How can I install from my external HD?
 

Most of the computers in my house all have DVD burners/drives, but there is one that doesn't. I want to install SuSE on it, but I don't want to have to burn all of the CD ISOs just for that one computer. I have copied the directory of the DVD into a folder on my external hard drive - is there any way I can install SuSE from my external HD?

Check out this thread: HOW-TO:Installing (or upgrading) fedora without a CDROM The method should work for any iso image.

Edit: Note that you'll need the iso image on the HD, not just the DVD contents, but that shouldn't be hard for you to do.

Edit2: Opps! As usual, I got it wrong here. See below, please

Can you not just pull out a drive from another pc?

What good does that do? It has a different hardware config than any of my other PCs (it's built from some old leftover hardware plus an ATi "TV Wonder Pro" card - I wanna make a TiVo-like system out of it, and Windows keeps saying I don't have DirectX on it even though I just installed DX9 on it. . .).

Unless you're talking about taking out the DVD drive. I could do that, but I'd rather not since I've got the external drive - especially since if I ever upgrade, I would rather do it with the external HD than rip the DVD drive out of my PC again.
Well that's cool, but the tutorial seems to assume that Linux is already installed on the computer - which, in my case, it's not.

I'm thinking maybe I'll just let BitTorrent download the CD ISOs and then use RW's so I don't have to waste 5 CD's on just that one PC. Or maybe the first CD will give me an option to install from HD?

Yes, I meant a DVD drive...

Sorry, I wasn't thinking clearly, and got it almost backwards in my post above.:eek: :cry:

What he's describing is what you've already done: Making a copy of the copy of the contents of the DVD. (Exactly what I said not to do. Mea Cupla :cry: )

Then what you do is tell GRUB how to load Linux from the DVD copy on your HD. Since that copy is set up to do the install, that's what it will do when GRUB starts it.

The files he refers to should be found in your DVD copy. (The file names may be somewhat different, but the locations should be the same.)

Note the important part: The copy should be on a partition that will not be formatted during the install. In your case, the DVD copy would be on the external HD, and you'd (presumably) be installing to the internal HD of you system, so that shouldn't be a problem.

His instruction depend on GRUB being available, but, further down in the thread, there's a discussion about creating a GRUB boot floppy that can be used to start the install.

OK, thanks! That should work, then!