Yes I'm new to linux.

I have a Toshiba Portege 3010CT. They system will not boot without a bootdisk to tell it what its mind is. ME is the only OS on the system and it will not boot (can't find ifshlp.sys and I don't have the installation CD). I need to get a decent OS on the system.

Here are my resources. I have a floppy drive to the Toshiba - there is no CD drive (that's really hurting me). I have an IOMEGA USB CD-RW, but the generic dos driver I tried didn't have the right parameters. I also have another box running Redhat 7.1 with all it services loaded (most disabled at the moment). It is not on the Internet though. Also I have dialup, so no impressive downloads.

Because all I have is a floppy-drive, I have been experimenting with "minimal" linux distros. I tried alphalinux and basiclinux (I will try some others). I was thinking that one of these distros might be able to allow me to connect to my redhat box and transfer an OS over so I could install it from the hard drive. If I knew enough I would only have to install the bare essentials for mounting a USB device and I would be set. Otherwise I was going to put Win98 on the thing. Either way, I must connect my notebook to a CD drive, through USB or another computer.

Has anyone ever done this? I am looking for the smoothest way. Those mini-distros are impressively compact, but I don't even know how to enable a network card. Thanks for any input.

I would say that your best bet is going to be to do this using Ethernet.

It will of course involve a little initial outlay (buying the network cards, assuming you don't already have them), but makes it easy to install Linux on the laptop using just two floppies and the network.

You'll also have the major advantage of being able to very easily and quickly transfer files between the laptop and desktop and share a printer.

Check the redhat hardware compatibility guide for a PCMCIA network card for the laptop and a PCI network card for the desktop.

Buy the cards and a suitable length of CROSSOVER Cat 5 cable. If you're only networking two PC's you don't need a hub or a switch.

Install the card in the RedHat 7.1 desktop. Boot up and Kudzu should automatically detect and install the drivers.

When asked, give your desktop PC the address 192.168.0.1 with subnet mask of 255.255.255.0. You don't need a default gateway or anything else. Set it to be enabled on bootup.

You said that most services are installed on the desktop but are not active. Try starting apache as root:

/etc/init.d/apache start

(I think... I don't have mine set up as the default RedHat install)

Hopefully that will have worked. Try with a browser going to:

http://localhost/

and

http://192.168.0.1/

If both work, excellent. If the first does and the second doesn't, you may need to allow it through your firewall. As root, type:

lokkit

Go through the menu and set it to allow http in.

Find your RedHat disks. Get 7.3 if you can, otherwise just use your 7.1 disks.

Now, find your htdocs directory. I can't remember where RedHat puts it - it might be /var/http or /usr/http

Create a new directory, rh71 (or 3 if you got that)

mount each disk in turn and:

cp -r /mnt/cdrom/* /var/http/htdocs/rh73

(substituting any bits that need changing). Allow the next disk(s) to overwrite any duplicate files they find.

Check that everyone has read permissions to rh73 and below. You may need to:

chmod -R a+r /var/http/htdocs/rh73/

now get two blank floppies.

Label the first RedHat 7.1(3?) Network Boot. Put it in the drive.

type:

dd if=/var/http/htdocs/rh73/images/bootnet.img of=/dev/fd0

Label the next disk RedHat 7.1(3?) Network Driver Disk. After the first is finished copying, put the second in the drive and type:

dd if=/var/http/htdocs/rh73/images/drvnet.img of=/dev/fd0

Now we're ready for the laptop. Insert the PCMCIA card. Connect your crossover cat 5 cable directly between the laptop network card and that of the desktop.

Insert the Network boot disk and switch on the laptop.

type "linux dd" at the installation menu. You'll need your Network Driver disk now.

When choosing an installation method, choose http.

Set up your network card with the address 192.168.0.2, subnet mask 255.255.255.0 and default gateway 192.168.0.1 (this last bit will help if your want to share your modem on the desktop PC later on).

