[TriLUG] Home installation of Linux (ftp install howto)

[Chris Hedemark]

On Fri, 2002-02-22 at 13:55, Justin Johnson wrote:

> How hard is this to set up? I have seen references to ftp / internet
> installs
> of linux, and would (geek!) like to do that once just for kicks. 

Painless.  Very easy.  Most Linux distros, if you look on the CDROM or
FTP site where they keep the boot floppy images, usually have something
like "netboot.img" which you put onto a floppy disk with dd (or, on w32
platforms, rawrite.exe).  You boot off of that floppy, point to the
right FTP site and the right subdirectory.  When I netboot a Red Hat
install I usually use
ftp://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/redhat/7.2/en/os/i386
(going from memory but I think I got that right).

It is a lot slower than a CDROM install.  But I have one client with a
bunch of machines that have no CDROM, but do have a floppy drive.  I
usually just start a net boot and walk away from it.

Of course if you have the hardware around, you can put an FTP server on
your LAN with the appropriate distribution image and in that case
installs are usually FASTER over the LAN than they are from a CDROM. 
Very much so.

In fact, I think the first time I installed Linux ever was when I worked
at IBM in the mid-late 90's and I installed it over the network since
someone in the 500 complex was nice enough to set up an internal mirror.

> Is there a
> detailed
> doc that will walk me through setting up the boot disk I need in order to
> this?

1) Go to
ftp://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/redhat/7.2/en/os/i386/images and grab bootnet.img
2) Use dd (on UNIX systems) or rawrite.exe (on W32 systems) to copy the
image to a floppy.
2a) On UNIX, do a "dd if=bootnet.img of=/dev/fd0" (you may have to
change the command line options to suit your flavor of UNIX).  That one
command is all you need to make the boot floppy.
2b) On W32, run rawrite.exe and give it the sourcefile (bootnet.img) and
destination (A: drive) when prompted.  You can get rawrite.exe from
ftp://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/redhat/7.2/en/os/i386/dosutils/rawrite.exe
3) Boot off of the floppy you just made.  If you have installed Red Hat
before, this will be very familiar.  Just note that the install GUI
doesn't work on network based installs.
4) You will be prompted for your network configuration info.  Hopefully
you know your own settings here.
5) You will be prompted for an install location.  The ftp server is
distro.ibiblio.org and the path is
/pub/linux/distributions/redhat/7.2/en/os/i386/

Everything else is pretty much like a regular CD based install.  It's
really pretty easy.

If you want to install over ftp to a bunch of machines, you would be
wise to mirror the contents of
/pub/linux/distributions/redhat/7.2/en/os/i386/ to an ftp server on your
LAN.  This works well for installfests if someone brings a working
server with them.

-- 
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| Rev. Chris Hedemark, DD
| Hillsborough, NC
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