Chuck, As long as a generic (i386) kernel is used, you can install linux on a machine with FDD and CDROM then move it to your target machine. As far as hardware auto-detection goes, for the most part the kernel will recognize your hardware at boot time. I'm not sure which "auto detect" facilities you are speaking of, the only tricky things are usually audio, video (x-windows), and ethernet. How those are configured is different depending on distribution. Perhaps you can also do an install from HDD, several distributions allow this, slackware, debian and I think Redhat too. You copy the install files to the hard drive. One thing I've been using which is quite useful is the slackware UMSDOS boot image. It stores all of the linux stuff on a DOS partition and you can boot from there. This allows you to run the slackware setup *without* a floppy or cdrom drive. You can boot this UMSDOS based image and it is exactly the same as booting from floppy. I put this on all of my machines now because I really hate floppies. It allows me to re-install linux at any time. The cool thing is that if I boot from the DOS partition, the linux partitions are not even mounted, so I am free to re-partition, format, or change the file system type any time. Check it out here: ftp://carroll.cac.psu.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-8.1/rootdisks/install.zip.README ftp://carroll.cac.psu.edu/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-8.1/rootdisks/install.zip Using the above method, you can just unzip the install.zip in an existing DOS partition, then run the install from there. It can boot linux from within DOS using loadlin. If you copy the slackware install files to your hard drive you can then install slackware completely with no FDD and no CDROM drive. What I do now is put a small DOS partition on all machines and have this UMSDOS based image bootable from the LILO menu, as a rescue function. If anything ever goes wrong or if I want to reinstall linux, or format filesystems, I can just select to boot the UMSDOS image. My other partitions won't even be touched upon boot. Then when I get to the console prompt I can do anything I want to fix filesystems or whatever. Works very well ... -- Doug Chuck wrote: >OK, guys, I've got an old 486 notebook lying around, on which I wish >to install LINUX. I need some help. It has no CDROM drive, or >floppy...I need to take out the hard drive to install a new O/S. Not a >big deal, really...it's easy to get in and out. > >Now comes the hard part. With Windows I could easily make the >drive bootable, copy the install files over, and run SETUP.EXE on >the laptop itself. I *know* how to do that. > >Can I do something similar with LINUX? I'd like the LINUX setup >routine to auto-detect (I hope) most of the built in hardware, rather >than having to manually set everything up. > >No, I don't have a friend from whom I can borrow a PCMCIA >CDROM drive..no I don't have a network connection available, etc. >Just what I've described. > >Thanks for any hints, guys...I've done the LINUX thing on my desktops, >but never on such a limited machine. > > -- Chuck Knight > >P.S. In case it makes a difference, it's an old Toshiba Portege T3400 -- Subscription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with subject of "subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" toWear-Hard Mailing List Archive (searchable): http://wearables.blu.org Please, *PLEASE* don't subscribe through a forward/expander/false domain
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