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viv wrote: > I have a small problem - well, it's a very small laptop anyway. I'd like > to pick your brains about it, if I may. > > I have been given a very small Windows laptop - a Dialogue. It has no > CD/ DVD drive and I really want to install Linux on it - ideally Kubuntu > 6.10. > > I have messed about with a pen drive and have managed to install Puppy > Linux on it. I have an idea for upgrading it to the Distro I want - that > is not too difficult (in fact, really easy if I am going to be able to > do it). > > I also have an external CD / DVD drive but, unfortunately, the Dialogue > won't boot it. However, Puppy can access it when flying. > > My idea is this : > > 1) Boot Puppy up on the pen drive > > 2) Use GParted to create 2 new partitions - 1 small and 1 larger. > > 3) Copy all the Kubuntu live CD files to the smaller partition - we'll > call that the 'Install' partition > > 4) Edit the Grub menu.lst file to include an entry for the 'Install > Partition' > > 5) Reboot and boot the 'Install' partition - my theory is that this will > then work the same as the live CD and boot Kubuntu > > 6) Then install Kubuntu to the larger new partition and keep Puppy on > it's own existing partition as a multiboot option > > I wanted to know is if this is a completely rubbish idea and won't work. > Also, if any of you had any better ones ? > > Thanks > > Viv > > P.S. Please don't suggest anything complicated - another alternative is > that I offer this up as a paid job to any of you that are interested - > and I would be only too happy to do this if it gets it working. > > I want to be able to take it into work when finished and show my boss as > I don't think he realised how good Linux is. Many moons ago I managed to install IPCop onto a computer that had no usable CD drive... it took a bit of fiddling, but it worked. What I did was to take one of the harddrives out of the target machine and use a USB-IDE adaptor to hook it up to an existing Linux system, then used the "dd" tool to copy the ISO image of IPCop's installation CD onto the target machine's harddrive. Popped it back into the target machine and fired it up... and it worked. Now, I'm not suggesting you took the laptop's harddrive out... that would be silly. But the "bootable USB" specification supports 3 boot modes: usb-floppy emulation, usb-zip emulation and usb-cd emulation. If your BIOS supports usb-cd boot emulation, then you *could* try using dd to put an installer CD's ISO image onto a pendrive (completely obliterating any existing data on the stick... not to worry, you can repartition and format it again later, just like a harddrive) and try booting it that way. If you were to do this, I wouldn't recommend dding a large CD to the pendrive as "write actions" will eventually kill them, so something small like the business-card Debian installer CD (~30MB) might be an idea. Good luck. --Grant. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html