[dima_t]

Good evening,

I can be considered a linux newbie. But my notebook is the worst one of all times. My cd-rom is broken. It does not have floppy drive. I purchased an external USB one. But it does not boot from it. I purchased PCMCIA-USB card from it should boot. Still it does not seam to boot from anything... I do not know why. (If somebody knows how to make it bootable I will really appreciate it). I am sure the problem is in BIOS, but I have the latest one installed.

question: I do have Boot Magic installed. So I can boot from different partitiones using Boot Magic. I alreday created ext2 and fat32 partitiones. Is there any way I can put some files on one of these partitiones, so I can boot from, and manually(from the command line) find the CD-ROM, and further install SUSE distribution. Or basically, how can I get to the command line, while booting from one of the partitiones?
What files do I have to poot onto the partition I would like to boot from?

I am stuck. I really need help. Already spent tons of money on external CD-ROM and PCMCIA. (I am not sure if the internal cd-rom change will help in this situation).

Thank you

[dylunio]

I'm not sure that I can be much help, but have you entered the BIOS to check if you can boot from USB at all? And if so have you got boting from usb highter than booting from the hard drive in the list of bootable devices in the BIOS?

[Dolda2000]

Well, if you can't get it to boot foreign code, then it certainly is hard. And sorry, but it's not possible to get it to boot something by just putting files on a certain partition -- you need to edit the boot sector in order for it to boot something.

Can't it do PXE booting? I admit that that's a whole heap of hoops to jump through just to get it to boot, but if you can't do anything else...

[dima_t]

Thanks for replies.

1. On this type of toshiba's there is no BIOS, in terms of what is common understanding of it. You cannot enter it while the machine is booting. You can only change the boot sequence from Windows, from Toshiba Console, where there is no USB. During boot though, a window appears with six different options for boot, but I tried them and they do not work. I know, i know, it's either the machine or me...

2. What is PXE booting? (I am still going to google it)

Thanks
Dima

[onlinebacon]

What model laptop is it? CD-ROM slimline drives are very inexpensive nowadays, my dad piced 5 up for £10 on eBay, have a look there and maybe buy one, it's a good investment

[drakebasher]

Google these:
umsdos is a DOS and Linux compatible filesystem. That is, Linux can work with it on a DOS partition.
loadlin is a DOS file which can bootload a Linux kernel

So all you need is a Linux filesystem to boot to. But I think you might be able to create one, working from a minimal Linux written in umsdos format on the DOS partition. Once you are able to boot to the Linux filesystem in its native format, you could install Grub or LILO to boot properly without going through DOS.

But it might be easier to figure out how to fix that CD drive....

[jordower]

alternatively you could ghost a linux install onto the the drive

[dima_t]

Thanks for replies guys:
to onlinebacon It's Toshiba Satellite 5205-s705. I found the one for $118 for this model on sparewarehouse...
to drakebasher thanks, how can I boot from cd-rom using GRUB or LILO, I just do not know what should i do in GRUB so that it will boot from cd-rom?
to jordower what does it mean "ghost"? (I kind of understand the meaning, but still) How to do that?

Thanks a lot gentlemen
Dima

[drakebasher]

Originally Posted by dima_t

to drakebasher thanks, how can I boot from cd-rom using GRUB or LILO, I just do not know what should i do in GRUB so that it will boot from cd-rom?

I'm afraid I was misunderstood. Grub is a bootloader that can eventually (actually as pretty much the last step) be installed to the hard drive to boot a Linux system, or Windows or whatever.

[dima_t]

Originally Posted by drakebasher

I'm afraid I was misunderstood. Grub is a bootloader that can eventually (actually as pretty much the last step) be installed to the hard drive to boot a Linux system, or Windows or whatever.

Thanks, I know how to use GRUB, I just thought that you meant that there is an option of choosing a boot device (like cd-rom).
Dima