I am new to linux and I want to move to this system after bad experiences with windows.
I have also a particular problem. An old laptop is probably able to handle just linux at this point of its life.
The cdrom is gone, the bios doesn’t have usb boot support, there is no floppy or pxe network boot ability, so I was wondering what other way I can have to install linux on a barebone hd (nothing on it).
The only Idea I had was to copy some files on the hd via a ide cable adapter, connecting the laptop hd to the mobo of a desktop. I did the same in the past to install xp: I used msdos 7 to boot the machine and then launch the xp setup from withing the hd (copied before the installation files).
So my question is, can I do the same with linux? in such case, of course I will have a hd formatted with fat32 to boot in msdos, and what files should I copy on this partition to launch the installation?
If this is not the best path to follow and some guru here can advise me a better way I am looking for his helps. I look on the net but everywhere at least they require a previous operative system on it or some kind of boot support (usb, cdrom, floppy…)
Take the HDD out of you laptop, attach it to another computer, install linux on that HDD (reformatting to ext3 or ext4) and put it back into the laptop.
So I can easily do that but this means starting the installation from within windows environment, correct? then how it will be handled the boot when I put back the hd on the laptop? I mean, I am formatting all the laptop hd (which in windows will be a secondary hd, something like E: F:…) as extended partition, so how the mbr and a boot will be configured?
sorry for the silly question but I am not so familiar with linux installation requirements
so I will boot from my desktop with the linux cd/dvd, connecting the hd which will be seen as secondary hd. then when install I will specify the secondary hd (the notebook one) as destination instead of the hd on my desktop.
Is that correct???
But how can I be sure that linux is not going to modify also the mbr of my desktop hd?
and when I will put back the hd in the notebook, the installation will start flawless?
That is correct. The installation program will detect two harddisks: /dev/sda and /dev/sdb. You can decide on which hdd linux should be installed and where grub (its the bootloader) should be installed. When the installation program tells it wants to reboot, then you can switch the HDD to your laptop.
but of course I will have to edit the boot loader on /dev/sda2 or tell it somehow in the installation progress not to add the entry of my windows who is already present on /dev/sda1.
I’ll try immediately, thanks for your help.
one last thing. it has to be just suse linux or any other distribution which can start from a bootable dvd/cd?
Sorry, your first HD is /dev/sda and your second is /dev/sdb/
The first partition on your first HD is /dev/sda1 and the second partition on your first HD will wbe /dev/sda2. The thir on your first /dev/sda3. I just want to mention that because i dont want you to kill your windows. So dont install your bootloader to sda2. Install it to sdb2 or to mbr from sdb. But never on sda2! And you can start any distribution from DVD or CD. But when you want openSUSE then you need the openSUSE DVD. Also the installers from other distribution will work different. I cannot promise that the other will reboot while installation. So it maybe different from switching hd.
Thanks that I would have figure out so I will use sdb
what about the previous question about the bootloader? I dorm wan this is going to mess up the nbd or sda where ihave already three partition with windows
so how specify the mbr of sdb or sdb1 and what is the difference between them? For sure in that HD I will have only Linux so what partition setup you advise me?
Since you are going to muck around with the inside of your computer anyway, why not just connect the disk as the primary disk, i.e. disconnect the existing disk. That will make sure it will be seen as the primary, and you don’t have to fix up the bootloader afterwards, and you can sure it won’t change the Windows HD.
You may have to do some reconfiguration of the X server on the final machine if the graphics card is different. But that adventure is for later.
So I did the installation and everything looked fine. I installed linux on sdc which was my third hd and lilo on sdc as well. during the installation I got a message that I probably should have rerun the lilo configuration.
Anyway back the hd in the laptop, lilo seems to start loading linux but what’s happen is that the root device cannot be found: after a while the process gave up and return to a shell…
As error I got the following:
“ALERT! /dev/sdc1 does not exist. Dropping to a shell!”
now I checkd under /dev and I have only sda, since in my notebook this is the first hd, while lilo probably was configured to run on a third hd (sdc)
So how can I edit lilo and where I can find lilo.conf to change the hd? probably just substituting any sdc with sda.
p.s. it was sdc instead sdb because my desktop had already two drives by itself.
Right now I have lilo installed on this machine and I am trying to figure out where is located lilo.conf and how to edit from the basic shell which the system unable to start booted into.
Any help? I am using ubuntu distribution , but I guess it should be pretty similar to suse right?
I have to Acer netbooks that I wish to install Linux 11.2 on. I have no cd or floppy drive nor do I have an external drive. How can I go about doing the installation. The attempt to install from a usb failed. In need of help.
If you didn’t choose LILO, and I don’t know even that Ubuntu gives you the choice these days, you would get GRUB whether you like it or not. LILO was so last century. So just make life easier for yourself and do an install with the disk in primary position, then you don’t have to fix anything.
I go with ken_yap all the way. First on installing in the other machine with only the laptop HDD connected, second on GRUB to be used instead of LILO. After install it should just work in the laptop.
