Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Linux Software

Single Floppy Boot/Root/Install For USB-Floppies 14

Posted by timothy from the gotta-save-space-gotta-save-space dept.
blutgens writes: "I have a Sony VAIO superslim with no cd-rom and only a USB floppy. I'd like to install Debian or Slackware. Only problem is, without some serious mojo it's next to impossible to do. FreeBSD has an install disk which works fine and will load the MFS (same as a ramdisk essentially) but I'd just as soon migrate it back to linux (Don't ask, I have my reasons) but refuse to run redhat. I made custom kernels with USB support but all I get once the kernel tries to load that second floppy from USB is "Invalid partition table" the disk is fine, I've tried others. My question is what do other people do when they lack normal install media? Isn't there a debian netboot.img floppy image that won't require some magic needed to read a second floppy?"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Single Floppy Boot/Root/Install For USB-Floppies More

Single Floppy Boot/Root/Install For USB-Floppies

Comments Filter:

  • Try this (Score:3)

    by ooze ( 307871 ) on Friday February 23, 2001 @05:20AM (#408036)
    debian boot disk creator [debian.org] only for 2.17 ker thus no USB, but I think the scripts are easily adaptable.
  • I've had a couple of libretto's over the last few years and they have pcmcia floppy drives. This presents the same sort of install problem your having here. Like a USB floppy, there were hardware hooks for booting of the external floppy, but once the kernel loaded it couldn't see the floppy anymore.

    With RedHat 5.x (I think), this was a royal pain. There were serveral different methods of bootstrap, usually involving a parallel port zip drive. But them came RedHat 6.x. The netboot driver contains all the pcmcia network drivers so that you can boot off a single floppy and then do a network install.

    I understand that you'd like to install Debian or Slackware and not necessarily RedHat. Since RedHat does it already, its clearly possible so someone should be able to kludge something up. That's one option. Another option is to try out RedHat (or Mandrake) and see how that works out. In my personal experience, I find that Mandrake is especially laptop-friendly
  • I have the pcg-c1x vaio (picturebook, 266 model) and have had a libretto 50ct - both had similar issues (as the libretto's pcmcia floppy doesn't send data in the standard manner that 98% of floppys do). Long story short - you can do what I did, or try what I've learned...

    What I did:
    Installed Debian 2.1 - with the base install files on a separate partition (which you later bring back into the folds of linux, or leave for windows booting for those annoying windows streams) - the boot disk will [perhaps after a few tries] get to the point where you can continue with the installation. The problem is basically at some point linux stops communicating to the floppy through the bios (almost immediately) and when that happens it no longer see's it.

    Try What I've Learned:
    the following are the steps I go through to enable my vaio's floppy to work, I've never played with making custom boot floppies and whatnot - but I presume it would be fairly simple if you could fit the modules on the disk (or just in a custom kernel I guess).

    sync
    modprobe scsi_mod
    modprobe sd_mod
    modprobe usbcore
    mount -t usbdevfs none /proc/bus/usb
    echo "scsi add-single-device 1 0 0 0" > /proc/scsi/scsi
    modprobe uhci
    modprobe usb-storage
    sleep 1 [implicit, if you script you need to sleep here]
    mount -r -t vfat /dev/sda /mnt/floppy

    and verify
    cat /proc/scsi/scsi

    that would do ya, good luck - if you do figure out a good way or directions on making a custom floppy [come to think, I didn't even look at the howto's, since my method worked] - drop me a line.
  • Why not use the best of both worlds: Use a recent RedHat floppy for the kernel, and once you've got a root prompt with the drivers loaded in memory, install whatever distro you want? I do this all the time if I need a "Rescue Floppy", because I don't usually have one handy and the RH CD now only tells you how to create a rescue image, you can't boot one off the disk (So far as I know). So, I keep an old Slackware CD around, which only boots a kernel and drops you to a login prompt. Viola, just what I needed.
  • Do you have a network card? Do a network install. As I'm sure you know, the Vaio BIOS will boot off the USB disk just fine, so just do a network install.

