Yes, this has come up before - check the archives of debian-boot and
debian-laptop mailing lists (debian user might not hurt, but those two
discuss it more).
I've never done it personally - I installed from base packages on a
dos partition when I had my libretto (funky floppy disk, pcmcia -
supported after some work once installed but never got installation to
like it) and installed from cdrom with my sony.
Two options you may not have considered - one, you can base install on a
desktop by removing the hard drive. This has the advantage of merely a
$3-6 adapter cable for the laptop HD, and you gain the full power of your
desktop for setting everything up (cdrom, processor, etc.).
Another, is doing the same thing, but putting the base files on the hard
drive in a small partition (which you can later use as swap, or just as a
spare partition) This can be done either with lots of floppies and a
small DOS partition, or with the hard disk method outlined above.
I believe the first floppy disk does work - as linux isn't loaded yet so
it's still using the disk through the bios's native mode, correct? That
being the case you can get far enough into the install to point it at the
base files for the rest of it. Hmmm you will however need a smaller, or
older, debian boot disk for this - I believe the earlier 2.2's would
allow you to get far enough to do this, but current ones don't. Someone
with more experience rolling floppys could advice you on this - but at
this point I think it's probably more effort than researching the usb
floppy issue.
and of course there's parallel and serial installs as always, yow. I
prefer the HD method because it gives you a cdrom and a local HD for
plenty of speed.
-Martin N.
-----
This email has been sent as a single line of query, and in no way
indicates the senders interest in or acceptance of any promotions or
"opt-in"'s unless otherwise EXPRESSLY noted.
On Thu, 14 Nov 2002, milti wrote:
milti wrote:
hello,
for the past couple of days, ive been trying
to do a floppy/network install of woody on my
sony picturebook (usb floppy/xircom netcard)
and have not been able to get past the rescue
disk: the error that stands out is
root fs not mounted
i had potato installed (via pcmcia cd drive) just
fine before and actually was able to do some perl
network programming before the upgrade bug
bit me, so i know debian works fine on my pc. does
anyone have any ideas as to what i need to say
at the boot prompt?? id like to finally get my picturebook
installed with the minimal windows/full debian/full netbsd.
netbsd installed like a dream. but id like to try woody
as well. how to get past the rescue floppy??
ive been trying this some more and the problem seems to
be the usb floppy drive. is there anyone who has had this
problem and knows how to surmount it??
milti
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-laptop-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org