Enter the server to install from as 192.168.0.1, and the installation path as /rh73.

The rest of the installation you should be familiar with, except that it will be done in text mode - don't worry, it's harmless enough!

Hope this helps...!

Ian

I do have the network cards. The setup is really waiting for some configurations to be set (and options to be enabled). Thanks for post.

I will get on it and report the results.

Thanks again

I have followed your instructions Ian and everything is fine up until RH requires a network driver (during the notebook installation).

I have three notebook cards at my disposal:
Ambicom 10/100 (AMB8100) - the Ambicom docs say it uses tulip
Linksys Etherfast Modem/Lan (PCMLM56)
SMC EZCard 8041 (SMC8041TX)

I have tried all the sensible drivers for these cards. Can I customize the RH disk image so I might add an undated driver to it? Is the problem me? I did not expect to have difficulty with drivers.

Thanks again.

Sorry! My fault entirely.

I'm so used to doing network installations from desktop PC's (in fact, now I think about it I don't think I've done one from a laptop) that I forgot you'd need a different set of boot disks.

From the same directory (images), use

pcmcia.img and pcmciadd.img

instead of

bootnet.img and netdrv.img

respectively. Other than that, the instructions should be the same.

Hope you manage to get it working this time!

Ian

Man, I missed this one... lanC's directions are super-solid, but a long time ago I had a friend with a similar problem, but it was his work laptop and his systems department claimed the data was toast, so after we offloaded all of it, I built a page he could show his boss to get some of them fired...

www.clockwatching.net/~fin/fixed.html

or, and I'm glad he used this URL instead:

http://www.clockwatching.net/~fin/Yo...mentSucks.html

I hope that can help.

Cheers,

Finegan

I have replaced the disk images and had a knock at round two. I get to the prompt "Insert PCMCIA drivers disk" and do so. The floppy drive reads a little, then stops. The installation freezes with the floppy light on (but no reading). I have to a do a manual reboot. I have tried a different disk to write the pcmciadd.img to, and I have tried two network cards in the notebook.

Any thoughts? I don't know why I have these problems.

Thanks for the link fin. I need to try slackware one of these days.

Which distribution did you end up using? RedHat 7.1 or did you manage to get 7.3?

If you're using 7.1, it might be worth getting the new pcmcia installation disk images from RedHat.

Have a look at http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...install-guide/

which goes into a great amount of detail about various stages of the installation.

RH7.1

Ok I set PCIC Compatible in the BIOS and now the installation accepts the pcmciadd.img disk. After accepting the disk, it asks if I have a driver disk. I hit OK and (from this point) have tried both the drivers.img disk and pcmciadd.img disk. Both bring me to the prompt "Which type of media" will the installation be from. The only option is hard drive.

Assuming I select hard drive, I am then required to type in the directory path of the ISO images. I don't know what to put here. Now I am trying to install from localhost:/var/www/html/rh71 on another machine connected by two network cards and cable. Isn't this the wrong place to be? Can you tell where I went wrong in the installation?

I'm afraid I don't really have much experience of networking Linux with PCMCIA, and that experience I do have has been with RH7.2 or above...

Next thing to try would be to get an updated copy of the pcmciadd.img disk and try that.

ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linu...os/i386/images

download and write it and use that with your current pcmcia.img disk.

If that fails, try getting the RH7.3 pcmcia.img disk as well -- I'm really not sure if the 7.3 installation disk will work with a 7.1 installation set, but it's worth a try! In any case, if you get to the point where the 7.3 installation disks boot and recognise your network card, you will at least know you've got a good chance of getting it working by getting hold of the full 7.3 distribution.

Did you try all three of your PCMCIA network cards? Seems strange that none of them work. Did they work with Windows ME when that was installed?

I was going to try the RH73 pcmciadd.img and pcmcia.img disk. I will mix and match. I did register my Redhat product, but tech support won't have anything to with laptops.

Thanks. Wish I could move this thread to the Redhat distro section.