It seems there are several people trying to get Fedora installed on one
machine that doesn't have a DVD drive (but does have a CD drive), and
have another Linux machine around with a DVD drive or a DVD iso image.
Here are cut-to-the-chase instructions for using HTTP for a network
install and the boot.iso image on a CD as the boot media.
One machine A, the one with the DVD drive or image (these instructions
assume that this system is running FC6, but these should be easily
adapted to other distributions or releases):
1. Mount the installation image:
If the image is on DVD and was automatically mounted: find the
mountpoint and replace "/mnt/f7" with that mountpoint in all of the
following instructions
If the image is on DVD and is not automatically mounted: mkdir /mnt/f7 ;
mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/f7
If the image is in an .iso file: mkdir /mnt/f7 ; mount -o loop
ISOFILE /mnt/f7
(Where ISOFILE is the name of your DVD iso image,
e.g., /tmp/Fedora-7-i386/F-7-i386-DVD.iso )
2. Burn the 'images/boot.iso' file to a CD:
If the image is on DVD:
- Get the boot.iso file: cp /mnt/f7/images/boot.iso /tmp/
- Unmount the DVD: umount /mnt/f7
- Swap the DVD for a blank CD
- Burn it: cdrecord -dao -dev=/dev/cdrom /tmp/boot.iso
If the installation image is in an .iso file:
- Insert a blank CD
- Burn it: cdrecord -dao -dev=/dev/cdrom /mnt/f7/images/boot.iso
Remove the CD now.
ALTERNATIVE: Use the images/diskboot.img file on a USB flash drive.
(Required warning: this will erase all data on your USB flash drive).
Insert the USB flash drive, check the drive ID, then issue this command:
dd if=/mnt/f7/images/diskboot.img of=/dev/sd?
Where /dev/sd? is the device name for your flash drive.
(You'll need to partition and format your USB flash drive later to get
the full capacity back: DRIVE=/dev/sd? ; dd if=/dev/zero of=$DRIVE
bs=512 count=1 ; parted $DRIVE mklabel msdos ; parted -- $DRIVE mkpart
primary fat32 1 -1 ; mkfs -t vfat ${DRIVE}1 ).
3. If the installation image is on a DVD and you burned a CD boot disk,
repeat step 1 to get the DVD mounted again.
4. Install Apache if necessary: yum install -y apache
5. Set up Apache to serve the F7 files:
ln -s /mnt/f7 /var/www/html/fedora
setenforce 0
service httpd start
The 'setenforce 0' is required because the security context of the F7
files does not permit them to be served by httpd.
On machine B, the one with only a CD drive and a network connection to
machine A:
1. Boot from the CD (or USB flash drive).
2. Select the language and keyboard when prompted.
3. Select the HTTP install method.
4. Configure your networking (usually this means disabling the IPV6
option, then selecting DHCP or manually entering the network
parameters).
5. Enter the server IP address (not name) and the directory name
"fedora".
6. Enjoy the rest of the normal installation process.
I think these instructions are reasonably complete and accurate -- I did
this earlier this evening because my laptop's DVD drive couldn't
successfully verify several DVDs that I burned.
The installation speed for this network installation was impressive,
matching or beating the time that I'd expect from an optical disc
installation.
Hope this info is useful--
--
Chris Tyler
http://dailypackage.fedorabook.com/
