Installing DSL to HDD from another HDD

<Ol>Origy · 04-04-2009, 04:23 PM

Hey.

I have an old PC that's barely worth calling a PC. It has 16MB of ram, two hard drives (1 GB and 4 GB), 120MHZ processor, an integrated video card and some ISA cards. I would like to install DSL on it as it seems to be pretty much the best choice I could find for a computer that fits these specs. The problem is that it doesn't seem to detect the CDROM so I can't boot any liveCD. The floppy works tho. Since I have two different HDDs, I thought I could just use the 1GB one to store all the installation files for DSL and boot from it as I would from a liveCD. The thing is I don't seem to know how to create a boot disk like that. Could someone please point out a proper way to create such bootable HDD with DSL installation files on it?

Should the the files inside ISO be extracted directly to the HDD?
Should the HDD file system be ext3 or fat16?
What additional boot loader needs to be set up and how?

Thanks.

linus72 · 04-04-2009, 05:10 PM

What you might want is wha's called the "poorman's install"
It involves using a script. frugal_lite.sh

( http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/...frugal_lite.sh )

Note-

Code:

There are currently four types of DSL....

dsl-<version>.iso: the standard isolinux version, which is used for liveCD, 
frugal, or traditional harddrive install.

dsl-<version>-syslinux.iso: boots using syslinux instead of isolinux, 
used for some very old hardware that is no longer supported by isolinux.  
Use syslinux version if booting fails with the standard iso.

dsl-<version>-embedded.zip: comes with qemu, for running inside of a host 
Windows or Linux system.

dsl-<version>-vmx.zip:  a virtual machine that will run in VMware or 
VMware player.

frugal_lite.sh is our network install script and requires tomsrtbt linux:
http://www.toms.net/rb/

Docs are located in the pdfdocs/ directory and in the DSL Wiki

How to for frugal_lite.sh

( http://damnsmalllinux.org/network-install.html )

From the how-to answer #3

Code:

Follow-up Question: Will it do a standard hard drive install ?
Answer:

It grabs the iso from net and temporarily stores it in a partition. It then moves the KNOPPIX folder to the other partition and creates the boot floppy, then iso is removed. System then reboots from boot floppy. Now you are running a poorman's. From there you have the following choices...

1. You are done!  You have a poormans/boot floppy all from the net!

2. You boot up your poorman's DSL and run frugal_instal.sh into the now other empty partition.  Then you don't need the boot floppy and you have a much more custom system.

3. If the other partition is large enough, then you can:  Boot up from floppy and then do a full dsl-hdinstall into the empty partition.

Now go download Billix-0.24, DSL-embedded and check my post here to get the fix-it kit and some cool distro magic!

( http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-works-714322/ )