Slackware Install without a Floppy Drive?
 

:scratch: I want to install slackware on my laptop. It has a CD rom / DVD player drive only it does not have a CDRW... I am going to burn the two ISO images onto CD from another machine.

My laptop does NOT have a floppy drive, but like I say the CD device can be set to be bootable.

I need some advice about installing slackware without a floppy... is it difficult to do? I read that it is first necessary for me to create a DOS partition and then install a package called LoadLin.

How big does this dos partition have to be? Please outline the procedure for me as the official FAQ is a bit vague.

Thanks

you don't have to boot from a floppy. if you burn the cd correctly. you'll be able to boot to it and start the install w/ no problem.

try linuxiso.org and from there on the left is a link for howto burn
from that point you can dload an eval of NERO, you only need the first package of nero. I recommend this software since I was able to burn a good copy of the iso images using nero. I tried some other software and they did not burn so well.

gluck.

-Cheng

supposed the 2 isos are called /path2somewhere/{iso1,iso2}

Then write the bareacpi.i, install.1, install.2 to floppies. boot with them, type "ramdisk hdc=ide-cdrom" at the promt if prompted during booting with floppy ..

Login as root as usual, create the required partitions. Then:

mkdir /tmp/{iso1,iso2}
if the "path2somewhere" must be mounted, then u would also create a dir "mkdir /tmp/newPath", then mount it first "mount -t vfat /dev/hdx-of-path2somewhere /tmp/newPath" endif.
For the rest "npath" refer to either "path2somewhere" or "/tmp/newPath".

mount -o loop -t iso9660 npath/iso1 /tmp/iso1
Do that also with iso2, then run install as usual, until u get to the menu for choosing the install source, chose option install from a premounted directory. Give the path to where the slackware packages r residing "a ap d f k .."

In the case above it would be "/tmp/iso1/slackware", not for installation it is only iso1 required, as those thingies on iso2 u can do that later with the installpkg to intall extra packages ..

Note apply those commands above within "" with out the "" ..

I find booting off the CD's is much easier than working with 3 floppy disks. Plus, it's quicker, and Slack's second disk is a live rescue disk, which is nice.

Yeah, I was stuborn on burning the 9.1-images, recently I wished 9.2 to come out, looked like it ll not be that fast b4 2.6.x is ripe enough configured ..

The other thing is that I prefer to install directly from a premounted-slackware-current-tree rather than 9.1-iso. Therefore I don't bother to burn 9.1. Was a bad decision, not bcoz I gonna save some pieces CDR but I hate just to have those old CDs laying around, I've many of old mdk,rh,slws.. Recently I lost all of them through hd-crush.

But it is only faster on booting-up, but it is faster on installing the packages, copying between HD-partitions is faster than CD-to-HD..