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Thread: Howto: Install Ubuntu without a CD

  1. #291
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    Jan 2008
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    Re: Howto: Install Ubuntu without a CD

    Quote Originally Posted by tuxcantfly View Post
    Strange, indeed... Anyhow, if you happen to have a DOS bootdisk handy, try booting that and using the DOS fdisk to create a new DOS disklabel, that'll wipe out the MBR, all partitions, and hopefully Fedora won't hang when attempting to install to the disk. Alternatively, you might try to overwrite the first few sectors of the hard drive (MBR, PBR, etc) using dd with null bytes, then use fdisk to initialize a new DOS disklabel, and see if that does the job.
    I don't have any boot disks. Everything is remote and I can't get my hands on the server. Hence I used UNetbootin.

    Any other ideas on how to kill the MBR? I don't know how to use dd to erase the first few sectors.
    Last edited by Skeptical33; January 28th, 2008 at 07:26 AM.

  2. #292
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    Mar 2006
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    Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin

    Re: Howto: Install Ubuntu without a CD

    Quote Originally Posted by Skeptical33 View Post
    I don't have any boot disks. Everything is remote and I can't get my hands on the server. Hence I used UNetbootin.

    Any other ideas on how to kill the MBR?
    However, you said you could boot the Fedora LiveCD then right? Try doing this then (as root):

    Code:
    dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda
    That'll overwrite the disk's contents with zeros (you probably only have to do it for the first few megabytes or so). Then after that enter:

    Code:
    fdisk /dev/sda
    fdisk will spew out errors and ask to initialize a new DOS disk label, enter the command "o" on the fdisk prompt (to create a new DOS disklabel), recreate your partitions, and hopefully it will work after that.
    Last edited by tuxcantfly; January 28th, 2008 at 07:17 AM.

  3. #293
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    Feb 2007
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    Understanding how UNetbootin works

    In order to understand a bit better what can be done with UNetbootin, I'm interested in knowing a bit more about how it works. From what I can tell, it copies the kernel image and initrd image to the UNetbootin installation directory on the host (Windows or Linux). When you run UNetbootin from the host, it adds an entry in the bootloader that points to the kernel and initrd images in the UNetbootin installation directory on the host (which is on an NTFS or ext2/3, etc. partition). On reboot, the kernel and initrd images are loaded into RAM but none of the partitions on the hard drive are mounted. This way, the installer can blow away the partition containing the kernel and initrd images while its running (since they are loaded into memory and the partitions aren't mounted). Is this correct?

    If so, I would pretty much understand how UNetbootin works. There's one more thing that I don't quite understand, though. How does UNetbootin remove itself from the bootloader menu after it's booted?

    Thanks for all your work on UNetbootin and related projects. I think this project will start taking off as more and more machines start shipping without an optical drive (Asus' Eee PC, OLPC's XO, Apple's MacBook Air, etc.).

  4. #294
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
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    Suggestion: move from forum threads to mailing lists

    It seems to me that UNetbootin and related projects could benefit from moving to mailing lists instead of using forum threads as the primary means of communication. I find it easier to post to mailing lists since it is easier to send an e-mail than to login to a forum site and post a reply. Mailing lists also handle different threads of conversation more gracefully since most e-mail clients and archive tools (like pipermail, which most Mailman installs use) can group messages by thread. This makes it easier to find a topic that has been previously discussed.

    I would suggest having Sourceforge host the mailing lists through the Lubi project page. This has worked well for me in projects that I have hosted.

    I'd be happy to discuss this further. Let me know if you have any comments or questions.

  5. #295
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    Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin

    Re: Understanding how UNetbootin works

    Quote Originally Posted by ossguy View Post
    In order to understand a bit better what can be done with UNetbootin, I'm interested in knowing a bit more about how it works. From what I can tell, it copies the kernel image and initrd image to the UNetbootin installation directory on the host (Windows or Linux). When you run UNetbootin from the host, it adds an entry in the bootloader that points to the kernel and initrd images in the UNetbootin installation directory on the host (which is on an NTFS or ext2/3, etc. partition). On reboot, the kernel and initrd images are loaded into RAM but none of the partitions on the hard drive are mounted. This way, the installer can blow away the partition containing the kernel and initrd images while its running (since they are loaded into memory and the partitions aren't mounted). Is this correct?
    Yes, pretty much correct

    If so, I would pretty much understand how UNetbootin works. There's one more thing that I don't quite understand, though. How does UNetbootin remove itself from the bootloader menu after it's booted?
    It adds the uninstaller to the Windows autostart; that way it's removed (menu entry along with the files) next time the user boots WIndows. Theoretically, this can also be accomplished by loading a temporary kernel that removes the menu entry then chainloads the main kernel/initrd, but I stick with the Windows uninstaller approach because it's generally safer.
    Last edited by tuxcantfly; January 30th, 2008 at 05:07 AM.