  • The Sony BIOS will present this USB floppy drive as a standard fd0 for boot purposes.
    Just copy the RedHat CD to your windoze partition, rawrite yourself a bootdisk, and boot from the bootdisk. Make your linux partition, select the hard drive install method, and away you go.
    Drivers are another fun slow death but the latest kernel has the sound drivers, and, well, don't expect the softmodem to ever work.
    PCMCIA works just right, as long as you mask off the used interrupts.
  • I have a 2-year old VAIO superslim, also with a USB floppy. I did a network install of RedHat 7.0 with the built-in ethernet adaptor, and got everything to work fine. There are many web pages out there with info on putting linux on VAIO laptops - search google for "linux" and "vaio". They are especially helpful for the X config.
    One tricky thing I noticed when I compiled and installed the 2.4.1 kernel is that sndconfig no longer works - it thinks there is a nm256 module, while the module is now nm256_audio. Also, you need to load the ac97 sound module first. I had to hand-edit /etc/modules.conf so it contained these lines:

    alias sound ac97
    alias sound-slot-0 nm256_audio

    for the sound to work (there may well be a much better way - I just poked things until something worked)

    Let me know if you have any more problems - email me at theodorelogan -at- yahoo -dot- com
    (being a bit paranoid about spam :) )

    -Josh

  • Re:Kernel != Distro (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The Red Hat CD says it' can't be used as a rescue disk. It depends what you want to do and if you know how to do it. Do ALT-F2 during the installation process, and think about it.
  • well you could sell the viao and then wait until the end of march and buy a mac powerbook with DVD-ROM. Or a cheaper choice and not the best one is If you have ethernet just make a simple boot disk and du a network install debian supports it through the internet. I am personally waiting for Mac OS X [apple.com] because of the killer window manager (Aqua)
  • ...as the floppy doesn't work as a standard floppy, and so using a two-disk boot/root setup doesn't work with USB (or PCMCIA) floppy drives. I am currently trying to get around this problem by using the `initrd' feature instead of a normal ramdisk, and then you can get LILO to load the initrd image (compressed, usually) from the floppy. This should work because LILO (as far as I know) uses the BIOS routines to access the floppy, which work up until the kernel tries to initialize the floppy controller, at which point the USB/PCMCIA floppy fails to work anymore...

    I guess that the RedHat boot floppy uses this method, but I haven't looked at it recently.

    Also, having the USB drivers built into the kernel still doesn't help here, as the ramdisk only loads from a `standard' floppy (please correct me if I'm wrong), while the usb-storage module makes the usb floppy show up as a removable scsi disk.

    If you can fit what is needed for a rootdisk onto a floppy uncompressed, then you can disable the ramdisk, and point root at /dev/sda, which is another option.

  • You might look at the "LRP module" loading system used in the Linux Router Project [linuxrouter.org] and Coyote Linux [coyotelinux.com].

    This involves mounting a floppy with tar gzip files, then copying those into ramdisk. This happens late in the boot process (see the script "linuxrc" (ie, pkgsrc/root/linuxrc). Should work with a removable drive.

  • Too bad you missed the bit about not having a CD. I don't think anything later than 95 was able to install off floppy. And if you've ever used win95's USB support, you'd realize exactly how bad of an idea it is.
  • Almost exactly the idea I had. Except I was thinking just get slack's a + n sets on a 128MB fat partition (+kernel+loadlin+rootdisk+...), then pull the rest off the net. Once everything's up and running, you can cover up the remains w/ a swap.

    Of course, there's something to be said about just going to the store, buying a USB cd, and returning it after the install.. +)
  • it doesn't matter if you're going to return the mofos to the store when you're done.

Slashdot Top Deals

On the eighth day, God created FORTRAN.

Close