Read through this entirely so you can familiarize yourself with the steps, and get the data you need to finish your install.
Since SuSe doesn’t offer free iso download versions of SuSe, I decided to write this guide on how to do an net install (ftp install) of SuSe 9.0 since that is something that they do offer for free, but don’t offer support. They do offer a “guide” to installing SuSe from the net, but it lacks detail and seems intentionally cryptic to me. I wanted to write a step by step guide to make things simpler so others don’t have to search and search for hints on how it’s done. This is my second article on SuSe’s ftp install, the first one was for SuSe 8.2. You can find the older 8.2 article here: http://www.usalug.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=524
The first thing you need to do is select a place to download the boot.iso from. You can do that by searching here : http://www.suse.com/us/private/download/ftp/int_m
Once you have a mirror from SuSe open, you can find the directory where the boot.iso resides, I went to ftp://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/suse/i386/current/bo
After you have the boot iso downloaded, burn the boot.iso file as an image to a blank cdr. (I won’t go into detail here, but there are many helpful tutorials on the net if you need help with that.)
Next, simply insert the disk into your computer, and reboot. You should be rewarded with a screen that displays some welcome message and then be forwarded on to the boot options screen. At this screen you should be able to choose from Installation
Choose Installation — then hit the enter key.
You should get a {Loading Linux Kernel……………} and then proceed to the next screen.
You should get to a MAIN MENU screen. Several options there. Starting with Settings. System Information. Kernel Modules. Start Installation. Exit/Reboot. Power Off.
Choose Settings first. Make sure your Language selection is correct.
Then choose KERNEL MODULES and then select Load network card modules. Choose your network cards modules and load it.
If you need to load other modules do so here before proceeding. When that’s done go back to the main menu and choose START INSTALLATION. Then choose the source medium (NETWORK). Then choose FTP. Then to enable your card to access the internet you need to choose AUTO CONFIG VIA DHCP or do it manually. I choose auto, since I’m on a dsl router that does DHCP.
Next is the hard part. You have to enter the IP ADDRESS of the FTP server. It took me several trys to figure this out. But after a little research, I found that the IP address can be had via the DIG command on Linux.
You must use the dig command in a terminal to find the IP address of whatever FTP server your using. I was using the ftp://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/suse/ FTP server. Using the dig command :
If things have went right so far it should say “trying to connect to ftp server”. Once connected it says “Please enter the directory on the server”
For the ftp://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/suse/ ftp server the correct entry would be:
You should then see a small screen that says “Loading data into ramdisk (46760 kB)WOOT….. the hard part of the install, getting connected, is over!!
After that data is downloaded into the RAM disk, you will be greeted with the YaST Installation and System administration program.
The first thing you get to do is choose your language again. Then Yast detects hardware and checks to see if you want to load those drivers/modules. Choosing yes to detected hardware seems like a no brainer to me… so choose yes. The rest of the installation seems fairly straightforward and should be easy. The YaST installer has a very NICE partitioning tool.
At a minimum, you should probably have these partitions.
swap 500 mb unless you have alot of ram
NOTE: You can let SuSe auto-partition your drive for you. I decided to go that route this time and ended up with a 1 gig swap partition and a 5 gig root partition on my 6 gig test drive. While I’m not sure that’s the best setup, it did work fine.
The net install once it begins does take some time, even with fast connections. The servers are all running and alot of time are running at full capacity. My connection, installing KDE and the rest of the default install, takes about 3 hours or a little more. I set it up to start downloading the packages right before I go to bed
Wake up and finish the install, setting root password, users, graphic card settings, and that’s about it. Reboot and you get rewarded with a SuSe 9.0 Linux Desktop workstation !! I’m very impressed with the ease of use of the SuSe enviroment. I look forward to using it more and more.
I hope this short tutorial was useful to you. If so, let me know
Main Download Page http://www.suse.com/us/private/download/suse_linu
SuSe Mirrors Page http://www.suse.com/us/private/download/ftp/int_m
The installation guideline ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/9.0/README.FTP
Most current version of this article: http://www.usalug.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=8161
By Crouse
http://www.usalug.org
USA Linux Users Group”
Link: usalug.org
Category:
- Linux
