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