Install From Network to Laptop
 

Hello, guys! I am quite used to desktop but I am rather new to laptop. So please bear with me if I said something stupid. :D

You see. I've got a laptop from a friend. This is a kinda old laptop with no CD-ROM drive. But it can boot from floppy. And I have an external USB CD-ROM but It doesnt support booting from external drives, though it has USB port.

I want to wipe out the data inside and install linux on it but I dunno how. Does anyone know of a way to either:

1. Boot with a floppy then access the USB CD-ROM,
2. Boot with a floppy then access a Filesystem through the LAN

so that I can install linux on it?

Thanks for your attentions.

Happy Hacking.

You might try downloading the net.i boot disk and the root disk for Slack 9/9.1 and mounting the cd as a NFS share on your LAN. This setup was designed to do exactly what you're speaking of.

Thanks for you advice. But I found this README:
http://public.ftp.planetmirror.com/p...ork.dsk.README
and it says I should use network.dsk instead. I am still trying. Thanks :)

I tried everything I could think of to mount the directory on my desktop to a directory on the laptop with this command:

mount -t nfs koyi-one:/home/khoyee/tmp /myMount

but the screen just freezed after I pressed enter.

I can do "ping koyi-one"(koyi-one is the desktop which is 192.168.0.2) from the laptop and "ping slackware"(where slackware is the laptop which is 192.168.0.10) from the desktop without problems. I have nfsd, rpc.portmap and rpc.mountd running on the desktop(the server) but it still doesnt work. I have these entries in /etc/exports:

/mnt/dvd slackware(ro,sync)
/home/khoyee/tmp slackware(ro,sync)

and this in /etc/hosts:

192.168.0.10 slackware.example.net slackware

And this is how I boot up the laptop in order to be able to access the network:

1. Boot with bare.i.
2. Inserted install.1 and install.2 when prompted.
3. run "pcmcia" and inserted the pcmcia.dsk floppy when prompted.
4. run "network" and inserted the network.dsk floppy when asked.
5. switch to another console and did a "modprobe 8390".
6. ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.10 broadcast 192.168.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.0
7. ping koyi-one (successful)
8. mount -t nfs koyi-one:/home/khoyee/tmp slackware(ro,sync) ----- * Freeeeeze~~~

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks.

Wow!!! It worked!!!

Actually the above steps are correct. You just need to be a bit more patient.... go to brush your teeth and the mounting will be complete!!!