omnibook - installation without a CD?
 

Hello

Got me a problem - I just bought a HP Omnibook 900 from eBay. It only has an external floppy, so installation of Slackware 9.1 is going to be difficult.

I have almost got it sussed though using the following system, but I still have problems. I took the 4.3Gb HDD out of the laptop and installed in my desktop. I installed Slackware to this HDD by CD and created a rescue floppy. I put the HDD back in the laptop and everything works great UNTIL it detects an Intel 440BX motherboard in the laptop. It then hangs.

I then booted up BasicLinux into RAM from 2 floppys and was able to mount the HDD and see the slackware files. I just need to know where I can find setup so I can start again.

I have tried using find, whereis etc and none of them are available on basiclinux, so where will I find the files I need to alter to let Slackware boot up properly?

Hope someone can help

F0ul Oli

Have your laptop and your desktop got network capability, if so the easiest thing to do would be a network install.

I have never tried one, but there are bound to be tutorials on the net.

Samac

Seems like a good idea, however, when I was trying to set it up last night, I couldn't get the PCMCIA port to work - is there any difference between a slackware NFS install and any other distro?

could anyone point me in the direction of the clearest FAQ on doing this?

thanks

Slackware is already installed, no need to reinstall it

Could you bring more infos about :

unfortunatley, that is it.

It goes past VFS, it mounts the hard drive, then detects the BX440, and then waits. After 15 minutes, I pull the plug and reboot by disconnecting the power.
On the boot, it notices the HDA was forced, and fixes it, but then hangs again after detecting the motherboard.

I am still reading up on how to do the NFS thing. My understanding so far is that I need to put a floppy with a basic bootloader into FD0. Then, on boot, tell it where the installation information can be found (which I can't do because the laptop doesn't know it has a PCMCIA network card and a network on the otherside of it!)
Would I then try and mount the CDROM off my desktop to it, through the network?

e.g. MOUNT /desktop/mnt/CDROM CD ro

This is why all those other Linux's are so much easier - Mandrake did everything for me using the Windows Enter button method!
However, I didn't learn anything, and that's what I would like to do this time!

looking forward to being shown the way!

Oli

Take a look at this link :
http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/sh...cat=998&page=1

Maybe you could try install slack 9.1 in a first step or PM/email the other
user who said that "Slackware 9.1 installed very easily on this notebook"

thanks - that's really useful! :)

Oli

You said that you have problem after the drive is mounted...

I am now thinking of a hotplug problem, I would try to
boot the kernel without hotplug, just to see

I don't know how to pass the nohotplug parameter with lilo tough...

Re: omnibook - installation without a CD?
 

I don't want to be rude and hijack this thread, but on a side note: what does it take to connect a laptop HDD to a desktop? Got a similar problem with a Toshiba Dynabook. Are there convertor plugs available, and what with the power supply?

Cheers, Leon.

adaptor
 

You need a 2.5" to 3.5" adaptor plug.

The one I have is a strip of board with a standard laptop socket on one side, and a standard IDE ribbon leading to a 3.5" plug. The board also has a power lead connected to it which plugs into any spare power plug within the desktop computer.

Most PC repair shops should have them although they might be difficult to find in your high street PC retailer. Cost wise, its less than 10 GBP / 12 Euro / 15 USD

At least I can help someone on this board!

HOTPLUG ISSUE - I have read up to find that the floppy is hotplugable from the laptop, but I think its more to do with too much wrong info in the init file.

I'm just reading through "From Power up to bash prompt" to see if I can get any clues from that. I would prefer to try and fix this properly rather than reinstall in a different way seeing that Slackware is already loaded on the system as was pointed out earlier!

This is a much better forum than I was expecting!

thanks :)

Oli

do you have a timeout and see the lilo bootscreen. ?
if so, then at the bootscreen hit " escape " and type :

<label> nohotplug

( so if your label is " linux " just " linux nohotplug" should work )

egag

I think I have found the problem - I just need to know the solution!

It is caused by AGPGART which is for the graphic card. I'm assuming its looking for a graphic card which isn't there.
How do I send a signal to it to tell it to look for a generic graphic card?

Oli

Try what egag suggest, boot your laptop until lilo screen
then follow egag instructions

I did, but it didn't make any difference :(

I'll try it again with a dash and other variations etc.

But I'm feeling confident that I'm very close to solving the problem! :)

Oli

if agpgart is the prob, then switching off hotplug won't help .
you need to edit the file " /etc/rc.d/rc.modules " and comment out the line :

/sbin/modprobe agpgart.

but first you gotto boot eh...

try to boot to runlevel 1 with ( at the lilo screen ) :

<label> 1

or

<label> init 1

i don't remember wich one works, maybe both.

egag