[Tfug] Debian Install from Floppies

[Jeremy D. Rogers]

On Sun, 11 Jul 2004 01:34:05 -0700 "Bill M." <beelymagee at cox.net> wrote:

BM> I'm having some difficulties getting an old laptop (that won't boot from 
BM> a CD-ROM) to install Debian or any other minimal distro. This is a 
BM> Pentium 1/100, 1.2 Gb HD, 40 Mb RAM, with a 3Com 3c589 PCMCIA NIC. I've 
BM> been trying some smaller Linux distributions: Vector 3.2, older 
BM> Slackware (8.1), and Debian. I was able to install Mandrake 7.2--booted 
BM> from a floppy created with RawriteWin (or the "dd" command in Linux) -- 
BM> but still a bit too much on the bloat side and packages installed in the 
BM> typical screwy Mandrake locations. I do want to have X on this laptop: 
BM> XFCE or IceWM or FluxBox  would be great. I'm not even considering any 
BM> version of KDE or Gnome.

Thats whatI do for my laptop as well. I actually timed the startup from
power-on to logged-in using gdm/kdm and gnome or kde (2m50s) vs xdm with
fluxbox (1m24s). Light is good for older laptops!

BM> I can get Debian RESCUE disk to boot and was finally able to get it to 
BM> recognize the ROOT.bin disk that started the install process. I'm trying 
BM> to use my CIS-225 boot CD as install source, but no go. I tried a Woody 
BM> boot CD, but still no go. I have a Cox cable connection so I suppose I 
BM> could do a network install, but I'd see that taking the better part of a 
BM> day.

No way! I have used the debian beta installer quite a bit lately. Its
actually quite good.  Shouldn't take long at all. One important note: If
you install using the beta installer, you will be given the option of which
version of debian to install. Always pick testing. As of last week, any
other choice led to problems for me.

http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

The cd version is 110MB, but there are many other media options. When I
made my wife's dual boot system the other day, I had no cdrom at all and
just downloaded the root/boot images to the win2k partition, booted a win98
boot floppy with loadlin on it, booted the debian installer, and did a net
install.

Anyway, I would recommend the boot floppies and then do a net install. As
far as keeping to a minimal system, thats easy. The new installer installs
a fairly lean base, and then asks you to use either "taskselect",
"aptitude" or "dselect" (or maybe it was dpkg). I selected taskselect and
then selected no tasks. Once the system was bootable, I just apt-got the
xfree86 packages and fluxbox and other things as I needed them.

BM> I seem to be going round-n-round on this. Any tips or pointers about a 
BM> Debian install on this old system? I'd also like to get a non-GUI 
BM> mail/news client installed to pull mail from Cox, but first things first!
BM> I'd like to stick with Debian for this. I've done other installations 
BM> when the system can boot from the CD, but this booting from the floppies 
BM> has me a bit frustrated. Thanks in advance for any and all help.

Boot floppies are horrible and unreliable. If there is another way to get
the media to your box, your better off. I read in the docs (see link above)
that you should be able to boot a single boot floppy and then point to,
say, the cdrom for the irest of the installation files. 

If you have more question, please let me know. 
Good luck,
JDR