On Fri 10 May 2019 at 13:20:39 -0500, David Wright wrote: > On Fri 10 May 2019 at 16:28:09 (+0100), Brian wrote: > > > > I am not sure An Liu is asking for help with installing Red Hat. > > I understand that. But, because of the earlier post that I mentioned before, > https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2019/05/msg00032.html > and the thread where you commented on an overlooked paragraph in > https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/FAQ#Q:_How_can_I_install_sid_.28unstable.29_with_DebianInstaller.3F > I took a look at this page to see if the two ideas were related. > That led me nowhere, but further up this page I did see: > > Q: How to install with boot floppies + netinst.iso mounted as a loop > device in the ramdisk from a ext2 partition?
"boot floppies"; that's a blast from the past! > A: You can boot the installer directly from a hard disk using LILO or > GRUB, and the *hd-media initrd* will find your netinst.iso. See the > DebianInstall for details. Now augmented to be more useful (hopefully). > which takes you up to the DebianInstall page itself. If there were > any details here about that Q&A, they seem to have gone. The closest > approach to an answer would be Debootstrap, but that has nothing to > do with the netinst.iso. I found nothing on the DebianInstall page either and, like you, don't consider debootstrap comes into it. > But it does seem that a recipe to do what's promised by the Q&A > would answer this thread's OP: "Install Debian from Grub+ISO". > I think Greg's reference is the closest approach, but again it > involves debootstrap rather than the d-i. The Q&A implies that > you can jump from Grub into the netinst.iso. The least obvious > part is the *hd-media initrd* referred to above. What and where? Although it is not abundantly clear, I think An Liu was after a way of booting a netinst or DVD-1 image using GRUB's loopback device. This is, as has been said a few times in this thread, not possible using the initrds of those images. Quite a few people have asked for the loop module to be added to d-i's initrd and have even provided patches. Up to now the d-i team have not provided this facility. loopback with GRUB can be done if the hd-media initrd is used with the d-i kernel, but it can be a bit fraught. > My interest in this stems from a Laptop on which you are blind until > the kernel loads (ie text pours down the screen). No boot selection > menu, no CMOS screens, no Grub screens. You are in a bad way. I wouldn't even wish that on those users who see -user as a Windows support list. :) -- Brian.
