On Wed, Mar 16, 2005 at 05:02:07PM +0200, Gedas wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have to install debian on a notebook that has neither CD nor floppy
> drives. There is an external CD drive but there is no possibility to
> boot from it. The computer has Windows XP in it so I can user some disk
> partitioning software to make space for my Debian. My question is how to
> start debian install? I'm thinking of installing debian on other machine
> and cloning the partition over the network. Is there anyone who has done
> something similar? Any recommended tools for linux and windows for that
> purpose?
>
> Thanks
>
> --
> Gediminas Aleknavicius
Hi Gedas,
A hassle free way of going about this would be to mirror an existing
system, if you have one, and then adjust the specific parts. Meaning
network (/etc/interfaces), passwords, graphics and sound. I have carried
out this procedure several times desktop <=> desktop, there is no reason
why it shouldn't work with a laptop. The crux here is to install rsync
on the laptop. I'd suggest cygwin here, which is handy to have around on
a Windows box anyway :). Then you create a partition for the Debian and
rsync the root partition from the source system with (on the laptop)
'rsync -avx root@desktop:/ /path/to/new/root/'
To get into the Debian system, you need to add it to the boot loader of
XP, something which I don't really know about, but you can find pointers
to adding dual boot to a Windows boot managers with your favourite
search engine. In the end, this approach is not too straightforward I
realize, but I don't see any serious pitfalls either, so it should be
ok.
On the other hand, I seem to remember that debootstrap works from other
operating systems, but this might just be a hallucination on my part.
Check on the net, this would be fantastic. You get a base system right
away. And the middle between these approaches would be to generate a
debootstrap image from a desktop system and rsync it over to the laptop
while it is mounted via loopback on the desktop system....
Hth,
--
Andreas Rippl -- GPG messages preferred
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