[Rule-list] The 19 MB ISO, laptops, and WinNT partitions

[Michael Fratoni]

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On Thursday 24 October 2002 06:50 pm, Marco Fioretti wrote:
> Michael,
>
> I have a laptop with CDROM **OR** FLOPPY and a network PCMCIA card.
> The laptop also has a WinNT partition that *must* remain untouched.
>
> Said this, and also that obviously I will backup everything on that
> partition before trying, and never sue anybody if I lose it anyway:
>
> 1) is the installer in that ISO able to just leave alone that
> partition?

Short answer: yes.
More detail:
Slinky will alter only those partitions that you tell it to.
Currently, fdisk or cfdisk is run on each detected disk, you can just quit 
(q) if you already have the existing partitions. (I will be adding the 
option to just skip the partitioning phase.)

 A list of all available _linux_ partitions is presented. You can select a 
mount point for each, or just hit enter to leave them untouched. Any 
partition you assign a mount point will be be used for the install. For 
all partitions other than /, you are presented with the option of 
formatting the partition.

> 2) would it work with a PCMCIA network card?

Yes, I think it should. I have no laptop for testing, so this is untested 
by me. A full set of modules is available in the ISO image. You can try 
bringing up the network before running the installer. In the scripts 
directory is a network start up script you can edit for your needs and 
execute.

> 3) If not: the way I upgrade RH on that laptop is to copy the boot
>    images from new CDs in a /NEWDISTRO/ directory, change LILO to
>    boot from /NEWDISTRO/_the_install_boot_image_, and reboot with the
>    CD ROM drive inserted and containing disc 1: could I do it this
>    time?

Again, untested, but it should work. I assume you can't boot from the 
CDROM? Depending on modules needed you may have to make sure the modules 
can be made available. (Perhaps by copying them to /NEWDISTRO/ and then 
insmod /path/to/modules/ before starting the install script.) 
Having no laptop to try this on, I'm not sure of the details myself.

Once you boot, the CDROM (or floppy) is only used to access the second 
stage installer image and the i386 kernel (if needed) There are lots of 
ways to get around the cdrom not functioning. For example, if you loop 
mount the iso on /mnt/cdrom, the installer will give errors about the 
failed mount, but will still try to see if the files can be accessed.

Please make notes of the process and keep me posted. One of these days, 
I'm going to pick up a used laptop. ;)

- -- 
- -Michael

pgp key:  http://www.tuxfan.homeip.net:8080/gpgkey.txt
Red Hat Linux 7.{2,3} in 8M of RAM: http://www.rule-project.org/
- --
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