append initrd=hd.rdz ramdisk_size=128000 root=/dev/ram3 automatic=method:disk acpi=off vga16

label text

kernel vmlinuz

append initrd=hd.rdz ramdisk_size=128000 root=/dev/ram3 automatic=method:disk acpi=off text

label patch

kernel vmlinuz

append initrd=hd.rdz ramdisk_size=128000 root=/dev/ram3 automatic=method:disk acpi=off patch vga=788

label expert

kernel vmlinuz

append initrd=hd.rdz ramdisk_size=128000 root=/dev/ram3 automatic=method:disk acpi=off expert vga=788

label rescue

kernel vmlinuz

append initrd=hd.rdz ramdisk_size=128000 root=/dev/ram3 automatic=method:disk acpi=off rescue rw

label acpi

kernel vmlinuz

append initrd=hd.rdz ramdisk_size=128000 root=/dev/ram3 automatic=method:disk vga=788

 

 

Here's the entry I created in lilo.conf:

 

image=/home/patrick/floppy/vmlinuz

label="install"

root=/dev/ram3

initrd=/home/patrick/floppy/hd.rdz

append="ram_size=128000 automatic=method:disk acpi=off vga=788"

read-only

 

A few things to note here. The image flie is the path to the vmlinuz I copied from th floppy. The initrd is likewise the path to the initrd from the floppy. I knew initrd was hd.rdz from the syslinux.cfg configration file(initrd=hd.rdz). Location of the root directory I knew to be a ramdisk Again, looking at syslinux.cfg append line, note that root=/dev/ram3 so that's what I put in the appropriate place in my lilo.conf entry. Those are the big three items that I mentioned above. To get the thing to work, however, you need to pass the additional boot parameters from the syslinux.cfg append line to the bootloader. In lilo, that's done on the append line in lilo.conf. The ramsize one, I assume is for setting the size of the ramdisk which the install program will be loaded into. The "automatic" one, I assume is for designating the method of install(disk) which in my example is a hard drive. It would probably be different for a network install. The other stuff is for turning off acpi during the install and setting the video display.

 

After editing lilo.conf, I ran lilo as root in a console which is necessary for the changes to take effect. I rebooted and had the new lilo entry "install". and selected it. It booted in a manner identical to the way it boots from the floppy and I got to the screen asking me to select the path to the files on my hard drive from which to do the install. In short it worked. Pretty ingenious ha? 8)

 

All this should be easily transalatable to grub. If anyone on the board is familiar with grub configuration, feel free to jump in and tell bolanski how to edit the grub configuration file to get a new entry for an install along the lines suggested above.

 

One final caution. If you get the install to go, install in expert mode and do NOT install the lilo or any other bootloader. If you do, it will overwrite your current grub without creating an entry for red hat in lilo. If for some reason you can't boot into mandrake, you'll have no way of booting to redhat since you don't have a floppy or cdrom. You'll have to boot into red hat and edit grub to create a new entry for mandrake. But if you get through all the above, that should be child's play. :wink:

[Ric]

^^^^That was what I was refering to ^^^^^

 

Ric

[Guest bolanski]

Thanks for all the help. I did not get the long example working but I dident try to damm hard on it either, I've been looking for a way to do this for about 2 weeks and this is by far the most helpfull tip yet. Still way over my head though...

 

I did try to install using an other computer via a 2.5" to 3.5" IDE adapter but well my guess is its not a good solution since there must be a kernel difference and other hardware related stuff.

 

One big thing is the lack of a floppy drive not only in the notebook but overall in all the avalible computers around me.

 

My last chance may be to install a grub/lilo on the disk and copy the necesary files (to start a network install) to some partition i create on the disk, either from winXP or RH9 on my second computer (also lacking floppy but having a cdrw) or to do a PXE install if its possible I know I have a Intel NIC thats bootable but I dont how to do it or if its possible on linux.

 

I would like to continue using linux but this migth force me against my will to setup a windows system using some oldschool trix I have up my sleve.

 

If someone only could build a network install client that I

could run in GUI :)

 

Once again THANKS for the help I've learned alot...

 

/Andy

[pmpatrick]

If you need the files from the network or hard drive install floppies, I can create them and email them to you. Just pm me with your email adress. Linux on Compaq laptops is pretty rough and I beleive your likely to have problems with mandrake too, both at the install and and afterwards. One thing you might want to check is whether there is a BIOS update for your laptop, preferably one that will enable usb legacy support so your usb floppy will work.

[Guest bolanski]

I now got it working. This is how I did it.

 

First I removed the hardrive from the laptop and used a 2.5" to 3.5" IDE adapter so I could fit it in my home computer.

 

I then installed a RedHat9 (Mandrake 9.1 would be the same thing and work just the same). This I did to get a grub bootloader on the hardrive. I dont know how to install only a grub bootloader so thats why I did it this way.

 

I then booted the system on my home computer and downloaded two files from the RH9 Isolinux folder

 

wmlinuz

initrd.img

 

(on mandrake it would be something like wmlinuz and all.rdz that I would use. And I did get that working to but Im more used to RH for now)

 

Ok back to the how I did it.

 

I put those files in a folder called /boot/rh9.0

 

I then fixed my grub.conf with the following stuff

 

title Red Hat 9.0 Install

root (hd0,0)

kernel /rh9.0/vmlinuz ro root=LABEL=/

initrd /rh9.0/initrd.img

 

The root=LABEL=/ thing is something ananconda writes and its only for pointing to /boot/ I think

 

Thats it!

 

Move the disk back to the laptop and choose Install in the grub menu and off you go to a installer and there you can choose to do a FTP install or from hardrive if you have the ISO files on the hardrive. I choosed to do a FTP install.

 

I did run into a problem when trying this on Mandrake 9.1 and thats when I wanted to remove all partitions and make new ones (this was because i had some DOS partitions I wanted to remove).

 

The system had to do a reboot before the new partitions where to be used, this kinda messed up my Install thingy since alla files were removed. But if you let the first Install (the one to get the system going and download files to before moving the disk to the laptop) you could keep the partition layout.

 

I now have the same grub.conf and the files above so I can choose to do a reinstall and when then next release is availeble I just download the files and enter a new post in the grub.conf and away I go to do a uppgrade or install.

 

 

Hope this helps someone it sure helped me.

 

/Andy - Sweden

[pmpatrick]

Excellent job. :D :D Glad you got it working. Sorry I didn't reply to your pm; was on vacation for a while and wasn't sure what advice to give as it's been a while since we talked. Best of luck.