What is Digg?30 Comments
- imafish2002, on 10/12/2007, -4/+18who says the system has to be old to not have a cd-rom drive?
- bepcyc, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13It's just a trick - not an universal solution
for example, I have a laptop with 1,8-inch hard disk
I can't get it out and install system on it without special boxes
If your computer doesn't have cdrom and have no usb-boot support it is almost certainly a legacy laptop and you can't just "Put the HD in another system, installed there, juggled some modules and setup files, and moved it back over." - Dested, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13Installing Ubuntu on a machine with no CDROM drive
by Erik Forsberg — last modified 2006-11-29 22:35
Filed Under:
* software
* linux
Today I had to install Ubuntu on one of the older machines in the computer room. It's a 1U server without CDROM drive.
Ubuntu doesn't seem to ship any floppy images. It does ship a utility to boot from IDE CDROM drives in the case where the BIOS is too old or full of bugs preventing it to boot from the CDROM. You can do that by creating a floppy that has drivers for the CDROM and allows booting from the CD. To be specific, the image shipped with the CD contains Smartbootfloppy which has a webpage (sort of) at http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/
However, since this machine had no CD at all, this didn't solve the problem.
My initial thought was to try using a CDROM drive connected to the USB port (at least the machine is new enough to have two USB ports). This however proved impossible due to the BIOS lacking functionality to recognize and boot from USB CDROM drives. And the boot manager from Ubuntu doesn't recognize USB drives either. Dead end.
I did some research on this, and found several places where people were asking how to do, but no places where people actually got good answers.
The solution to my problem was to create a boot floppy with etherboot. I went to http://www.rom-o-matic.net and located my network card in the dropdown. I was lucky enough to know the exact PCI ID numbers of the network card which helped in finding the correct driver. If you don't know, try to locate the card by name in the list. Opt for a bootable floppy image, download it and then write it to a floppy per the instructions on the site.
You then need to configure a tftp server on another machine on the same network. The server should be configured to serve the contents of /install/netboot directory of the Ubuntu CD as root directory. This way, when the computer you are about to install asks for the file pxelinux.0, the pxelinux.0 in /install/netboot on the Ubuntu CD will be served.
I did this by installing the atftpd package, mounted my ubuntu CD on /media/cdrom and added /media/cdrom/install/netboot as commandline argument to in.tftpd in /etc/inetd.conf. Don't forget to restart inetd after doing this.
I then configured my DHCP server as follows:
host tobeinstalled {
hardware ethernet 00:80:C8:F8:51:25;
next-server myinstallhost;
filename "pxelinux.0";
allow bootp;
allow booting;
}
This will make dhcpd tell the client that it should ask myinstallhost for pxelinux.0 at boot.
Inserted the floppy in the computer to be installed and rebooted it. It downloaded a bunch of files via TFTP, and then gave me the regular Ubuntu install prompt. Yay!
=) - treed, on 10/12/2007, -15/+23I once installed Debian on a similar system, except the ethernet device didn't support boot. You know what I did?
Put the HD in another system, installed there, juggled some modules and setup files, and moved it back over.
I'll have that Nobel Award now, thanks. - ProBeast, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5@LordSkywalker
No, problem is not solved if you like me have a laptop that doesn't support USB boot, and doesn't have an internal CD or DVD drive. - lilrabbit129, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Exactly, I have a 1.3Ghz Athlon in the corner that serves my webpages. I have to periodically reinstall linxu on it, and not having to take my DVDRW from my main box and hook it to the webserver would be a great help.
- crowdofone, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Been doing a lot of pxe installs recently and have to say that was one of the least verbose, crappy tutorials going ... pure digg whoring.
- felyduw, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4It really isn't bloated but I'll bite nonetheless:
There's Ubuntu server which may be a reason to install on that machine;
There's Xubuntu which is lighter than regular (K)Ubuntu;
And of course, Ubuntu Lite ( http://www.ubuntulite.org/ ).
