Installing from mounted iso to hard drive

[marcerickson]

I have a PIII 750 MHz ThinkPad with 128MB RAM. CD drive is worn so it won't properly boot a Live CD, and it doesn't support booting from USB. I'm a newbie to Linux, but a highly experienced Windows administrator.

Using the power of Google, I've booted from a Damn Small Linux Live CD, mounted the USB flash drive, and mounted the Lubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Minimal Install .iso. If I'm correct I have also removed all partitions on the hard drive - there should be no MBR or partition tables (this was formerly a Windows 2000 machine).

What now? Would it be easier to mount the full 10.04 Lucid Lynx .iso and install that way? If so, how do I start the installation (I think I can figure out how to unmount and remount the USB drive and .iso)? I've spent a day scratching my head and I know something's possible but being new to Linux I can't figure it out. I have another Linux box available so I could do a network install if necessary - but the ThinkPad doesn't have a floppy drive.

I'm not scared of the command line but understand very few Linux commands - I mostly type them in by rote. I'm looking for the easiest way to do this so that I hopefully retain some of the knowledge in case I want to do it again. ;-)

Thanks to all for the help.

[oldfred]

I do not think mounting will give you a way to run the installer. Someone that knows internals may be able to change to loop mount ISO and mount as cdrom, but I do not know enough.
You can try something like this that I saved, but I was experimenting with getting alternative or server versions to install with grub2 and the loopmount, but it kept losing path and I tried going to a terminal in the middle of the install and reloading paths.

If the ISO file is on the computer to be upgraded, you could avoid wasting a CD by mounting the ISO as a drive with a command like, doubt that DSL needs sudo? Change to exact name of ISO and path you have it on flash drive, not ~/Desktop.
sudo mount -o loop ~/Desktop/ubuntu-10.04-alternate-i386.iso /media/cdrom0


Grub does not loopmount alternate
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/debian-installer/+bug/914926


The minimal install is smaller than DSL and should boot and let you install. May work a bit better if you have partitioned in advance so you have a swap to use by the install.

[snowpine]

Recommend to recycle such an old computer and upgrade to something meeting the following minimum specs:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SystemRequirements

128mb is not enough for any member of the Ubuntu family (except possibly Ubuntu Server if your needs are very modest).

[marcerickson]

Recycle? Exactly what I'm trying to do here. ;-)

This is going to be a net surfing and email computer for a teenager.

[zvacet]

You can try Bodhi linux (http://www.bodhilinux.com/about_bodhi.php) Puppy linux (http://puppylinux.org/main/Overview%20and%20Getting%20Started.htm) or Slitaz. (http://www.slitaz.org/en/about/)