From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Sep 2 22: 3:20 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AE5FC37B400 for ; Mon, 2 Sep 2002 22:03:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sm13.texas.rr.com (sm13.texas.rr.com [24.93.35.40]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 24CEE43E4A for ; Mon, 2 Sep 2002 22:03:17 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dub@infowave.com) Received: from infowave.com (cs24243234-23.austin.rr.com [24.243.234.23]) by sm13.texas.rr.com (8.12.1/8.12.0.Beta16) with ESMTP id g8357xjQ019678 for ; Tue, 3 Sep 2002 00:08:01 -0500 Message-ID: <3D74427A.3070201@infowave.com> Date: Tue, 03 Sep 2002 00:02:50 -0500 From: Dub Dublin User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.0rc2) Gecko/20020618 Netscape/7.0b1 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Installation without floppy or CD? Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I am wondering how to best attempt the following installation: I have a Toshiba Libretto 50J with *no floppy* and *no CD-ROM* drive. The machine is currently running Mandrake Linux 7.1, and has network connectivity using a Xircom CEM56 CreditCard Ethernet/Modem Adapter, which is a combo card with a 10/100 Ethernet and 56 K modem. I don't care if the modem works when the install is done - although it might come in handy someday, I've not used it in the four years I've owned it. Note that I can easily install from the network, if there is just some way to kick off an FTP install from the hard disk, without requiring floppies. Is this as easy as just blasting the equivalent of the contents of the floppies onto an extra partition and telling LILO to boot from there? It's not clear from the docs what I should do here - I certainly prefer a network install, but I could create a DOS partition and copy the bin image there (who knows exactly what the others do? I can't find that info anywhere...) Unfortunately, the instructions are silent on how I might kick off the process of installing from that image without using floppies. I'm sure this isn't too hard, but this sort of thing will go much more smoothly if I can get it right the first time - reloading anything (even DOS) if I can't do so over the net is a painful process involving disk transplants, and all kinds of problems because of hardware differences. Anyhow, the answers to this question should perhaps be added to the Installation docs, since I'm sure others have similar problems, especially if they're working with embedded or other non-PC devices. Thanks, Dub To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message