On Thursday 04 May 2006 04:54, Erik Chakravarty <e.chakravarty@sms.ed.ac.uk> wrote about 'Re: Martin's O2 d-i image not booting on ip32': > Only 64M. > > Does this mean I can't use Debian at all on this system? I have just > successfully booted the Gentoo image so I might go with that instead, > although I'd much prefer Debian. I follow this list, but I run Gentoo on my main desktop, which is not MIPS. If you can get Gentoo booted, you could make a small partition at/near the end of your drive, extract a stage3, fix it up (copy /etc/resolv.conf and anything else you'll need in the chroot), chroot and the install debootstrap, which is provided as a Gentoo package. One you have debootstrap, you should be able to follow the Debian installation instructions from installing from within other unix(-like) system. It's not the /cleanest/ way to install Debian, but it will work and you'll later be able to merge the partition you created for the Gentoo stage3 with the one created immediately before it (after you get the Debian install booting on it's own) on disk. Heck, if you have enough RAM, just extract the stage3 into a tmpfs chroot and you won't have to worry about that partition at all. /Especially/ for installing on alternative architectures (like MIPS), I treat live/install CD/DVDs as just bootable media to start me out in a unix-like environment. Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, and Fedora (so probably RedHat) will comfortably install into a chroot from any booted unix-like system. I'm guess SuSE will too, but I haven't really accomplished it yet. Debian and Gentoo document how to do this well, and provide either tarballs (stage3) or tools (debootstrap) to lay down the base system for the chroot. I've found little information on how to do it with Ubuntu or Fedora, but it's not the hard once you figure out your way around apt/yum, and know what is the minimum you need to lay down. I've installed Debian starting from a Gentoo CD and vice-versa, and FC 5 from a Ubuntu DVD. -- "If there's one thing we've established over the years, it's that the vast majority of our users don't have the slightest clue what's best for them in terms of package stability." -- Gentoo Developer Ciaran McCreesh
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