Windows 2000, Omnibook 500 Install Difficulties
Hi All:
It doesn't appear to me that anyone has addressed the difficulty of
installing Debian on a laptop with no CD-ROM drive, external floppy, and
Windows 2000 pre-installed (I've checked the lists archive and
linux-laptop.net, so please point me in the right direction if I'm missing
something).
Although I can boot the Linux boot disk, when it asks for the Rescue disk,
the system can never access the external (USB) floppy. I've tried different
options, including floppy=omnibook, root=/dev/fp0, root=/dev/hda2 (with the
linux bin files in the root directory of my hard drive), etc..
Ideally, I'd just run loadlin under W2K. Unfortunately, W2K does not appear
to have any DOS-mode option--if you boot 'safe mode with command prompt'
you're still in the multitasking environment, and if you boot 'command
recovery console' you can't execute any binaries.
I sort of found a workaround by creating a Windows 98 boot disk (and running
in DOS mode), and then was able to execute loadlin from the hard drive.
This only worked, however, because my laptop came pre-installed with the
hard drive formatted as FAT32. If it had been formatted NTFS, I would have
been SOL, right?
Once I booted into DOS mode I tried to split the partition with FIPS, but of
course there is something towards the end of the disk restricting the size
of the partition. I defragged in W2K, still no luck. I deleted the W2K
swap file, still no luck (other than W2K would no longer boot).
Ultimately, this isn't too much of a problem because I don't care about
keeping W2K once Linux is up (at this point, I'm just deleting all the files
other than the Debian install, hopefully this will free up the space needed
to split the partition). But it seems like this is a very difficult
procedure for a semi-novice who wanted to keep W2K on a laptop, particularly
if their drive were formatted NTFS and/or they weren't luck enough to have a
Windows 98 or earlier boot disk.
I would be happy to help create a "Windows 2000 to Linux" mini-howto if we
can figure this out and if one doesn't already exist. Amusingly, a google
search for "windows 2000 linux install" gives you "How to Remove Linux and
Install Windows 2000 or Windows NT on Your Computer" from
support.microsoft.com.
(who would want to do *that*?!?!?)
--Adam
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