[atconc]

I'm trying to get RH9 installed on an old box I have lying around. The box had no floppy and I've just discovered that the cdrom drive in it doesn't work any more either. don't have a spare cd rom or floppy drive anywhere and I'm trying to avoid having to take a drive out of one of my functioning comps to install from.

So I was wondering if it's possible to somehow get the box to install over the LAN without having to use a boot disk? I'm pretty sure there's a boot from LAN option in the system's BIOS but I have no idea where to go from there. Any suggestions?

I have working xp, 2000 and 98SE on the three machines that are functioning on the network, so I could use whichever of those is preferable to host the install files.


The system I'm trying to install to is a P3 500 mhz with 320mb ram, segate 17gig HD, ati 8meg graphics, kingston NIC running on an old Gigabyte mobo.

If installing over the LAN isnt possible then would redhat cope ok if I temporarily installed my DVD drive from my XP box to install from and then removed it when the installation completes?

I'm a linux virgin so go slow with me please

Thanks for any help

[TristanSDM]

wow, i have know idea how'd u'd do that. I think it would be easier just to swap the CD drive from the good computer into the broken one for the install then take it out later.

Lemme know if u get the lan thing working, that sounds interesting.

[lynch]

A network install is possible but you probably need a floppy or CD drive to do that.Catch 22,eh?The reason is you need to load the nic drivers somhow to get connected to the network. For what it's worth,Here's how
You can do the drive swap to get Linux installed and remove the DVD afterwards.When you reboot it will ask if you want to remove it from configuration.Say yes
HTH
lynch

[atconc]

thanks for your help guys, I was hoping the network install thing could be easily achieved but it looks like it'll be easier to just move the dvd drive over for a few hours. I think I'll try and pick up a cheap cd rom drive for the linux box when I have some spare cash