CentOS 4.2 for alpha

[Michal Jaegermann]

On Fri, Oct 21, 2005 at 10:48:17PM +0300, Pasi Pirhonen wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 21, 2005 at 02:30:11PM -0400, Robert Williams wrote:
> > 
> > Now I'm looking at the floppy boot images, generic.img
> > etc...they are too big.   My boxes only see the floppy
> > device and one hard disk.  Can anyone give some advice
> > about whether I should try this install and how to get
> > started?
> 
> 
> From the methods you seem to be able to so, i'd say putting the 
> 
> /kernels/vmlinux.gz
> /images/cdrom.img
> 
> on running system /boot dir and making suitable aboot entry for it,
> should get one going. It would be one wat trip tho when installed over,

If you have enough space on /boot to add your "run-kernel" to the mix
then you do not have to reformat that partition and then you can try
multiple times if some extra kernel options turn out to be handy.
I would refrain from converting that partition to ext3 in any case.
What you will reformat during an installation is indeed "one-way".

If you do not have a suitable small partition to mount on /boot you
should be able to carve one using resize2fs.  I do not know if it is
available in an installation image but once you booted into a "rescue"
mode you can bring a network up and pull in various extra tools
(assuming, of course, that you have a network and something to put there
as a server - at least some of ftp, http, ssh, rsync will be available).

> When there actually is no CD-ROM and the rest of the installer, it
> failsafes and ask you from where you want to fetch the sencond stage
> installer (ftp,http,nfs) and walk you thru from there.

A network install should be actually faster than swapping CDs in
a slow drive, even if one available.  You need a disk space, even
if only for a time beeing, for a content of installation CDs.
In a pinch you should be able to install from a partition of your
own drive.  Whatever will later become /home likely should be big
enough.  You can always reformat that one later.  I did not ever
try something of that sort to that extent but it should work.

If you can attach that disk to some other Linux machine then
a "screwdriver solution" for preparing an initial disk layout is
also possible; aboot surely fits on a floppy.  Check first that
you indeed can boot using installation images.

   Michal