How Can You Install Slackware From ISOs on Hard Drive - (skipping CD burning process)?

[DrCR]

How can I install Slackware from the CD ISOs on my hard drive rather than burning the ISOs and then installing? I used to just burn the ISOs, but I'm stick of wasting CDs during my serial installations, my stack of old distros in my closet is going no higher.

Primary Partition:
1- Fat32 Windows
Extended Partition:
1- Linux Swap 600MB
2- SW10.1
3- VectorLinux
4- Free Partition (Where I will be installing the distro, in this case SW10.2)
5- Fat32 Data Storage Partition (Where the ISOs are located)

The closest thing I've found:

LinuxQuestions.org - Installing Fedora from ISO image

Found it!

1. Using raw write, copy the bootdisk.img file to a floppy
2. Hook up the USB hard drive to the laptop
3. With the floppy in the drive, power on the laptop
4. After booting, the USB hard drive should've been recognized
5. Choose Hard Drive as the installation source
6. Choose the /dev/ dir that corresponds to the USB hard drive

Example the /dev/ dir for my USB hard drive came up as /dev/sda1.

That's it! From then on, it's just like installing from the CD.

The bootdisk.img file is in the images folder of the Fedora Core 1 First CD.

Rawrite For Windows is in the dosutils of the Fedora Core 1 First CD.

Or you could download those files from an FTP mirror site.


Needless to say, this is going to save me or someone else a bunch of blank CDs!

The bootdisk.img refered to is apparently particular to that Fedora release, and multi-floppy images for later releases can be found here for fedora.

Is there an equivalent technique that can universally applied to linux distros? For the record, I can boot from a CD no problem, so I wouldn't mind burning 4MB or whatever on a CDRW to do the trick.

Thanks,
DrCR

[technossomy]

The way I used to install Fedora (that was Core 4 in case you're interested) was to burn CD 1 to 4 + rescue CD and starting the installation by booting from CD1. It takes a good hour, but when choosing the defaults, the distribution should be running as expected.

Another approach that is sometimes quite helpful, and this is more for diagnostic purposes in case the above doesn't immediately terminate normally, is to burn a live CD. Your best bets are probably Knoppix or DSL. When running that, you may find that hardware is supported under certain circumstances for FC#.

To answer your question: a dozen CDs or so usually fixes the trial-and-error. I am not familiar with USB sticks, but the idea is similar to the live CD.

Hope this helps

Tech

[kern]

just burn the first CD , install what you want

get a running system

mount the 2nd ISO as a loopback filesystem

'mount -o loop file.iso /mnt/cdrom

and then keep installing packages

[DrCR]

Thanks for the thoughts technossomy, but burning is exactly what I want to get away from.

just burn the first CD , install what you want

get a running system

mount the 2nd ISO as a loopback filesystem

'mount -o loop file.iso /mnt/cdrom

and then keep installing packages

Ah, thats a step in the right direction.

It's been a little while since I did my last serial installation streak, but after the 1st CD it's going to ask for the 2nd CD. Do I hard-reboot, edit lilo (or grub) using another distro installation, and then boot to the partial installation? You do know that Disk2 is part of the installation, not just source like Disk3 and 4, right?


Oh, I found the bootdisks for SW10.2, so while this won't contribute to a universial approach, it may do the trick for this particular case.
ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackwar...are/bootdisks/


DrCR

[kern]

"It's been a little while since I did my last serial installation streak, but after the 1st CD it's going to ask for the 2nd CD."

not if you just install want you want (ie a/ap/l/n/x/) and do an expert install.


"Do I hard-reboot, edit lilo (or grub) using another distro installation, and then boot to the partial installation? "

no, you just boot the installation you just installed in expert mode.



"You do know that Disk2 is part of the installation, not just source like Disk3 and 4, right? "

you do know that expert mode doesnt prompt you for the 2nd disc, right?

[DrCR]

you do know that expert mode doesnt prompt you for the 2nd disc, right?

Thanks for the input. Never done an expert installation before. Got any links to newbie expert installation guides or something?

Thanks,
DrCR

[kern]

"newbie expert installation guides"


.. lol

nope, unless the slackbook has it, www.slackbook.org

[DrCR]

lol probably should have put a hypen between expert and installation

I'll try slackbook and do some googling for it. Going to try installing with that SW10.2 bootdisk too.

Thanks for the insight