[TriLUG] Installation question

[Joseph Tate]

Christopher Blackmon wrote:

> I've got an old Sony Vaio PCG-C1 subnotebook computer
> that I'd like to install linux on.  The problem is
> that I don't have a floppy drive nor a cdrom drive for
> it.
> 
> I can, however, remove the hard drive, and connect it
> to another computer.  (Right now I've got it in a USB
> case connected to another laptop).
> 
> Is there anyway to do this?
> 
> thanks,
> Christopher.
> 

Do you have a network card that you can boot from?  PXE boots aren't 
that difficult to set up if you have a dhcp server already.  The Debian 
docs are the best I've seen for setting this up.

If network installs are not feasible, what I would do is mount the vaio 
drive on your other computer after formatting it appropriately, then run 
a yum install yum command using -installroot or whatever the options is 
to change the installation root.  Pick a kernel and grub/lilo.

After that, install grub/lilo on the MBR for that drive, and run any 
appropriate mkdev commands (you should have a script that installs with 
the devs package).

Check /mnt/usbdrive/etc/fstab and /mnt/usbdrive/boot/grub/menu.lst to 
make sure you're pointing to the right drives for your other computer.\

If you get stuck, check out the Linux From Scratch documentation.  If 
you cant get the above to work with a Red Hat derived distro, LFS will 
definitely work.  I'd recommend for everyone to try LFS at least once so 
that you know what it takes to bootstrap a distro.  The instructions are 
very good, and easy to follow.  Only takes a few days to do too. 
(Compiling gcc and glibc umpteen times requires stepping away from the 
project while they run, but otherwise it flies by.)

Joseph