Le 07.05.2013 23:23, Patrick Bartek a écrit :
Unfortunately, the Thinkpad 240X we're discussing here can't
boot directly off a CD or even a USB thumb drive for that
matter.
Natively, it can only boot off a floppy or internal hard
drive. (I
said this thing was ancient. ;-) ) And except for the
hard drive, all
other drives are externals.
I understand that kind of problems. My old computer have a
CD reader so it was not too hard... (I had some problems
anyway, but I was able to quickly fix them)
But you can install a system from an ISO quite easily if a
system which support boot customizations is installed (like,
by example, Debian).
I did it some times, and I have noticed various issues
depending on your boot loader and partition scheme.
For boot loader, it depends if the installed version is able
to directly boot an ISO or not. If yes, things are made
simpler. If not, you can anyway use a gentoo-like method for
installation: boot your system, create a partition for the
future system, make a chroot and do your installation job
from it (I have never tried that with Debian, but gentoo
have a description about how to install gentoo from another
distro, which might be adapted to your needs).
For partition schemes, there are few things I have noticed
to help:
* obviously, if you have a /home partition, it helps because
you can split it to create space for the future system,
which allows you to keep a working and reliable system
* if /boot is on it's own partition and if there is enough
space, you can copy there the installation ISO and configure
your boot loader to boot it. Grub is able to boot ISOs IIRC.
* if you can manage enough space in a new partition, you can
dd the ISO on a dedicated partition and boot that partition.
Every time I did such experimentations (I guess, 6-8 in 2
years... I love to destroy my systems, and I never look at
where I am doing it :D) it took me some times and readings
to achieve my goals, but I am a beginner with linux stuff
(*and* a tinkerer, which explains why my system broke so
often ;) ).
But every times I was able to have a fully working system.
Maybe I should redo that for fun tomorrow and write the
steps somewhere, in case it might help someone...
[snip]