[Rule] my two cents

[chris at idlelion.net]

On Wed, 22 Aug 2007, James Miller wrote:

> On Wed, 22 Aug 2007, Richard Kweskin wrote:

> Apart from Fedora 7 I have tried to find a slinky sort of script or (by 
> hand) way of getting a minimal install of Debian Etch. I have only 
> succeeded so far in getting Debian on my old sony vaio (pentium 1 mmx 
> with 64MB and no cd except an external pcmcia thing) by just copying 
> over a virgin minimal Debian install from my network to its hd, booting 
> with a floppy containing grub nad getting in that way.

Would the floppy images on this page will help: 
http://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/etch/main/installer-i386/current/images/ 
? That boots you into a very basic system from which a netinstall can load 
everything else. That presumes an internet connection and, as you might 
guess, the faster the connection, the better. It's been 3 years or so 
since I've done a Debian instal starting with floppies, but I presume it 
still works as it used to. I think there might well be a way to specify an 
installation CD as the package repository, thereby overiding the 
netinstall's attempts to get all packages from the network.

James

_______________________________________________

Another attempt:

This is cool: http://www.thisiscool.com/fcfloppy.htm

Lets you install Fedora from floppies and works on FC3, 4 and 5. I used it 
on a PII laptop with no CD drive successfully. I made a set for FC6 with 
the same result.

It still has the system requirements of Anaconda, and it doesn't work on 
my 486 of course, because the stock Fedora kernels need a Pentium or 
later, but it's another option for some.

Slackware also supported floppy install for a long time.

Chris