Re: Installation help
David Wright wrote:
>
> Quoting Sunil Pandey (sunny@cse.iitb.ernet.in):
> > This may not be the correct place to ask but since it is related
> > to debian installation, I would ask it anyway. Thing is debian allows a
> > way to install through existing dos. Now, my comp already has Win-2000
> > and that would not let me boot into dos. can someone suggest a way to do
> > this.
>
> This is precisely the correct place. My answer might not be quite
> so precise...
>
> For linux, you're going to need (at least) two partitions, one for
> swap and one for linux.
>
> Create your swap-sized partition but make it a dos partition and
> copy the appropriate installation files to it.
>
> Make a dos boot floppy and boot from it.
>
> Find out what dos has called your dos partition, say X:,
> and where your files are, presumably X:\.
>
> Type
>
> X: <- the drive letter
> cd \ <- the directory
> loadlin linux root=/dev/ram initrd=disks-1.44/root.bin
>
> Do the installation, but choose "Do without a swap partition"
> when it offers to create one.
>
> At some time in the future, whenever you've got your base system
> installed, and the dos partition is now redundant,
>
> vvvv
> mkswap -c /dev/hdaX (-c checks for bad blocks, choose hdaX appropriately),
> edit /etc/fstab to add the single line, again appropriately,
>
> /dev/hdaX none swap sw 0 0
> ^^^^
> vvvv
> swapon -a /dev/hdaX (to make it use it)
>
> all as root. Double check the partition name before you mkswap it.
> (Perhaps mount -t msdos /dev/hdaX /mnt first and then umount /mnt
> as a check.)
>
> Cheers,
>
Alternatively, if your W2K drive is not NTFS formatted (i.e., it's Fat32
or Fat16), just copy your installation files to that drive and then boot
off a Win98 floppy (borrow one) to boot into "DOS" mode. However, if
your drive is NTFS format, do the above (it looks scary, because there's
so much writing, but it's really fairly simple).
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