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#1 2008-04-13 07:54:11

taulin
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Registered: 2008-04-13
Posts: 3

no-cd install while running linux

im not entirely new to linux, but ive sort of been learning as ive been going along

i have a gentoo box thats getting fairly out of date, installed it at 2.6.15, its going along fairly stable but various new applications require newer kernel versions and my attempted kernel upgrade didnt work too well so i am thinking of switching to archlinux seeing it appears to make both kernel and application upgrades simpler

the problem is that my box is fairly important to keep running, it does my network routing, webserver, wireless access point and more, so i would want it down for as little time as possible and get it reconfigured, data transferred and back running quickly

i have a second empty hard drive the same size as the current drive in it, would it be possible to mount or extract the ftp install iso for archlinux and then run the setup to start install the base system files to the second drive and then chroot to complete the installation and configuration, and then copy the data across, configure boot loader, swap drives, pray and then boot?

or will i have to bit a nail or two and rewire my network and install from cd and then copy data and config across from the gentoo drive?

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#2 2008-04-13 14:38:19

pyther
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Registered: 2008-01-21
Posts: 1,395
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Re: no-cd install while running linux


Website - Blog - arch-home
Arch User since March 2005

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#3 2008-04-13 20:56:00

taulin
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Registered: 2008-04-13
Posts: 3

Re: no-cd install while running linux

how much of the arch system can i safely build before the reboot?

can i get like samba, apache, mysql, madwifi, dhcpd and tinydns installed before booting arch?

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#4 2008-04-13 21:31:39

pyther
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Registered: 2008-01-21
Posts: 1,395
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Re: no-cd install while running linux

^^
In theory you should be able to configure everything within a chroot.
Although what works and doesn't work when you boot it live is up in the air. If did everything correctly it should work, but there probably going to be things that don't work.

You can use qemu and tell qemu to use you second physical hard drive as the virtual drive. Everything should work unchanged with maybe the exception of /etc/fstab


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#5 2008-04-14 00:34:44

taulin
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Registered: 2008-04-13
Posts: 3

Re: no-cd install while running linux

i notice there is a similar guide of relevance in the wiki ->> http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ins … her_distro

which has a slightly different approach to the installation ("livecd" has a bootstrap script and "from within another distro" seems to involve just downloading pacman and building the base system with it), obviously there is a bit of a difference between a system running from a livecd and one running from a hard drive, but is this enough to choose one of these methods over the other? or should it not matter?

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#6 2008-04-14 00:45:08

pyther
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Registered: 2008-01-21
Posts: 1,395
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Re: no-cd install while running linux

Either solution should work. I have only used Installing Arch from a Live


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