> you could always do a floppy install for the base stuff. > > and then use that base install to get the cdrom working, when you get the > cdrom working you can use dselect and point it to get the packages off the > cdrom.
Assuming you have a SCSI pcmcia card, -and- the slink installer finds it, it should, well, just work. Sadly I don't know which SCSI pc-cards are well enough supported ... my external CD is an Addonics (thus ATAPI IDE) and worked great. Anyways if it works this way, you only need 2 floppies, not 7 or more. There is a PLIP Install HOWTO which I hear was recently updated. It's good if you don't have some other form of net connection. > or if you have a fast connection, you can bypass the cdrom altogether and > use dselect to download everything after you install the base system. Please let's not forget the power of a cross connect cable to a well behaved box. One can even use apt-proxy or apt-zip (depending on connected behavior) to help the task along. > On Sat, Feb 19, 2000 at 11:09:20PM -0800, John Miskinis wrote: > > Hello, > > > > I wish to re-install slink on a partition, and my Thinkpad 560 > > has no builtin CDROM drive. I am very close to getting a small > > floppy linux system working that can talk to my SCSI CDROM. > > > > What is the best way to go about a (re)install? My initial > > install(s) required me to copy the whole CD to a vfat partition > > under Win95, and fix up symlinks, etc., and I do not wish to do > > this all over again. There are distributions optimized for living in UMSDOS space if you really must do this. (Anyone know if one of them is debian based?) But if you're worried about your hibernation volume I don't think it cares if MSwin still lives there or even works; it just wants a FAT fs to live in. You still need to have enough space for it plus a bit of overhead (my 96 Mb system needed about 100 Mb) and you might want room for the textmode Thinpad tools to remain, but you can safely ditch Windows if you want to. > > When I get a floppy boot or even a small linux partition talking > > to my CDROM, can I easily wipe out my hda5 partition and put > > a fresh copy of slink on it? You can probably boot into a rescue floppy such as Tom's Root/Boot (www.toms.net/rb/) and suck down the base.tgz file that way, if you have net connectivity. You could certainly use it to set the partitions the way you like. Tom's has some pcmcia ability but probably you need to insmod exactly what you want - pcmcia_core, (whatever your bridge is, usually i82365), pcnet_cs... then, I don't remember if it has dhcp or otherwise > > Many thanks for any info. I could not find the debian-laptop-FAQ > > mentioned a few months ago in the archives! > > > > John Miskinis Hmmm... now I'll have to look for it myself; I don't remember seeing that, but I deal with a lot of mail, so I could have missed it. Ah, search engines are wonderful things! * Heather
