...stored in a USB hard drive.

Is it possible?

Hi,

I have been trying to get Fedora installed on my laptop. During my first attempt, I found out my CD-Drive is busted.

I have a USB Hard Drive with the Fedora ISO images in it. I would like to be able to boot from a floppy disk, mount the ISO image, and start the install process after that. Then just unmount the first ISO image and mount the next ISO when it asks for the next CD. I'm hoping this is possible.

Thanks,
Hector

Nope ... that won't work as far as I know. You need the actual files to be able to do the install

Found it!

1. Using raw write, copy the bootdisk.img file to a floppy
2. Hook up the USB hard drive to the laptop
3. With the floppy in the drive, power on the laptop
4. After booting, the USB hard drive should've been recognized
5. Choose Hard Drive as the installation source
6. Choose the /dev/ dir that corresponds to the USB hard drive

Example the /dev/ dir for my USB hard drive came up as /dev/sda1.

That's it! From then on, it's just like installing from the CD.

The bootdisk.img file is in the images folder of the Fedora Core 1 First CD.

Rawrite For Windows is in the dosutils of the Fedora Core 1 First CD.

Or you could download those files from an FTP mirror site.

Enjoy!

Needless to say, this is going to save me or someone else a bunch of blank CDs!

I got that working as well. Any idea how to skip the floppy and boot off the USB Hard Disk directly? Perhaps GRUB could boot the installers?

It would be nice to carry around a small portable USB HD for carrying around installation ISOs.

Use Case

1. When you don't have CD / DVD drive on your system.
2. You have Fedora DVD but your system has only a CD Drive.
3. You don't want to waste time and resources in burning iso on optical media.

Pre-requisites

1. You have a Fedora DVD iso or rescue cd iso.
2. You have a Linux installation on your system.
3. You have a partition (FAT32, ext2, ext3) which you will not format while installing the new OS.

How to proceed

Let us assume you want to install Fedora 9 on your system and you have a Linux distro already installed on your system. You have downloaded the Fedora DVD iso (Fedora-11-DVD-i386.iso). And you have a FAT32/ext2/ext3 partition /isoimage/ which you will not format during installation.

Step 1 : Move the Fedora DVD iso to /isoimage/ directory.

[root@tomcat neo7]# mv Fedora-11-DVD-i386.iso /isoimage/ [Enter]

Step 2 : Mount Fedora DVD iso on /mnt/

[root@tomcat neo7]# mount /isoimage/Fedora-11-DVD-i386.iso /mnt/ -ro loop [Enter] (do as root)

Step 3 : Copy the initrd.img and vmlinuz to /boot/ partition

[root@tomcat neo7]# cd /mnt/isolinux/ [Enter]
[root@saini isolinux]# cp initrd.img vmlinuz /boot/ [Enter] (do as root)

Step 4 : Create grub entry for booting into Fedora 11

Add these lines at the end of your /boot/grub/grub.conf file.

title Fedora 11 (New installation)
kernel /vmlinuz
initrd /initrd.img

Step 5 : Note the device having Fedora DVD iso

[root@tomcat neo7]# df -h [Enter]
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3 15G 9.5G 4.1G 70% /
/dev/sda4 119G 105G 15G 94% /isoimage
/dev/sda5 5.6G 1.1G 3.4G 26% /home
/dev/sda1 99M 12M 82M 13% /boot

In this case /dev/sda8 contains Fedora DVD iso. Note this down as you need it later.

Step 6 : Reboot

Reboot your system and boot into the Fedora 9 (New installation) grub entry.

Step 7 : Install from hard disk

While in installation wizard, select "Hard drive" as installation method and choose /dev/sda8 as it contains the Fedora DVD iso.
Follow the installation instructions as you get them.

to neo7, your information is just amazing.
i tried it.. but getting an error.

while installation i choose 'hard drive' as a installation mediam.
choose my partition where i placed my fedora 11 dvd's img file
choose the path for .img file.
.
.
after that.
screen shows error message that.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
failed to read directory /mnt/runtime/etc: no such file or directory
failed to read directory /mnt/runtime/var: no such file or directory
---------------------------------------------------------------------

after this, installation unmounted the virtually created directories/file systems.
and then he ask me to reboot the system. thats it.

i'm unable to install fedora 11.

please help me.

mmmm....

you got dvd?

if your using USB. and your willing to copy the contents
of iso to usb...

1st-
Mount cd/dvd and copy contents to a folder(only cause you gotta do editing
and no reason to transfer to usb, then edit)

now, inside the fedora iso should be
folders
"LiveOS"
"isolinux"
"EFI"

Rename isolinux folder to "syslinux"
go into new syslinux folder
and rename isolinux.cfg to syslinux.cfg

Here's fed11 Omega isolinux.cfg
To boot from USB, you gotta label your USB "FEDORA"
and edit new syslinux.cfg

You also must open a terminal, while fat32 usb is mounted
and, as root, enter
thats B L K I D, but not in capital letters

this will tell you the UUID of your usb
mine is



Change "root=CDLABEL=omega-11-1"

to

change "rootfstype=auto"

to
to label USB "FEDORA"

Open Gparted, with USB Unmounted, but plugged in, and right-click on Line displaying USB and select "label"

label it FEDORA

your done
install syslinux to usb
and boot

hello linus72 and all others,
your information is good and descriptive, but none of my business.
actually i want to install fedora 11 on my SATA hdd not on USB stick/hdd.
i have fedora 11 dvd image (fedora.img) on sda6 partition(ubuntu 8.04) and i want to install it on sda7.

can anyone help me?
(the actual problem is described above at #7)

How about this stuff?
that's $4.99 too for that bro
per post

http://bobpeers.com/linux/hard_drive_install.php

http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_boo...ll-hd-x86.html

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/fedora...harddrive.html

Thanx linus72,
I'll check this.
Thanx, once again.