[olug] network installations

Mon Oct 30 02:33:45 UTC 2000

Your information was great thank you,I bookmarked the links.I am going to try debian next,I was going to try it
this last week but the only installs I've done so far is off of a cd and  I got frustrated after reading debian's
page and not being able to figure out how to make a boot floppy to start the install.I'm going to give it a few
days then try it again,I hope it will come to me then :)

                Thank you,Gary Martin

"Mark A. Martin" wrote:

> This message is my latest reply in the "another distro" thread.  I
> changed the subject to make it more descriptive.
>
> The specific instructions for performing network installations are
> distribution dependent.  Below I describe the information I found
> related to doing this using Debian or Red Hat.  If you want to try
> another distribution, you'll have to troll around the web site for the
> distribution for documentation, like I did for Debian and Red Hat.  The
> bottom line is that Debian seems to discourage this type of
> installation.  Red Hat is more forthcoming and provides explicit
> instructions, if you exert enough energy to find them.  More detailed
> information follows.
>
> DEBIAN:
>
> I consulted the documentation on the Debian web site
> (http://www.debian.org) and "Learning Debian GNU/Linux"
> (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/debian/chapter/index.html) on the
> O'Reilly site.  Debian seems to want to keep most people from attempting
> this kind of installation.  Perhaps one of the Debian officionados in
> OLUG could help you with this.  I took a look at the Methods for
> Installing Debian Section
>
> http://www.debian.org/releases/potato/i386/ch-install-methods.en.html
>
> of the (Official) Installing Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 for Intel x86 Manual
>
> http://www.debian.org/releases/potato/i386/install
>
> In the Introduction to Chapter 5, I found that
>
> "You can install Debian from a variety of sources, both local (CD, hard
> disk, floppies) and remote (FTP, NFS, PPP, HTTP)."
>
> but, from Section 5.3.2, that the
>
> "...only (recommended) use for PPP (meaning "FTP, HTTP, and the like")
> in the installation process is the installation of packages (rather than
> installing the base system)."
>
> although
>
> "...certain kernels may permit you to do this (use FTP, HTTP, etc.)
> earlier (in the installation process). Experts can also use these
> connections to mount disks and perform other operations to accelerate
> the process. Providing help in such cases is beyond the scope of this
> document."
>
> I couldn't find a document that had this procedure within its scope.
>
> The recommended procedure seems to be
>
> 1. Boot from a floppy.
> 2. Install the base system from CD, hard drive, floppies, or NFS.
> 3. Install packages from wherever you like.
>
> A semi-network installation would be to only download the files needed
> for steps 1 and 2, which would be considerably less that downloading the
> entire contents of the CDs.  Since initiating the installation from the
> boot floppy requires configuring the network, it seems that it should be
> fairly easy to install the base system from the Internet too.
>
> There is a related FAQ question "Can I get and install Debian directly
> from a remote Internet site?"
>
> http://www.debian.org/doc/FAQ/ch-getting.html#s-remoteinstall
>
> which indicates that one way to install over the Internet is to use
> dselect and dpkg-ftp but doesn't provide explicit instructions on
> performing a fresh installation.  Perhaps dselect and dpkg-ftp are
> accessible after booting from the installation floppy but this is only
> supposition on my part.
>
> RED HAT:
>
> A network installation of Red Hat 7.0 is possible via a text mode
> installation.  Chapter 14
>
> http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/RHL-7-Manual/ref-guide/ch-install-tm.html
>
> of The Official Red Hat Linux Reference Guide
>
> http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/RHL-7-Manual/ref-guide/index.html
>
> describes how to do this.  A text mode installation is simply the old
> style installation that many of us used before they introduced an
> installation GUI.
>
> Here are the steps that you'll need to follow.  As with any
> installation, read *all* of the steps through *carefully* before
> starting the process.
>
> 1. Collect all of the information that you'll need about your system and
> network connection and the FTP or HTTP site that you're going to install
> from ahead of time.  The information you need is described in Chapter 13
> Preparing for a Text Mode Installation
>
> http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/RHL-7-Manual/ref-guide/ch-before-you-begin.html
>
> 2. Make a network installation boot floppy.  See the Official Red Hat
> Linux Installation Guide
>
> http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/RHL-7-Manual/install-guide/
>
> for instructions.  The information about making installation diskettes
> is located at
>
> http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/RHL-7-Manual/install-guide/s1-steps-install-cdrom.html#S2-STEPS-MAKE-DISKS
>
> 3. Boot from the floppy and type "text" at the boot prompt.  See
>
> http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/RHL-7-Manual/ref-guide/s1-start-install.html
>
> 4. Choose a language for the installation.  See
>
> http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/RHL-7-Manual/ref-guide/s1-install-choose-lang.html
>
> 5. Select a keyboard type.  See
>
> http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/RHL-7-Manual/ref-guide/s1-install-sel-kybd.html
>
> 6. Select FTP or HTTP as the installation method.  See
>
> http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/RHL-7-Manual/ref-guide/s1-install-sel-method.html
>
> 7. Enter the information about the FTP or HTTP site that you're going to
> install from.  See
>
> http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/RHL-7-Manual/ref-guide/s1-install-network.html
>
> 8. Follow the remaining instructions from the Reference Guide.  Just
> keep following the "Next" links from the web page listed in step #7
> above for the complete instructions.
>
> As I mentioned above, you'll have to consult the web sites for any other
> distrubutions that you might want to try for their instructions.  Most
> Red-Hat-based distributions (such as Mandrake) probably allow network
> installations following similar steps to what I've described above.
> Likewise, Debian-based distributions probably have facilities similar to
> those of Debian.
>
> Good luck,
>
> Mark
> --
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Mark A. Martin                                  Dept of Applied Mathematics
> http://www.amath.washington.edu/~mmartin        University of Washington
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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