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Compaq Contura Aero Frequently Asked Questions
Section - 3.3.6.4 Installation without Floppy

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[C] Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1998 13:08:27 -0800
From: bgeer <bgeer@xmission.com>
Subject: 2.5" disk in desktop, Linux install, ...

 >Date: Sun, 11 Jan 1998 12:37:02 -0600 (CST)
 >From: "Allan 'Norm' Crain" <allanc@idea-inc.com>
 >Subject: Installing Linux on a floppyless Aero...
 >
 >[1] problem, though: I have no floppy drive. ... This is
 >going to make the Linux installation a bit of a bitch, especially since the
 >new hard drive is NOT bootable.

I tried floppy-less Linux boot w/ RedHat & Debian & gave up.  I
succeeded with Slackware 3.4 cdrom's net.i bootdsk & pcmcia.gz
rootdsk, using loadlin to boot them from DOS.  The command line is
something like

        loadlin net.i initrd=pcmcia.gz

Oh, I forgot to mention I have a PCMCIA Ethernet card - once the
install kernel was running, I nfs mounted my desktop's cdrom drive on
/mnt & everything worked just like the cdrom was local.

Check my URL http://www.xmission.com/~bgeer/laptop_aero.html for an
all too wordy diatribe on my Linux install.  So far, when it works, it
works great.  The Aero/Linux/Apache/PERL setup is a zippy little
server of HTML & cgi-bin's.  See below, tho.

[Q] I'd like to also install Linux on my new Aero. The problem is, I don't have
a floppy drive.

[A] You would be best off by finding someone who could do the first phase of
the install on an UMSDOS system, use ZIP to make a zipfile out of it, install
the zipfile under DOS, and then try to boot a kernel with UMSDOS support off
that.

[A] Well, the one sensible way to install Linux for DOS-machine without floppy
is to use LOADLIN command from DOS. That requires root filesystem installed to
your DOS-partition and of course kernel file, which is loaded by LOADLIN. You
can find LOADLIN from linux-sites from .../slackware/contents directory. There
should be also more detailed instructions available.

[A] It can be done (I did it) - there are at least two Linux distributions on
sunsite.unc.edu that can be installed directly over an MS-DOS filesystem
(usually in the directory C:\linux). They take 15 to 20 MB of harddisk space
(plus any swap space you may want). Since X did not work satisfactorily for me
in 4 MB of RAM, I removed Linux - (yeah, wouldn't it be nice to have that 20MB
RAM and 700MB HD 8-).

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Top Document: Compaq Contura Aero Frequently Asked Questions
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Next Document: 3.3.6.5 X-configuration for color

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