HD Install :: Installing DSL with no FDD or CD-rom

Remove the drive and plug it into another computer. For a desktop computer, buy a cheap laptop drive adapter. Then install DSL and put the drive back into your original computer.

To Andrea: I don't know if you'll see this or not, but you might find it useful to register and start a new topic for your question?

bigredgpk: If you follow cbagger01's suggestion, you might find this recent topic of interest:
http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....t=10015

It is pretty much a given to back up your stuff prior to doing anything serious (I mean copy anything you want to keep onto the drive of your desktop machine since it is probably not easy to back up without CDs or floppies).
If you really want to keep your windows installation it's probably not a bad idea to clear out as much stuff as you can off the drive and defrag it before removing the HD from the laptop. A really good program for partitioning is Qtparted and it can be found on the Knoppix Live CD. Probably others can tell you how to use cfdisk but I've never used it when I wanted to try to preserve the data, so I don't know how cfdisk goes doing that.

Cheers and beers,
Sarah

Sarah, thanks for your suggestions! I think I'll register and I ask again if I can't solve the problem. I just take the time to try any possible option I've found in the forum. Thanks to Roberts, too.

bye,
Andrea

Quote (cbagger01 @ Dec. 07 2005,17:59)

Remove the drive and plug it into another computer. For a desktop computer, buy a cheap laptop drive adapter. Then install DSL and put the drive back into your original computer.

Has anyone here ever tried to take the hard drive out of a Sony Vaio A130? i'll have better luck building a cd rom by hand for my old laptop

Maybe my gf will let me "Borrow" her Vaio v505, those are wicked easy to remove...

Timmay

I just did something very similar to this last night. I was fortunate that my laptop DOES have a cdrom, but it doesn't boot from it and it doesn't have a floppy drive so really we're in the same boat.

Here's what I did:

1. Removed the 1gb hard drive and attached it to my desktop via a 2.5"-to-3.5" HDD adapter. (I got it for $3 from Geeks.com on green light special. If you don't want to order it online, you should be able to pick one up at your local CompUSA for $5 or so.) I disconnected my other HDD's so there's no chance of FDISKing the wrong one. Call me paranoid.

2. Used a copy of the Ultimate Boot CD to boot my desktop. Once booted, I chose [F6] DOS/Linux Boot Disks, and then [F1] FreeDOS Boot Disk V3.22 (I'm more familiar with the hard drive utilities in DOS than Linux).

3. Once the computer booted to FreeDOS, I ran FDISK, wiped everything off the 1gb drive, and created a small partition. While mine was only 10mb or so, you will need more because you don't have a CDROM in your laptop. Everything on the DSL CD takes 50mb or so, so I'd probably make at least a 60mb partition to be safe. Fat16 is fine, since it's so small.

4. I think at this point it's best to reboot (it may even be required before formatting the newly created partition will work), loading the FreeDOS boot disk again from the UBCD menu. Then format the hard drive.

Code Sample

format c:

5. Once the hard drive finishes, from drive A: (the FreeDOS Boot Disk in RAM), type

Code Sample

sys c:

This will transfer the boot files to the hard drive and make it bootable.

6. Next, I copied the CD drivers that the UBCD boot disk used to control my cdrom to drive c: and created simple config.sys and autoexec.bat files to load them. I've glossed over this step because you said your laptop has no CDROM. Instead, you will want to copy the ENTIRE contents of the DSL LiveCD to your new partition. Keep the same structure.

7. The last things I copied to my new bootable partition are the EDIT.COM (might have been EDIT.EXE) file from FreeDOS (Again, don't recall if it was on A: or Q:) and LOADLIN.EXE, (which you can get it here.)

8. Now, it's time to put the HD back in the laptop and boot.

9. Once FreeDOS loaded, I used the settings in STEP 5 from these instructions in the DSL Wiki to create a config file to boot DSL using loadlin.

Code Sample

edit loaddsl.cfg

I believe this is what my actual file ended up looking like:

Code Sample

D:\boot\isolinux\linux24
root=/dev/ram
rw
initrd=D:\boot\isolinux\minirt24.gz
vga=normal
ramdisk_size=100000
init=/etc/init
lang=us
apm=power-off
nomce
noapic
quiet
BOOT_IMAGE=D:\knoppix\knoppix

You will need to change the locations of the 3 files I have pointing to drive D: to their locations on drive C: that you copied them.

Now, you should be able to do:

Code Sample

loadlin @loaddsl.cfg

Once DSL started, I followed the instructions from this page in the DSL wiki to actually install it to the HD. I created a 128mb swap partition (hda2) and used the rest (800mb or so) for the Linux partition (hda3).

Viola! You're done.

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