Faster Installing or No CD writer

vacant · 2004-11-05 10:03:29

Hello All.

My first post to the forum after playing the Arch for a few days. I'm getting things the way I want them - thanks for a great distro. Five years ago I first started using Linux as my OS with SuSE, then Mandrake, Slackware and now Yoper so I'm not really a "distro tart" though I've toyed with Gentoo, Debian, Knoppix, Linspire, Slax, Red Hat ... the list goes on.

I searched the Wiki and forums but haven't found the installation method I use because I don't have a CD writer. It works for Arch (hell, it even worked for Linspire):

You need one more spare partition bigger than the arch CD iso. Here I'm logged in as root and am using "/dev/hda12" which happens to be 6GB.

1) Copy the iso to the spare partition:

dd if=arch-0.7-beta2-base.iso of=/dev/hda12

2) Mount the partition somewhere (you can use option -tiso9660 but mount should work it out):

mkdir /mnt/archCD
mount /dev/hda12 /mnt/archCD

3) I don't use grub but this works for lilo. Edit lilo.conf and add:

image=/mnt/archCD/isolinux/vmlinuz
        label=archCD
        initrd=/mnt/archCD/isolinux/initrd.img
        append="root=/dev/rd/0 BOOTMEDIA=cd"

then don't forget to run:

lilo

4) Reboot and select archCD, when the installer asks if you're using CD or SRC, you can hop out to another shell and:

mount -tiso9660 /dev/discs/disc0/part12 /src

then hop back and install from hard drive.

Sorry if this has been posted somewhere I didn't spot but since Arch is meant to be fast it can't hurt highlighting a faster install process - no CD burning or reading, no making boot floppies.

juggz · 2004-11-08 05:22:00

Thanks a lot!

I had aldready downloaded and burnt 0.6 extra but somebody suggested I update to 0.7. Using your method I saved myself a CD as well as time. The whole thing took less than 10 minutes to install (including partitioning, configuring, installing package, etc). The copy of the files itself took barely a few seconds

rasat · 2004-11-08 06:18:04

Welcome to Arch Linux.

This was interesting!
I suggest you post in wiki.

vacant · 2004-11-08 09:22:34

rasat wrote:

I suggest you post in wiki.

Got a PM suggesting this a couple of days ago so Fast Arch Install from existing Linux System from the Install wiki page

Arch Linux

#1 2004-11-05 10:03:29

Faster Installing or No CD writer

#2 2004-11-08 05:22:00

Re: Faster Installing or No CD writer

#3 2004-11-08 06:18:04

Re: Faster Installing or No CD writer

#4 2004-11-08 09:22:34

Re: Faster Installing or No CD writer

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