Arch Linux

sn0n

Member

From: Antioch, CA

Registered: 2004-08-31

Posts: 31

Website

No Floppy / No CD Install.

Ok, here is the situation, i have an Sony VAIO Laptop (one of the smaller ones without a cd drive or floppy drive) and im wanting to install Arch onto it.. i do have a second partition setup (right now NTFS, but can/will format).. but unfortunately have NO IDEA how to install and setup arch on it.. also, my eth0 will be a usb (one of the thumbdrive looking ones from linksys).. Please someone send me in a direction of setting this up from within a windows env.. noting that i cant boot from floppy or cd.. odd i know..

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kleptophobiac

Member

From: Sunnyvale, CA

Registered: 2004-04-25

Posts: 489

Re: No Floppy / No CD Install.

There's no onboard NIC?

phrakture

Arch Overlord

From: behind you

Registered: 2003-10-29

Posts: 7,879

Website

Re: No Floppy / No CD Install.

Sounds like Xentac's laptop - he had to bootstrap it via another system....

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Xentac

Forum Fellow

From: Victoria, BC

Registered: 2003-01-17

Posts: 1,797

Website

Re: No Floppy / No CD Install.

I didn't actually have to bootstrap it from another system...

My laptop (r505el) has a base station that has a cd drive.  The problem with mine is that it's a firewire cd drive.

The problem with yours is you can't boot anything other than the hard drive, which is a big problem.  You only option sounds like it's pulling out the hard drive and popping it into another machine.

Unless you found some tool to boot a cd image off of your hard drive...  Actually, vmware could do it.

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tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: No Floppy / No CD Install.

Yeah, that usb NIC is a killer.

Here's two ideas. I've never heard of anyone using them with Arch, I've never had to try them myself, and I've no idea if they'll work:

1. Use loadlin, with a DOS partition if necessary.
2. Use cygwin, with archbootstrap.

Probably no good, but I''ve just been out with my wonderful wife for some excellent Italian cuisine, and I'm feeling good.

The wine and limoncello have nothing to do with it, of course. 

paranoos

Member

From: thornhill.on.ca

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 442

Re: No Floppy / No CD Install.

maybe you can boot from a usb pen drive... do you have one?
i think Damn Small Linux would run from that, and you can use the archbootstrap script (previously mentioned) to install Arch.