Installation without cd-writer

unixguru · 2007-04-06 16:35:01

I don't have a cd writer and have the base iso. Iwould like to use one of the alternate ways of installing found in the wiki, preferably from http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ins … her_distro. But some things like sda instead of hda have been made in th new kernell, So how exactly should my fstab look now. I also tried this one http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fas … nux_System but it's booting but then it tries to search for the /packages which it is unable to find in sda1...sda10. I have ide hardisk and the iso has been extracted to (hd0,9) an ext3 partition and it is not picking it up. Any other ways will also be appreciated.

ebbot · 2007-04-18 12:51:45

sda is pretty much the same as hda. I'm not sure why sda is used but I think it has to do with SCSI controls being enabled. For me I have the first partition on the first drive installed as boot, the second partition on the same drive as swap, and the third as /. I use ext2 for the boot partition and ext3 for the rest (except swap of course). This is how my fstab looks like:

/dev/sda1 /boot ext2 defaults 0 1
/dev/sda2 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/sda3 / ext3 defaults 0 1

A second drive would be called /dev/sdb. Does the drive have 9 partitions? If so I guess you would have to set the above somewhat different, i.e. the numbers and /usr, /var, /home, aso.

fstab should also have:

none                   /dev/pts      devpts    defaults            0      0
none                   /dev/shm      tmpfs     defaults            0      0

/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom   iso9660   ro,user,noauto,unhide   0      0

I hope this is what you meant.

As for the installation, don't you have an USB memory you could put the installation on?

Last edited by ebbot (2007-04-18 12:54:19)

ravster · 2007-04-20 17:07:11

Unixguru:
I am having the same problem as you.
My archcd partition is sda7/hda7 and has the label 'Archcd' (Not very imaginative of me, but thats okay ). The partition I want a new arch system on is '/dev/sda5'. This is an IDE harddrive, but I'm currently running from a Arch testing system, so everything is sda instead of hda.
I followed the instructions telling me to boot from a loopbacked system here and got the following error message for each of the partitions on my drive (from sda11 to sda1).

Looking for new config files on /dev/sda1, checking /config directory...
No files found to copy in /config directory on media disk.
Looking for new packages to install on /dev/sda1, checking /packages directory...

After that the regular mkinitcpio error came up

::Initramfs completed - control passing to kinit
Cannot open root device dev(0,0)
...

The lines I put into grub were

title ArchCD
kernel (hd0,6)/isolinux/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda7 BOOTMEDIA=cd
initrd (hd0,6)/isolinux/initrd.img
title ArchCD
kernel (hd0,6)/isolinux/vmlinuz root=/dev/disk/by-label/Archcd BOOTMEDIA=cd
initrd (hd0,6)/isolinux/initrd.img

Neither of which worked.

I'm currently trying to install using the instructions given here and will put up a post letting you know if it worked or not.
I hope the information I've given helps,
Thanks,
Ravster

gradgrind · 2007-04-20 20:29:04

Some of the wiki stuff is quite old and doesn't apply to the current state of Arch. It would be nice if someone could update these pages, or at least add comments pointing to the bits that don't work any more.

An alternative way to install Arch from another distribution, using ftp to fetch the packages, so you need an internet connection, is my 'archin' script (available on the download page of the larch website). I would be grateful for any feedback on it, positive or negative.

ravster · 2007-04-22 20:49:23

Ok, so I used the instructions from this page and it worked well. The system started and I was able to use it without problems apart from the kernel not booting. This happened since mkinitcpio just doesn't seem to like my system.
So what I did was chroot into the new system, compile my own kernel, and then was able to successfully boot into my system, and was able to add users and install packages and all the other good stuff.
Basically, I was able to install Arch 0.8 using pacman.static from my backup arch system.
Ravster.

synthead · 2007-05-15 19:44:56

I install via FTP most of the time, works like a charm given that you're not doing something bizzare for networking

Arch Linux

#1 2007-04-06 16:35:01

Installation without cd-writer

#2 2007-04-18 12:51:45

Re: Installation without cd-writer

#3 2007-04-20 17:07:11

Re: Installation without cd-writer

#4 2007-04-20 20:29:04

Re: Installation without cd-writer

#5 2007-04-22 20:49:23

Re: Installation without cd-writer

#6 2007-05-15 19:44:56

Re: Installation without cd-writer

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