Besides, it could be a laptop with a bios that doesn't boot from USB (I know, I've had to boot stuff through network in a laptop like this) and still be perfectly capable of running Ubuntu.
As you see there may be reasons either in the software side as in the hardware side to install ubuntu through network boot. - KlipschFan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I suppose you have to have a PXE enabled NIC.
It may not have worked on a workstation from that era. PXE was not always implemented on older cards. - imjustabill, on 10/12/2007, -6/+8Don't get me wrong, I'm a big Ubuntu fan, but why would you want to install ubuntu on a computer that's too old to have a CD drive? It's one of the more bloated distro's out there
- int19h, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Thin clients
- zoom1928, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2> found a cdrom drive
That doesn't help if your BIOS doesn't support booting from a CD. Please start thinking. These ridiculous knee-jerk reactions are getting old. Just because you get lucky and don't have to use crappy equipment doesn't mean everyone else has the same luxury. Some of us have new systems, like from Dell, that don't support booting from a CD in the BIOS. - lonniebiz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1rm999, that was funny, but not helpful.
- zefram12, on 10/12/2007, -7/+8Why is treed dugged down?
A friend once helped me install knoppix (also debian based) in this manner. - rusty0101, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1That presumes that he could. I can envision reasons both why he might not be able to, and how he may also.
In any case he found at least one way to do the job. There are likely others. - garoo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I have a weird problem that this is perfect for. The controller in my laptop that runs the CD died, as did my Edgy upgrade. It also doesn't support USB booting. This would leave me moving the HD to a desktop and installing, or doing a network boot.
I'm a old Windows guy who's built millions of bootable NT floppies but I wasn't sure of how to get Ubuntu going. I really didn't want to map a drive to a share, install XP, copy the Ubuntu CD over the network and then install. This is way better.
Rarely used, but extremely useful when needed - 15charmaxwtf, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4That's not helpful if you don't want to spend £50 on a laptop cdrom drive, and the usb boot only works with a floppy disk.
- zoom1928, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1rm999, I can tell you don't have much experiences with PC's. The only way that will work is if the BIOS supports booting from a CD. That doesn't work on any older systems and still doesn't work on many models of newer systems. With our new Dells, there is no option in the BIOS to boot from CD/DVD. I think Dell does that to keep you from reinstalling XP to fix problems.
- drilldown, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Nobody says yer fat anymore when you are. PC.
Win98, until. - rm999, on 10/12/2007, -16/+15step 1: buy a 20 dollar cd-rom drive
step 2: install new cd-rom drive
step 3: install
Hmm, now was that hard? - punx45, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0or if the computer has no CD capability... but then i suppose you wouldnt be putting ubuntu on it would you?
- zoom1928, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1> too old to have a CD drive?
I have new Dells that have DVD drives that you can't install Linux from a CD on because there is no option to boot from CD in the BIOS. It's not old systems without CDROM's that are generally the problem. You can always spend $10 to buy a CDROM drive if you don't already have a dozen laying around. That's not the problem. It's the millions of people that have systems, like our crappy Dells, that can't boot from a CD that are the problem. I want to install Linux on a few of them that are having problems with Windows, but Dell makes it more difficult than it should be because they intentionally added this brain-dead limitation. - geronimo, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1Nice.
Although he didn't have to go through this if he found a cdrom drive and connected it temporarily to install. - FrostySol, on 10/12/2007, -10/+5http://duggmirror.com/
- geronimo, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2Didn't I just say that above you? Yet I got dugg down?
- LordSkywalker, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3Alternate Solution:
1. Find that old CD-RW drive you tossed in the closet.
2. Put it in the pc.
3. Problem Solved. - Jarasmen, on 10/12/2007, -12/+41. Find a machine with no CD ROM drive.
2. ???
3. Profit. - shashiraj, on 10/12/2007, -13/+0good one!
- blapierre, on 10/12/2007, -28/+2Second I suppose?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -35/+1First i guess?
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