Why this installation method?

Because I have a laptop/desktop with neither CD drive nor Floppy drive that can actually make the machine boot from. However, I do have a PCMCIA Cd drive.

If you don't have the PCMCIA Cd drive, I believe there's a way to install from a partition (usually /dev/the_partition) you mount during installation procedure.

If you have an URL we can use for that method, please provide it.

Hardware used for this

I successfully did it on:

• Fujitsu Lifebook B2175
• Celeron 500 MHz
• 256 MB of Ram
• 20 GB of HD
• PCMCIA CD drive

• Ubuntu previously installed on server mode via Edubuntu NetBoot

• Edubuntu CD (latest breezy .iso at the time I am writing this)

Software used

• Edubuntu or any GnuLinux distro should do fine.

• GRUB

• vmlinuz and initrd.gz files

Preparing the booting

• Mount the Edubuntu Cd to a dir you have access to or create a new directory (it depends on what permissions you have to work on the current system).

  • As for this HowTo I am using a previously installed Ubuntu on server mode, I created a /mnt/CdDrive directory, and then mounted /dev/hdc on it, which is the PCMCIA Cd drive.

$ mkdir /mnt/CdDrive
$ mount /dev/hdc /mnt/CdDrive

• Get the vmlinuz and initrd.gz files from the Edubuntu Cd.

Edit Grub file

Let's set menu.lst to read our vmlinuz and initrd.gz files.

Ooops! I apologize but I have lost the URL where I found the lines to set GRUB. If you know the lines, please do provide them.

PLACE THE LINES HERE

Reboot

Now, let's reboot and cross fingers

CategoryInstallation