Vector Linux install
What a great little distro this is turning out to be. I am seriously considering trying it on my main Desktop. I have been after a fast, light weight OS for my laptop and this is it. Dropped loading times of OOo by half compared to Slackware and Ubuntu.
So installing on a system with no CDROM and a LPT port connected floppy drive can be a bit tedious. Vector comes with so nice shell scripts to use to install (see
here for more details), such as:
- Install with the contents of the CD on a partition
- Install using the ISO file on a partition
- from a CD but booting off a floppy to being the process
The system i wanted to try and install onto for a friend was a laptop with no CDROM and no floppy built in (but an external FDD as mentioned about). This was looking easy as i could boot it off the network here at work and copy over the iso image and run the iso install script. But during my partioning and reboting the system magically lost its ability to boot from the PXE. So onto trying to use the contents of the CD on a partition of its own. For some reason this just refused to work. I tried putting then in a type of mirrored tree, no go. Then tried all in a dir called veclinux, no go. And then all just in the root of the partitio, still nothing. So then i found the ISO install method. Looks promising but launching from Toms Root Boot floppy fails right at thestart complainging i need to login as root, which i had. I take its becasue the boot floppy doesnt have all the commands needed; it does say to install from a Linux host, not a Linux bot disk. So what next ?? Well luckily i have other laptops here that are the same make up, except they are a little larger and contain a CDROM. So i have installed on one of them, used out Acronis True Image (you could use dd just as easily), placed it on the 'home' (hda6) partition, and then booted with the Acronis True Imahe floppies to put it on this system......
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