Newbie Q: Installing from FAT drive
Christopher Paton
I've just downloaded SuSE 7.3 and I'm trying to install it from a FAT drive.
I ran the DOS setup program but loadlin didn't work: the slashes seemed to
be the wrong way (eg. c:/ instead of c:\). I tried a boot disk as well but
this failed too.
I read the readme and manually created a bootdisk using rawrite and this
finally worked! However when asked for the location of the setup files by
the setup program (eg. /dev/blah) I don't know what to put! The files are on
my DOS C:\ drive. Do I need to mount this and if so, how?
Whilst I'm here, does linux do NTFS?
Many thanks,
--
Christopher Paton (16)
Change * to _ when replying direct
Philo
don't worry about that yet
your first partition of an ide harddrive is prob /dev/hda1
and yes...in linux it's a foreward slash
--
Philo
website: www.plazaearth.com/philo
Christoph
There are txt,dvi and pdf Files, which contains the SuSE Linux Reference
Book for SuSE 7.3. In this Book you should find "Installing from a Dos
Partition" or something familar.
If you can't find this files you should take the following section of the
Reference (SuSE 6.3) which were the steps i installed 7.3 from my
Dos-Partition. By the way, if you want the Book as *.txt i could send it to
you (from my good old 6.3 CD).
Here we go:
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2.4.1 Installation from a DOS Partition
What's It All About?
When you cannot use the CD-ROM, you may copy the Linux distribution to
a DOS partition and install it from there.
Requirements
You are using DOS, Windows or OS/2 and cannot use your CD-ROM
for
Linux installation (perhaps because Linux does not support it).
Moreover,
you have enough space on your DOS, OS/2 or Windows partition to hold a
copy if the base system.
Details
On the CD in directory \suse\images , you will find files
related to ker-
nels. Files without extensions are considered kernels only for
installation
purposes. These kernels only support hardware that is needed for
installation
(no streamers or mice). Files with .ikr extension are
considered normal,
installable kernels. There is one more file ending in .inf . This is a
text file
containing a number which YaST uses to present information about a given
kernel.
You should always copy a suitable kernel even if you plan to start via
loadlin
or floppy. YaST will create a boot disk using this kernel at the
end of the
installation procedure.
Step by Step
Here's how to copy the necessary files onto your hard drive.
1. First create a directory you want to copy the files to. The name of
this
directory is unimportant, as long as you don't forget it. In our
example,
we will refer to it as \emil . In addition, you have to create a
subdirectory
\emil\suse .
2. In the \emil\suse tree, you will need at least three
directories. Let's call
them a1 , images and setup . These are necessary for the
base installa-
tion. Create these directories now. Diagram figure 2.26, page 46,
shows
the complete file tree needed.
3. Copy all files from \suse\a1 of the first CD into
\emil\suse\a1 on
your hard drive.
4. In \suse\images select a kernel
which supports your hardware. More
detailed information about which kernel
supports which hardware can be
found in \suse\images\readme.dos
.
Copy this kernel to \emil\suse\images
. A kernel consists of three files,
one without an extension and those
with .ikr and inf extensions. If
space on your hard drive is not an
issue, you can copy all the kernels
into this directory. You can then
choose your kernel later on. More
information about this can be found in
Infoblock section 2.6.4, page 56.
5. Copy\suse\images\initdisk.gz
to \emil\suse\images .
6. Copy \suse\setup\loadlin.exe
to \emil\suse\setup .
7. Copy file \suse\setup\inst-img
to \emil\suse\setup . This file is
relatively big, but it is only needed while
doing the first installation. When
the base system is up and running, you will
be able to install additional
packages from a DOS partition. Then the
file inst-img can be removed.
8. Create the directory \emil\suse\setup\descr
and copy all files from
\suse\setup\descr into it.
9. If there is some space left on your hard
drive, you can copy
\suse\setup\du to
\emil\suse\setup\du , which you have to create
in advance. These files are not really
necessary but will help you later for
showing you how much space is left and how
much is already occupied.
If you have enough space, you may find this
handy.
10. You now have everything that is absolutely
necessary for installing Linux
on your hard drive. All other software is
still missing. Since your CD-
ROM is not supported by Linux, you have to
install everything step by
step, meaning that you have to copy everything you want onto the hard
drive and install it from there using YaST . You don't have to do that
right
now, but if you already know what you're going to use, you
can start
now: just create the corresponding directory in \emil\suse
and copy
everything from the CD (meaning the corresponding directory) into this
newly created directory. You can find all packages with their
contents in
the online documentation or in the package descriptions.
Problems
There should not be any problems so far. If there is not much free space on
your DOS or HPFS filesystem, keep in mind that you have to be `root' to
install the above mentioned base system. Otherwise, you have to say goodbye
(just for a while) to your DOS/Windows/OS/2 software.
Now the installation can begin as given in (section 2.2.2, page 28).
As soon as linuxrc asks for the source medium (section 2.2.3, page 29),
you
should enter `hard drive'. The + Device, of course, is your DOS partition.
This is normally something like /dev/hda1 or /dev/sda1 if DOS resides on
the first primary partition.
If you stuck to the example above, the source medium should now be
emil.
Then the installation proceeds as given in section 2.2.4, page 33 pp.
------
The text is looking bad, but it should work.
--
mfg,
Christoph
Norman Diamond
news:r_VE8.1757$iO4.19...@news-text.cableinet.net...
> I've just downloaded SuSE 7.3 and I'm trying to install it from a FAT drive.
> I ran the DOS setup program but loadlin didn't work: the slashes seemed to
> be the wrong way (eg. c:/ instead of c:\).
I haven't tried loadlin, but guess that the kind of slash shouldn't be a
problem. The MS-DOS command line eats forward slashes with command options
so you usually can't use them in pathnames on the command line, but
Microsoft libraries are rumoured to accept both kinds of slash. However,
due to bugs in SuSE 7.3, it doesn't matter if loadlin works.
> I read the readme and manually created a bootdisk using rawrite and this
> finally worked! However when asked for the location of the setup files by
> the setup program (eg. /dev/blah) I don't know what to put!
In addition, you have to download a file from SuSE's web site because they
didn't put the file on the CDs. In addition, you have to use the MS-DOS
version of gunzip (gnu unzip) to unpack the downloaded file. In addition
you have to rename the unzipped file and copy it into some directory. Up to
this point, I've forgotten what the filenames and directory name are. The
reason I've forgotten is: even after doing all of this, it still didn't
work. SuSE kind of decided that they weren't going to support installing
from a FAT partition any more in 7.3, but they forgot to announce this fact,
and then they kind of half-corrected it but still not enough to make it
work.
Sorry I haven't tested this matter in 8.0 yet. On the other hand, if it
doesn't work in 8.0, my friend at SuSE might not want to hear about it
again...
However, if you have a working CD-ROM drive, then you can install by using
the boot floppy that you created and using the CD-ROMs. Even if you can't
read your FAT partitions during installation, you'll be able to read and
write them while Linux is running.
> Whilst I'm here, does linux do NTFS?
There are read-only drivers that are safe, and read-write drivers that are
still under development and you should not dare to install them on a system
whose data you want to keep. I don't remember if the read-only version is
installed by default in 7.3, but you can always rebuild the kernel yourself
with options for this. I think the read-only version is installed by
default in 8.0.
> Christopher Paton (16)
Age doesn't matter. A newbie who is ready and capable of learning as
needed, regardless of age, seems to get help from experienced people. An
idiot who refuses to learn gets flamed, regardless of age. Your questions
were on-topic, and in this particular case you seem to understand the issues
better than SuSE did ^_^