Installing Slackware 12 without CD-Rom
 

Hello Guys,

After a few days fighting with my Notebook + Google i decided to post here to call for help :)

I'm quite new to linux and i want to install Slackware 12.0 on my old Notebook(20GB HDD, 256 RAM, 1 GHz), but the CD-Rom drive is broken.

I get tomsrtbt-2.0.103 and with some addons i got my USB Drive working and copied the 3,6 GB Slackware 12 DVD image to my Harddrive.

Is there any Way to start the setup from my harddrive with the image?

I've read that Slackware 11 got a Way to boot from floppys but with Slackware 12 and the new kernel there should be no choice.

I also searched for installing it over Network, but there was just a way to boot from network and my Notebook doesn't support this feature.

Thanks for your effort and sorry for my bad english :/

domi

How about booting off USB ?

If you want to install Slackware using a local hard disk partition where you copied the Slackware tree in advance, that is also an option. It would not make much sense to opt for the third install method "use a CDROM" since we just abandoned the use of a CDROM medium :-)

For Slackware 12.0 and onwards, please use the files and instructions you find in the respective /usb-and-pxe-installers/ directory.

http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackboot/usb/

http://slackware.mirrors.tds.net/pub...xe-installers/

Thanks for the quick answer!
But my notebook doesn't support usb-boot :(
are there any other things i can do?

Unless someone else will chime in with a better idea, the only thing I can think of is install Slackware 11.0, as it can still be installed with boot floppies. I don't think you can use the ver 12.0 install files with the ver 11.0 installer script as the install would probably fail when it encountered file/directory mis-match.

If you haven't done it already, I suggest searching this forum for similar CD less Slackware installs as you might find a solution as I'm pretty sure other folks were in the same similar situation as you.

If you have a DOS/Windows partition on your hard drive you can try if you can get the installer started using loadlin.
The ZIP file containing loadlin is in your /kernels directory:
Unpack it into the DOS/Windows partition, this creates a directory 'loadlin'. Into that directory, copy the hugesmp kernel and the initial ramdisk (initrd) containing the installer:

Kernel:
Initrd:
Then in a DOS command prompt, change directory to the 'loadlin' directory and there, run the following commandline:
This should boot the Slackware installer.
Tell me if that works.

Eric

Ok, i give it a try, thanks eric.

@bsdunix: I'm downloading version 11 at the moment, if this don't work i try to install version 11.

Perhaps the following might help:

Installing Slackware Without a CD Drive

A bad CD-ROM drive prompted me to find that solution and write the mini how-to. Basically:

1. Mount the ISO image.
2. Extract the kernel and initrd files.
3. Create a boot menu option to look for the extracted kernel and initrd files.
4. Boot.
5. Before running setup, toggle to another console and mount the ISO drive.
6. Continue setup.

I still have that option on my system and tested only a few days ago.

@Alien Bob: I'm sorry i didn't get it work, i always got an error message saying "unable to open an initial console".

@Woodsman: Thx, it worked fine. I just booted with a GRUB-Floppy and started the kernel. Then the installation went well.
I just got a problem with lilo, i couldn't install it to my MBR, but i think i could fix this tomorrow alone.

Thanks for your help!

Hi,

You should look at 'Slackware 12 installation with the ISOs but without burning them!'.

This link and others are available from 'Slackware-Links' .