[Rabid Rodent]

I have a Compaq Armada, which is a ~500MHz lappy 12Gb HD and 192Mb RAM, running Win XP (just about). The odd thing about it is that it doesn't have any removable disk drives: no floppy, no CD. However, it is networked quite happily. Thus it cannot be booted from anything other than its own HD, or if it can be booted over the network, I haven't a clue how to set this up. However I can partition the HD and get stuff onto it to my heart's content but only onto the NT and FAT32 partitions. What I would like to do is install Linux, but to do this I would have to have a distro that can run from Windows. I don't particularly want to run "Linux under Windows", I just need to install it initially from HD (and thus from Windows). Anything that needs to boot from a CD or floppy is no use. As you will appreciate, if this exercise renders my HD unbootable, that's it, the lappy goes into landfill, so for the time being I have installed a multi-booter (OSL) which should be fine unless the distro insists on putting GRUB or LILO in the MBR and the installation fails. If the Linux loader can go on the Linux partition I would be happier. I don't mind doing a two-stage install if that's what it takes, but I am not familiar with command-line Linux so if I need to type stuff in, I'll have to be told exactly what to do.

Any ideas anyone?

[killah]

hmm, i know you can install linux via network connection, its slower, but can be done. Question is, how to get the laptop's HD imaged with the linux network boot img....thats beyond me...i am sure someone will let us know though..

[happyrck]

do you have a usb port ? if so you might be able to connect an external Cd drive and run a "live" linux distro such as knoppix or unbuntu that will run right from the CD drive and doesn't put anything on your harddrive unless you set up a separate partition for it. you can also install the linux OS to that partition and duel boot your system

[Rabid Rodent]

Hi, happyrck, yes there's a USB port but I haven't got an external CD and it's not worth buying one just for this. I was hoping to put "real Linux" on the system.

killah - how do you start the network install? The system boots up in Windows so AFAIK I'm limited to file transfers into NT and FAT32 partitions. I'd be happy to install Linux onto FAT32 if I have to but there's still the problem of getting a Linux boot loader into the boot record.

[jiml8]

You are setting down a set of requirements that will be nearly impossible to satisfy. Problem is, there are very few ways to go about this at all, and you will have no oipportunity to debug; you get it right the first time or you are done. What are the odds? Very very slim.

If the laptop has wake on lan, you *might* make something happen that way; at least, it'll try to boot from the LAN.

[Rabid Rodent]

jiml8 - "You are setting down a set of requirements that will be nearly impossible to satisfy."

I don't know why it should be inherently difficult. You can do what you like to a partition but distros usually choose to do everything from a bootable medium. There is no reason why it shouldn't be installed from within Windows since a huge number of people must wish to do exactly that and find it a pain to have to burn a CD (assuming they have CD reader in the target system). It would mean having a Windows program to

1 launch the installer or
2 create a bootable stub for a "free code" installer or
3 create a tiny Linux installation to run an installer under Linux or
4 (horror!) run the installer as Windows app.

"you get it right the first time or you are done"... No, like I said, I already have a safe multi-booter in the MBR etc: I can boot to XP or ME. The main thing would be to avoid overwriting the MBR with the Linux loader, but standard SuZE, for example, offers you the option of putting GRUB in the Linux boot sector, so no problems there.

Cheers

[killah]

well, anyone with more linux knowledge then me know how to take a img file, such as the network install img for linux, and make it go to a small partition of the hard drive, instead of a floppy?