Re: DEBIAN Linux on floppy disks

[Rick Hawkins <rhawkins@iastate.edu>]

> Why are there always utilities to do this?
> 
> What would happen if I wrote a simple program to output the file in volumes
> of a certain size, and then used "cat" to stick em end to end?

that works.  I had to do this a few times.

If you already have a unix somwehere, that simple program already
exists; it's part of the base debian installation.  

Anyway, while i had one of the two machines talking to the network,
while still working to get the second talking to the network, i had to
move files.

Anyway, the "split"  program creates files named xaa, xab, etc.  I moved
these by floppy, anc then "cat xa* > perl.deb" (or whatever), and dpkg
would install.  also, this is useful for putting the base1_1.tgz file in
place on a drive rather than using the 3 disk set.

Or (perhaps better), put a dos partition where you will ultimately put
your swap file, boot with the first 2 disks, make the debian partition,
hit alt-f2 to get a shell, then copy the files over:
(assuming the swap/dos partition is hda1, and the linux is hda2)

mount -t msdos /dev/hda1 /mnt
mkdir /target/debfiles
cp /mnt/* /target/debfiles
umount /mnt

Then boot dos, use dos fdisk to delete the partiton, reboot linux, make
& initialize your swap partiton, *be sure to use mount pre-existing*
linux partition rather than "initialize".

follow the instructons, and when it gets to the dselect program, tell it
to install from an already mounted partition, and answer for each type
that it asks that the files are in /debfiles, and that the Packages file
is "none"

rick