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From: naza on 24 Jun 2008 17:40
I have got hold of quite a basic box, very little is on the mobo. I
want to use it as a basic file server and maybe a LAN game server. I
got hold of a copy of Red Hat but there is a problem installing it.
The computer has no Floppy, CD-ROM/DVD drive. It has a NIC and HD but
thats about it. I thought I may be able to do a network boot which it
does support and install it like that but that never went too well. So
I was wondering If anyone knew of a guide or could provide some
instructions on how to set that up.

Other methods that I could use would be good as well, like some sort
of hard drive image which could be copied onto the Hard drive of the
box and then put back in the all the hardware is configured.

I want to not have to add anything to the computer as it is quite old,
and not really worth much.

TIA
From: Andy Burns on 24 Jun 2008 17:50
On 24/06/2008 22:40, naza wrote:

> I got hold of a copy of Red Hat but there is a problem installing it.

If it really is redhat it either is very old, or you'll will need to pay
for a licence

> The computer has no Floppy, CD-ROM/DVD drive. It has a NIC and HD but
> thats about it. I thought I may be able to do a network boot which it
> does support and install it like that but that never went too well.

TO get network boot you'll need to make sure the machine can PXE boot
and have another machine with DHCP and TFTP servers and either an NFS,
HTTP or FTP server running.

http://syslinux.zytor.com/pxe.php

Alternatively you might be able to boot from a USB memory stick, or
temporarily add a CDROm drive, or temporarily put the hard disk in
another machine to copy stuff onto it.
From: Ian Rawlings on 24 Jun 2008 17:54
On 2008-06-24, naza <naza911(a)googlemail.com> wrote:

> I have got hold of quite a basic box, very little is on the mobo. I
> want to use it as a basic file server and maybe a LAN game server. I
> got hold of a copy of Red Hat but there is a problem installing it.
> The computer has no Floppy, CD-ROM/DVD drive. It has a NIC and HD but
> thats about it. I thought I may be able to do a network boot which it
> does support and install it like that but that never went too well. So
> I was wondering If anyone knew of a guide or could provide some
> instructions on how to set that up.

Just quickly check the BIOS to see if it'll boot from a USB drive, and
if so, then try a USB DVD/CD drive if you've got one hanging around,
it's worth checking as it's the lazy way! If it'll boot from USB but
you have no USB DVD/CD then either get one, or look into booting from
USB storage, it may well be very easy to sort out.

Another relatively easy way is to install to a hard disc in another
computer, using the generic options, then move the hard disc to the
basic machine. Just watch out for selecting CPU optimisations that
aren't available on the basic machine, although that's not normally an
issue with distros other than gentoo.

--
Blast off and strike the evil Bydo empire!
http://youtube.com/user/tarcus69
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tarcus/sets/
From: Will Kemp on 25 Jun 2008 01:02
Ian Rawlings wrote:
> On 2008-06-24, naza <naza911(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>> I have got hold of quite a basic box, very little is on the mobo. I
>> want to use it as a basic file server and maybe a LAN game server. I
>> got hold of a copy of Red Hat but there is a problem installing it.
>> The computer has no Floppy, CD-ROM/DVD drive. It has a NIC and HD but
>> thats about it. I thought I may be able to do a network boot which it
>> does support and install it like that but that never went too well. So
>> I was wondering If anyone knew of a guide or could provide some
>> instructions on how to set that up.
>
> Just quickly check the BIOS to see if it'll boot from a USB drive, and
> if so, then try a USB DVD/CD drive if you've got one hanging around,
> it's worth checking as it's the lazy way! If it'll boot from USB but
> you have no USB DVD/CD then either get one, or look into booting from
> USB storage, it may well be very easy to sort out.

Booting from a memory stick and doing a network install is probably the
simplest. Although network installs never seem to be as simple as they
should be!

> Another relatively easy way is to install to a hard disc in another
> computer, using the generic options, then move the hard disc to the
> basic machine. Just watch out for selecting CPU optimisations that
> aren't available on the basic machine, although that's not normally an
> issue with distros other than gentoo.
>

It's likely to be an issue with several distros - if the architecture of
the installation machine is different to the target machine. Fedora, for
example, will install at least a kernel to match the processor. If it's
only the kernel, though, it's a simple matter of installing the right
one for the target machine before moving the hard drive.


--
http://SnapAndScribble.com
From: naza on 25 Jun 2008 04:54
Its quite an old machine. Its a Celeron @ 1.2ghz, 384MB RAM, 20GB hard
drive. It does not support USB boot so that rules out quite a few
options. It support PXE boot from network, I am just trying to find a
way to get it to install really.
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