Re: Installing Debian from Red Hat (without a CD or floppy drive)

[Haines Brown <brownh@hartford-hwp.com>]

Steve,

I don't reply as a debian guru, but as one who has recently struggled
with the issue of installing debian without the use of removable
media.

What you seek is called a "cross-install," and I gather it is really
the preferred method. I found two guides for it:
trilldev.sourceforge.net/files/remotedeb.html, and section 3.7 in the
debian installation manual
(www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch-preparing.en.html#s-linux-upgrade)

Basically, the idea is that you partition an installation directory,
activate it, mount it, and chroot into it to do the install by using
the debootrap utility (rpm or deb) up to the point of installing the
kernel.

I created the install directory on a remote hard disk and installed
and ran dbootstrap from my local machine. Things went well up to the
point I tried to install the kernel, but my kernel of choice required
an initrd.img file. To build it, the mkinit utility needed to get
information about my system from the remote /proc (filesystem, scsi),
but since I had not used it to boot a kernel, there was nothing in
/proc to read out and my attempt at cross-install failed.

It may be that a cross install will not work if you locate the install
directory on the remote disk and perhaps also if the kernel needs a
initrd.img to boot. I was using the 2.4.18-686 kernel which requires
it, but the 2.4.18-bf2.4 does not, and it might have worked for me. I
ended up making install floppies, but that requires a floppy drive, of
course.

In sum, if you have at least 128 Mb in a local partition, such as
temporarily converting the use of your swap partition, you can use it
as the install directory, and when done, transfer the files to a
remote disk. To install directly onto that remote disk seems cleaner,
but I'm not sure it can be done. I hope maybe your question will shed
some light on the issue.

Haines Brown