Announcement

**Snowhog** · Jun 08, 2008, 02:33 PM

Re: Old laptop. No CD boot, No Network, how to install??

Welcome to the Kubuntu Forums. As one of the 'beards' here (literally, and full of gray to boot), I can appreciate your situation. I'm not the one with the answers, but there are others here who most likely do. Your situation is a challenge to be sure, but most probably not insurmountable. Does the laptop have a CD player or not?

**scot** · Jun 08, 2008, 03:05 PM

Re: Old laptop. No CD boot, No Network, how to install??

It has a CD (BIOS has no option to Boot from the CD) but it uses the same bay as the Floppy Drive so I can only have one installed at any time. I am not sure if it hot swappable, but I think that would depend on the OS not the hardware??

I have tried installing SBM and using that to boot from the CD but it still wouldn't boot. Maybe I was doing it wrong though.

**Snowhog** · Jun 08, 2008, 03:20 PM

Re: Old laptop. No CD boot, No Network, how to install??

That you can't boot from the CD may in fact, present a real problem. It means you can't use any LiveCD. With no network connection, you can't even download the .iso file and create a 'virtual' CD drive to mount it to and perform the installation that way.

Your idea of taking the HD from the laptop and connecting to another working PC, and installing Xubuntu to it and then returning it to the laptop may be the 'best' approach. Others here will chime in on this I'm sure.

**scot** · Jun 08, 2008, 04:59 PM

Re: Old laptop. No CD boot, No Network, how to install??

Just found a thread on a DSL forum...

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/i...ans_Install%29

I may see if I combine the idea with the UNetBootIn stuff detailed at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...=netboot+heron

I will try this tomorrow though as I have to sleep now, but if anyone has any other ideas, keep em coming.

**scot** · Jun 09, 2008, 07:05 AM

Re: Old laptop. No CD boot, No Network, how to install??

OK I have tried to boot with BGRescue disks as detailed here
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/i...ans_Install%29 but it didn't recognise either of the network adapters. I think when it talks about PCMCIA cards, it is talking about ethernet adapters not wireless cards.

I have been thinking about they way we used to install Win98. Ie boot from the setup disk and copy the system files to the HDD, then reboot (and swap out the Floppy for the CD drive) then from within the minimal Win98 OS on the HDD, kick off the Win98 install from the CD.

Is this sort of thing possible with linux? Could I put say DSL on a small partition, then boot into that, then access the install CD and install Xubuntu onto a second partition? If this is doable, then I think I will need some specific advice on what to type once I have DSL installed etc.

**arochester** · Jun 09, 2008, 08:26 AM

Re: Old laptop. No CD boot, No Network, how to install??

1) How much RAM does the computer have?

2) How big is the Hard Drive?

**dibl** · Jun 09, 2008, 09:21 AM

Re: Old laptop. No CD boot, No Network, how to install??

3) Does it have a (working) USB port?

4) Does that old BIOS have a "boot from USB" option? Ooops, you answered that already.

But it does have a functional USB port? Hmmmmmmm.

I made a bootable Win 98 diskette "with CD support" a couple years ago, that comes in handy once in awhile. I don't remember whether it has USB support or not, but it definitely has FDISK and other useful capabilities including the ability to run or copy files on CD ROM. I think Mr. Google can help you find such things, if you don't happen to have your own Win 98 installation CD. I don't recall if Win 95 had that capability or not.

There are some species of Linux designed to be installed from downloaded compressed files. The one that comes to mind is Backtracker which is mainly a wireless net "security validation" tool, to use the euphemism. You can download the .rar file to a USB stick (or copy/burn it on a CD), use your Win 98 boot floppy to run a Win 98 session and (I think) uncompress the .rar from the USB stick or CD onto the clean & formatted (FAT32) hard drive, and then follow the BT3 instructions to have a bootable Linux system, using the "USB version" download file from here:

http://www.remote-exploit.org/backtrack_download.html

I've never played with DSL -- maybe it can do the same thing.

So, how to do that with Kubuntu .... (writing while thinking) possibly you could use the part of Qqmike's "Build a Live Kubuntu Flash Drive":

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3089474.0

if you followed his procedure to put a /boot and a /boot/grub directory on your clean formatted (FAT32) hard drive, then made a Super Grub diskette (link to bigpond site in his notes) and use the Super Grub diskette to install Grub, then where he talks about extracting the contents of the Live CD, you could simply substitute "the hard drive" for "the USB stick", and maybe come up with a bootable OS.

p.s. better use FDISK to make a second small partition (1.5 x RAM) for swap. But you can't format it with FDISK, you'll have to do that after you get a Linux OS running on the first partition.

p.p.s ext3 filesystem would be far better than FAT32, but DOS/Win OSs on diskette don't do that, AFAIK. Maybe FAT32 is good enough for your purposes, given the platform's other shortcomings ....

**scot** · Jun 09, 2008, 11:23 AM

Re: Old laptop. No CD boot, No Network, how to install??

The Craptop...

Ram: 128MB
CPU: Pentium-166
HDD: 3GB
working USB

**dibl** · Jun 09, 2008, 11:37 AM

Re: Old laptop. No CD boot, No Network, how to install??

Ummmmmmmmmm --- that 3GB hdd may be your real limiting factor. You won't be installing standard Kubuntu on that -- you'll be 95% full before you reboot the first time!

I recently bought an Asus Eee PC, which comes with Xandros Linux pre-installed on a 4GB Solid State Disk (SSD). Being the perpetual fiddler, I immediately nuked the Xandros and its "kiddy-toy" appearance, and installed Sidux, a rather lean pure Debian Linux that uses KDE. The basic install was 2.2GB, but by the time I added Firefox, OO wordprocessor and spreadsheet and other common apps, it was at 2.7. So even Sidux would be too large, I think, for your purpose. If I had it to do over again, I think I'd go for Slax on the little Eee PC, and I'm thinking that might be a good way for you to go with that Dell.

http://www.slax.org/

I would pretend your hdd is a USB key, and follow the applicable instructions as I wrote above, plus the Slax installation instructions for USB booting, but on the hdd instead of a USB key. It looks like you could download the tarball file to your other PC, unarchive it there, copy all the files to a USB device, and then use the bootable DOS or Win diskette to copy them over to the hdd, and then to run the bootinst.bat script to make it bootable.

Let us know if it works.

**scot** · Jun 09, 2008, 01:20 PM

Re: Old laptop. No CD boot, No Network, how to install??

Because I am using such an aged laptop, I am trying to use Xubuntu - it should fare better with the Xfce interface than with KDE. I did manage to install it by taking the HDD out and attaching it via a usb caddy to my desktop. The install came to just over 2 gig. The problem with that approach was that when I tried to boot the hdd in the laptop, it stalled at the detecting hardware stage - I guess the pc hardware that it was configured for during the install was just too different to the laptop hardware.

I have found a couple of pages that I am going to take a closer look at...
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/In...veWithFloppies and https://help.ubuntu.com/community/In...tion/FromLinux

I think the option most likely to succeed is to some how boot from a floppy, then access the install files on a usb stick.

**dibl** · Jun 09, 2008, 01:37 PM

Re: Old laptop. No CD boot, No Network, how to install??

Originally posted by scot

I think the option most likely to succeed is to some how boot from a floppy, then access the install files on a usb stick.

I agree. Interesting links -- I'd forgotten about that TomsRtBt diskette -- that could help. Note the requirement to include USB driver.

Good luck -- sounds like a fun project!

Announcement

Old laptop. No CD boot, No Network, how to install??

Old laptop. No CD boot, No Network, how to install??

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment