totse.com | Fedora and Debian Installation questions

KING G · #1 2007-05-06, 18:28

I've finaly decided to install Fedora 6 on my PC via partations, the booter reformated and began installing, it asked me to pick which packages I wanted to install, I picked the very basic stuff, anyhow, it installed and asked me to insert CD 2|3 in, the problem is I don't have it, and I was under the experssion that It would install it from one cd.

the problem is that I don't want to install it from more than one CD, is there an option or some thing that I missed on the installation?

and does the LiveCD version of Debian require the same process?

thanks alot, If anyone can find a newbie friendly tutorial for linux related topics, please give me so I can stop spamming this forum with retarded question!

BiOPSY · #2 2007-05-06, 19:50

IF you choose to use the installation media, a minimilistic install with no extra packages selected in te installer for Fedora requires disc 1 and 2.

You can use the boot.iso which is only 8MB though, and choose to install from a network server. The boot.iso is here:
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pu...mages/boot.iso

That's for x86 32 bit PC, if you need a different one, let me know.

EDIT: The need for disc 1 and 2 is due to not optimizing the discs with packages laid in in such a way that only the first discs is required, you need disc 1 and 2 but not every package on those discs are used for a minimilistic install. This is something they are working to correct by changing splittree.py. You could also use the DVD ISO image.

KING G · #3 2007-05-06, 19:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by BiOPSY View Post

IF you choose to use the installation media, a minimilistic install with no extra packages selected in te installer for Fedora requires disc 1 and 2.

You can use the boot.iso which is only 8MB though, and choose to install from a network server. The boot.iso is here:
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pu...mages/boot.iso

That's for x86 32 bit PC, if you need a different one, let me know.

EDIT: The need for disc 1 and 2 is due to not optimizing the discs with packages laid in in such a way that only the first discs is required, you need disc 1 and 2 but not every package on those discs are used for a minimilistic install. This is something they are working to correct by changing splittree.py. You could also use the DVD ISO image.

so it is not possible, in any way, to install fedora as basic as possible from the disk that I have?

BiOPSY · #4 2007-05-07, 00:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by KING G View Post

so it is not possible, in any way, to install fedora as basic as possible from the disk that I have?

Yes, but it would require you obtain a boot floppy, like tomsrbt that has RPM on it. Since you sound like a younger persona than I am, you probably don't have a floppy drive, because they are "phased out" or whatever other excuse people can come up with saying that a 1.44MB boot device is just worthless nowadays.

You can also download the diskboot.img and write it to a USB device or flash stick, and use that.

If you have a floppy drive, I can try to make you a floppy with RPM on it.

KING G · #5 2007-05-07, 01:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by BiOPSY View Post

Yes, but it would require you obtain a boot floppy, like tomsrbt that has RPM on it. Since you sound like a younger persona than I am, you probably don't have a floppy drive, because they are "phased out" or whatever other excuse people can come up with saying that a 1.44MB boot device is just worthless nowadays.

You can also download the diskboot.img and write it to a USB device or flash stick, and use that.

If you have a floppy drive, I can try to make you a floppy with RPM on it.

hahhahaha

I have a p1 with two floppies buddy.

BiOPSY · #6 2007-05-07, 02:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by KING G View Post

hahhahaha

I have a p1 with two floppies buddy.

Alright, give me a bit of time and I will post back with a floppy image, and tell you how to install it Fedora. It's probably going to be more work than neccessary, when you can just download the boot.iso and install over the network, but whatever. Give me a few hours.

(The kernel build time will be the most time consuming.)

KING G · #7 2007-05-07, 04:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by BiOPSY View Post

Alright, give me a bit of time and I will post back with a floppy image, and tell you how to install it Fedora. It's probably going to be more work than neccessary, when you can just download the boot.iso and install over the network, but whatever. Give me a few hours.

(The kernel build time will be the most time consuming.)

you're actually building one?

BiOPSY · #8 2007-05-07, 05:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by KING G View Post

you're actually building one?

You have to. There is no Linux distribution I know of with a 2.6.x kernel that fits on a floppy disk. There are just too many generic and default compiled options in the kernel nowadays for standard hardware.

KING G · #9 2007-05-07, 06:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by BiOPSY View Post

You have to. There is no Linux distribution I know of with a 2.6.x kernel that fits on a floppy disk. There are just too many generic and default compiled options in the kernel nowadays for standard hardware.

there are allways other options like installing the two disks (which I'm doing right now).

BiOPSY · #10 2007-05-07, 11:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by KING G View Post

there are allways other options like installing the two disks (which I'm doing right now).

That's fine.
I was able to get the kernel down to be about 500KB, as you can see here:

Quote:

Root device is (253, 0)
Boot sector 512 bytes.
Setup is 6873 bytes.
System is 586 kB
Kernel: arch/i386/boot/bzImage is ready (#5)

Unfortunately, niether an initramfs nor initrd would compress small enough to also fit within the leftover space on a floppy, which has busybox, and it's required libraries, as you can see here:

Quote:

[root@localhost tmp]# ls -l initrd.ext2.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1431861 May 7 06:40 initrd.ext2.gz
[root@localhost tmp]#

NASH was no smaller, in fact NASH is about 2MB it's self, but it is statically compiled. BEtween busybox and libc.so.6 I could not get the initrd nor the initramfs both methods which I tried, to be smaller than about 1.4MB. Simply not enough room.

Let me know how your installation of Fedora goes.