Arch Linux

Declan

Member

Registered: 2009-02-06

Posts: 91

Install without Partition, usb, or cd...help?

Hi everyone. I tried using the search function and it seems a few other people have had my issue. Basically, I have ubuntu running on an ancient computer. It can't boot off USB. The cd drive is fried. It has two partitions, one is the ~9GB one that has everything on it, and 2GB free, and the other is the 500mb swap partition.

I don't care about anything on the hard drive, it can all go. All I want is a goddamn arch install. I tried doing unetbootin. I did NOT use their arch thing, I selected "iso" and selected the arch .iso file I downloaded from the archlinux site. I then rebooted. In the grub menu, there were a few options: unetbootin, arch, archide. They all seem to do the same thing.

When I select it, it goes through a lot of the familiar arch booting stuff. I *THINK* I can see it mounting my HD. I then get "boot device could not be found", after searching for 30 seconds. It gives me a terminal with ramfs$. I tried something I found in my searching, doing "ln -sf /dev/sda /dev/archiso", but it gave me a kernel panic apparently.

Is there anything I can do? Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!

kowalski

Member

Registered: 2009-05-07

Posts: 82

Re: Install without Partition, usb, or cd...help?

I am afraid I do not entirely get the way you are trying to install Archlinux in. As you neither have a CD drive nor the possibility to boot off an USB drive you are presumably would need to follow:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fas … nux_System

Am I getting this right?!

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He who says A doesn't have to say B. He can also recognize that A was false.

Declan

Member

Registered: 2009-02-06

Posts: 91

Re: Install without Partition, usb, or cd...help?

Yeah, but like I said, I only have two partitions right now. I can't partition a partition while I'm using it, right?

But I do have that 477MB swap partition. Could I just use that as the "spare partition", or do I desperately need swap memory?

Declan

Member

Registered: 2009-02-06

Posts: 91

Re: Install without Partition, usb, or cd...help?

anyone?

kowalski

Member

Registered: 2009-05-07

Posts: 82

Re: Install without Partition, usb, or cd...help?

You don't need swap for installing Arch so you could go with that partition. Of course you are right that you can not repartition a disk that's in use.
Maybe you can plug in some usb pendrive to use that as "spare" partition and follow the instruction given in the link I pasted. But I have no experience in GRUB+usb drives. Nonetheless in theory GRUB should be able to use this partition to read the necessary files from.

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He who says A doesn't have to say B. He can also recognize that A was false.

vacant

Member

From: downstairs

Registered: 2004-11-05

Posts: 816

Re: Install without Partition, usb, or cd...help?

Alternatively, you may not be able to boot from USB but as you have ubuntu already installed you can use the grub/lilo menu on that to boot the arch core image on a USB flash drive. e.g. add:

title  Boot Arch Linux Live CD
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 lang=en locale=en_US.UTF-8 archisolabel=ARCHISO_COHYAE4A ramdisk_size=75%
initrd /boot/archiso_pata.img

to your ubuntu grub, but adjust for the usb device, e.g on grub2 my entry tells grub the usb is hd1 and the partition is 1:

menuentry " arch install" {
linux (hd1,1)/boot/vmlinuz26 lang=en locale=en_US.UTF-8 archisolabel=ARCHISO_COHYAE4A ramdisk_size=75%
initrd (hd1,1)/boot/archiso_pata.img
}

Cdh

Member

Registered: 2009-02-03

Posts: 1,098

Re: Install without Partition, usb, or cd...help?

ancient computer. It can't boot off USB

If it is "ancient" I guess it has a floppy drive.
You can just grab the PLoP bootmanager
http://download.plop.at/files/bootmngr/plpbt-5.0.5.zip
(http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanagerdl.html) if there's a new version)
and dd the .img on a floppy.
By booting from that floppy the PLoP bootmanager loads some usb drivers and enables you to boot from USB.

I also don't understand how you used unetbootin without a USB Stick to boot from.

Another way that is not too uncomfortable (if you have a second PC) is just putting the hard disk into another computer, install the system and change it back.

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else

Member

Registered: 2006-11-27

Posts: 4

Re: Install without Partition, usb, or cd...help?

When I select it, it goes through a lot of the familiar arch booting stuff. I *THINK* I can see it mounting my HD. I then get "boot device could not be found", after searching for 30 seconds. It gives me a terminal with ramfs$. I tried something I found in my searching, doing "ln -sf /dev/sda /dev/archiso", but it gave me a kernel panic apparently.

Same problem here. I also used the newest ISO and configured unetbootin to install it to my harddrive. When I bootup, I can select the Arch entry and the Kernel is booting, but then I get the same error as Declan saying that /dev/archiso cannot be found. I guess there is a problem mounting the ISO file from my hard drive partition (which has NTFS). The only way I could imagine is to mount the harddrive (with -t ntfs-3g or something like that), then create a loopback device pointing to that ISO file. Is that possible in the ramfs shell?

Thanks for your help!

Else

hokasch

Member

Registered: 2007-09-23

Posts: 1,461

Re: Install without Partition, usb, or cd...help?

I had my fair share of weird installs, with PXE booting as last resort...
But with a linux system still running this should be not too difiicult.

First, stick with the archboot: they use syslinux, no squashfs and run entirely in RAM.
You could even put kernel and initrd into your ubuntu's /boot partition, boot it, delete all partitions and install arch (netinstall). However, this is a bit risky beause if it screws up in the process, you bricked the machine and have to set up the hd in another computer (always worked for me though).

Anyway, I would just put vmlinuz and initrd.img from archboot onto the (formated) swap partition, add an entry in grub, do a netinstall, and reuse the swap partition once you got a working arch. Since you have a big enough spare partition to fit the hole iso, you may also follow the instructions in the link provided by kowalski: wiki.