Re: Diskless install
Hi.
Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> I just installed Debian on my 486 and thought I'd try to do it
> without disks. I got as far as the point were it wanted to install
> the kernel, but couldn't go any further. Is there any reason why
> there is no drivers.tgz and perhaps kernel.tgz?
There is actually a modules.tgz on the drivers floppy. However, the
way things stand at present is that a script on the floppy is run that
installs the modules. A similar comment applies to the kernel floppy
except that the script installs the kernel and system map instead.
[snip]
> The only things the Debian people could do to improve this is to put
> loadlin.exe on the ftp server and to modify the install so you don't
> need the two disks..
The boot-floppies package (which is used to create the boot disks) is
rapidly moving toward allowing floppy images (loop mounts) on any
medium to be used instead of actual floppies. It is not much further
to add loadlin as you did and boot the kernel directly. I suppose
things could be taken a stage further and the install could be without
any reference to floppies but this might be at the expense of a more
complicated and initially buggier install script. Maybe in the round
after this one.
> I was also thinking that with a iso9660 fs driver in the kernel a
> CDROM install could be done with either 1 disk or none! Even if no
> cd driver was in the kernel, by copying the files above from the cd
> to the dos partition an install could still be accomplished.
Exactly so. The ideal is to boot off CD ROM but this cannot be
achieved in all cases; the next best thing is booting off a single
floppy or via loadlin from the harddisk with all the other files
available from some mountable medium (DOS, ZIP drive, nfs?, ...).
Giuliano.
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