Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on July 11, 2003 04:40 AM
Very tough without network access. Several options, though. 1) get a Xircom parallel port ethernet adapter or buy a cheap 10/100 PCMCIA card if your laptop has PCMCIA. If it doesn't, you should really consider a newer laptop. If not, make sure your laptop has at least a 486 as even most old distros don't run out-of-the-box on anything less.
Not easy, but perhaps easier than the other ways posted.<nobr> <wbr></nobr>;-)
1) (Xircom method) Set up an FTP server (using Linux or Windows) and then use a Red Hat boot floppy image (use Rawrite to create it) to boot the laptop. Choose FTP install (HTTP/web server, NFS servers are other options) and go for it.) I recommend you use either an older version of Red Hat -- security updates probably aren't quite as important for a laptop that isn't connected to the Net full-time -- or a new version of red hat with virtually nothing installed -- install RPM's yourself by hand. 2) (Xircom method) Get one of the boot floppy images that support NFS, Samba, wget, or rsync and do a Gentoo install. You need to fdisk and format (ReiserFS recommended) your hard disk and then wget down the Stage one tarballs.
3) Do the same thing as #3 except put the various stage tarballs (all of them except for #3 are less than 100MB) on Zip disks. However, you're not going to be able to add many additional packages without a network package.
In short, you really need a) a network card or b) a cdrom drive to really make this valuable. If you have a choice, pick a network card as while it will be more difficult to do the install, it will ultimately be more valuable to you in the end. Plus those PCMCIA NICS are cheap. (Xircoms parallel port NICS are SLOW and probably work poorly under Linux.)
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Re:"old" laptop
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on July 11, 2003 04:40 AM1) get a Xircom parallel port ethernet adapter or buy a cheap 10/100 PCMCIA card if your laptop has PCMCIA. If it doesn't, you should really consider a newer laptop. If not, make sure your laptop has at least a 486 as even most old distros don't run out-of-the-box on anything less.
Not easy, but perhaps easier than the other ways posted.<nobr> <wbr></nobr>;-)
1) (Xircom method) Set up an FTP server (using Linux or Windows) and then use a Red Hat boot floppy image (use Rawrite to create it) to boot the laptop. Choose FTP install (HTTP/web server, NFS servers are other options) and go for it.) I recommend you use either an older version of Red Hat -- security updates probably aren't quite as important for a laptop that isn't connected to the Net full-time -- or a new version of red hat with virtually nothing installed -- install RPM's yourself by hand.
2) (Xircom method) Get one of the boot floppy images that support NFS, Samba, wget, or rsync and do a Gentoo install. You need to fdisk and format (ReiserFS recommended) your hard disk and then wget down the Stage one tarballs.
3) Do the same thing as #3 except put the various stage tarballs (all of them except for #3 are less than 100MB) on Zip disks. However, you're not going to be able to add many additional packages without a network package.
In short, you really need a) a network card or b) a cdrom drive to really make this valuable. If you have a choice, pick a network card as while it will be more difficult to do the install, it will ultimately be more valuable to you in the end. Plus those PCMCIA NICS are cheap. (Xircoms parallel port NICS are SLOW and probably work poorly under Linux.)
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