On Thu December 18 2008 4:36:04 pm John Andersen wrote:

On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 1:28 PM, Richard wrote:

...

Hi,

This one is maybe a bit different.

I recently took in a tenant in\to my spare room. He brought with him his almost brand new VISTA based computer. Of course, I had to show him the folly of his ways and demonstrated my home network of 10.3 through 11.2A0 machines including some with VirtualBox running XP. He was impressed that I could play movies from my 2.5TB archive multimedia machine in my livingroom while on my machine in my bedroom and using X and xterm, could control that and other machines as if I was at their console. He was having transferring files from his Vista laptop to/from his VIsta desktop in the same room. <grin>.

OK, I sold him on SuSE 11.1 when it came out. Here's the rub, his machine has NO DVD or CD. It can use a USB stick, can FTP programs and I got him a copy of a Windoze version of xterm so he could interact with my machines, BUT, this doesn't solve the problem of HOW to get SuSE onto HIS MACHINE in lieu of Vista. I know there used to be a program that ran under Doze that would install Linux/SuSE on a machine while running Doze then allow booting Linux to complete the install. If I remember right, it allowed a dual boot install. I have looked for this program, googled every combination I could think of, gone to the SuSE forum and checked out the Install forums and the only thing I come up with seems to be something for 10.3 which does not leave me where I want to be. I really do not want Doze running in my house, connected to my network even though I feel relatively safe that he can't hurt my equipment because of his poor choice of OS, but here is an opportunity to convert someone from Doze to a real OS, who want s to do it, but whose hardware is severely challanged (by the lack of a DVD/CD) and which does not have a provision for one of my old IDE drives.

So, is there such a program that will work for 11.x? Is it possible to install to an external USB drive on one of my machines, then boot from that drive by plugging in the external USB drive onto his machine and using it kinda like a DVD to effect a network install to his internal hard drive? Any suggestions?

Go buy a USB dvd drive. Install from that. Yes there are other ways, but they all suck by comparison.

Really, are you sure you want to attempt this on a machine so low-spec-ed that they left out a 30 dollar dvd drive?

In this case, it is a very good machine with built in SATA controller with a fried IDE port. It is a quad cpu MBd with 3g of memory running at 4ghz, so it is a MBd worth keeping and the lack of an IDE controller hasn't been a problem so far and using Doze and HTTP he has had no problems upgrading (quotes around upgrading) his Doze system. What I want to do for him is to be able to install SuSE, then run Vista under VBox for those very few occasions where he needs to run a Doze program for which there is not yet a suitable (for him) equivilent Linux program. In the meantime, he is enthralled with what I have shown him on my system(s) and really wants it on his machine but has no good way to import it at the moment. I got one response about PXE which I am trying to see if his machine can use this method to boot....if so, I have a complete set of repositories from 10.3-factory here so should be able to set up something he can boot/install from if we can get his NIC to do a PXE boot over the network. I have all my machines and a number of friends and neighbors that use my local mirror of SuSE repos. I download once and a few dozen local machines ftp to my local mirror. In the long run, I think it cuts down on bandwidth requirements at the 'official' mirrors. I update locally weekly. That should be a good basis for a PXE server if I can figure out how to implement it on my server and his client. I am also looking into the USB stick idea. For 11.1 there seems to be some SNAFU with missing files or some editing of scripts required. Still working on that aspect.... Thanks for asking. Richard -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

I believe he said that this otherwise desirable motherboard has a fried IDE controller.

I was kind of wondering about that. I was thinking there are two connections on a mb usually, and not knowing everything of whats under the hood, I assumed maybe there were two IDE controllers...my bad! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Thu December 18 2008 7:01:52 pm Sunny wrote:

On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 3:28 PM, Richard wrote:

...

OK, I sold him on SuSE 11.1 when it came out. Here's the rub, his machine has NO DVD or CD. It can use a USB stick, can FTP programs and I got him a copy of a Windoze version of xterm so he could interact with my machines, BUT, this doesn't solve the problem of HOW to get SuSE onto HIS MACHINE in lieu of Vista. I know there used to be a program that ran under Doze that would install Linux/SuSE on a machine while running Doze then allow booting Linux to complete the install. If I remember right, it allowed a dual boot install. I have looked for this program, googled every combination I could think of, gone to the SuSE forum and checked out the Install forums and the only thing I come up with seems to be something for 10.3 which does not leave me where I want to be. I really do not want Doze running in my house, connected to my network even though I feel relatively safe that he can't hurt my equipment because of his poor choice of OS, but here is an opportunity to convert someone from Doze to a real OS, who want s to do it, but whose hardware is severely challanged (by the lack of a DVD/CD) and which does not have a provision for one of my old IDE drives.

So, is there such a program that will work for 11.x? Is it possible to install to an external USB drive on one of my machines, then boot from that drive by plugging in the external USB drive onto his machine and using it kinda like a DVD to effect a network install to his internal hard drive? Any suggestions?

I have succeeded to install ubuntu on XP in such a situation using the "netboot" approach, described in this document: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromWindows

I'm almost sure, that you can do this with suse as well (I did not try). Just obtain the net install iso image (50MB), and get from it the right initrd, etc files. The other parts of the document should be the same. Except if in Vista the boot loader process is somehow different.

This seems like it is worth a try also. Thanks. Hopefully, one of the three will work out. I found out his BIOS DOES support PXE boot so if I can set up a PXE server on my LAN, that may be the most viable overall, but it is looking like there are several cats available for skinning :) I wish his MBd hadn't fried the IDE portion of his controller. His chassis is full of SATA drives :) Woulda been simpler, but then where would the challange have been :) Richard -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Patrick Shanahan wrote:

* Richard [12-19-08 00:58]:

...

On Thu December 18 2008 7:01:52 pm Sunny wrote:

I wish his MBd hadn't fried the IDE portion of his controller. His chassis is full of SATA drives :) Woulda been simpler, but then where would the challange have been :)

Well, you *could* disconnect *one* of the SATA drives and plug in a SATA DVD long enough to install a base system, then remove the DVD and reattach the hard drive. You surely do not require all four SATA drives for a base installation.

Why not just use a USB DVD drive? That computer is likely USB 2 and and external drive is always handy. -- Use OpenOffice.org http://www.openoffice.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Fri December 19 2008 4:29:52 am Philipp Thomas wrote:

On Fri, 19 Dec 2008 00:28:34 -0600, you wrote:

...

Though, can one boot from it?

Check if the BIOS has an option to do so.

Philipp

His bios supportss PXE, DVD (which is broken at the controller) FDD and HDD and USB. I think it is pretty well covered insofar as sources is concerned. Thanks Richard -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org