Hi,

I've been trying to install Slack on my Dell Inspiron 7000 laptop. Normally this should not be that hard, but the problem is the internal cdrom that comes with the laptop is broken, and I don't want to buy a new one because I already got an external drive.

Here's are things that I've try:
1. External USB and parallel cdrom drive: This laptop BIOS is old, so I cannot boot from external drive. I've tried booting from floppy, using the images provided for slackware installation , but I cannot access the drive (or I don't know how to do that ?) I wonder if I need to customize the disk image in order to access those drive?

2. Another the thing that I tried is network install through NFS. I set up a share on my main desktop, then boot up and configure network for the laptop. I think I got network connection, because I could ping my main machine. However, the laptop did not get any ip(I am on a university network with school DHCP server). And the problem is if I don't get an ip, I cannot specify the NFS share in the main machine.

Can anyone gives me some suggestions on how to go about installing Slack on this laptop? Either help with the above solutions, or newer approaches would be great.

Thanks in advance.

Giang

You might try using a bootdisk from RUNT linux(Zipslack 9.1 based). It has USB enabled.

Thanks, I'll try it out and let you know the result.

Note that you can't use a DHCP server when installing Slack. You might try buying a crossover cable to connect your desktop and laptop. Also, a hint on installing Slack with NFS:
Copy both CDs into one directory on a partition with lots of free space (about 1.5 GB). I did this:
Then, share /slackware. When you're asked for the path to the Slackware files, specify /slackware/slackware.
--Taj