  6. #296
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    Feb 2007
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    Suggestion: move distro-specific kernel and initrd files out of UNetbootin packages

    Because of the large number of distributions that UNetbootin supports and since UNetbootin has separate releases for each distribution that contain that distributions kernel and initrd files (usually), there are a ton of released files to choose from when downloading. This could turn into quite a headache for the maintainer of UNetbootin as a change to the core of UNetbootin requires all of the packages to be re-made, for example.

    I suggest that the core UNetbootin functionality be confined to a single package for each host distribution (so there would be one .deb, one .rpm, one .exe, etc.) that knows how to handle the installation of any target distribution (ie. FreeDOS, Ubuntu, etc.). This core package would know how to grab the necessary minimal ISO files from the web as needed (when the user selects which distro they want to install) and then take the necessary files from the ISO and stick them on the hard drive.

    There could also be an option for the user to specify their own ISO to UNetbootin. This would allow users to test new distributions that UNetbootin doesn't know about yet. It may require UNetbootin to include a mechanism to search for the kernel and initrd image and prompt the user if it can't find them in the ISO.

    Since I haven't really looked at the code, I'm not sure how feasible this would be, but it seems like the sort of thing that would be good to move toward.

  7. #297
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    Feb 2007
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    Suggestion: add support for Eee PC, OLPC XO, Mac OS X

    From what I can tell, UNetbootin has not been tested on the Eee PC or OLPC XO and does not support Mac OS X. I'm guessing you're probably thinking about these, but in case you aren't, here's a nudge.

    The Eee PC might work with the Debian package, but I'm not sure whether the file locations or bootloader configuration are sufficiently similar to most Debian installations to make it work. I may have access to an Eee PC for testing, but I'm not sure if I'd have a lot of time to test it.

    The XO might work with the RPM, but it's less likely because it uses the Sugar interface by default. You could make a proper activity and use the Sugar interface, but it might be easier just to use a command-line app for starters. Also, the XO will not boot a standard kernel because it does not have the standard BIOS that most kernels assume. So one would have to replace the distribution-provided kernel from the minimal ISO with the kernel from the XO. This isn't too hard, but would require some special casing. It also means that UNetbootin would have to replace the installed kernel with the XO kernel, which is a little harder to do. Hopefully the mainline kernel will soon support the OLPC, but for now I don't think it does. I would be able to do some testing on the XO, but it probably won't be for a month or two. You could also emulate it yourself if you like (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Emulating_the_XO).

    Lastly, it would be nice to have Mac OS X support, especially now that the MacBook Air (sans optical drive) is released. This is probably a fair bit of work (at least to make it look nice), but perhaps you can find an OS X coder that's interested. You may want to include the automatic installation of rEFIt (http://refit.sourceforge.net/) to make things easier on the user.

    I hope my comments are useful. I'd be happy to discuss them in more detail if you have questions.

    I'd really like to see more resources behind this project (perhaps in the form of official Canonical support). I think that would really help with implementing some of these high-priority feature requests. Any tips on how to push for that would be appreciated.

  8. #298
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    Feb 2007
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    Re: Howto: Install Ubuntu without a CD

    Quote Originally Posted by tuxcantfly View Post
    Perhaps this was what you were looking for? http://wiki.eeeuser.com/ubuntu:eeexubuntu:home (see the USB installation section). I doubt you'll have any success with UNetbootin, since from what I remember, the eee PC ships with a wifi incompatible with default Ubuntu so there's no way of fetching the packages from the net.
    The wired ethernet should work fine on the Eee PC during installation so I suspect UNetbootin would work. The wireless can be setup after the installation is completed using the instructions at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EeePC. Similar methods should work for other distributions.

  9. #299
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    Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin

    Re: Suggestion: move distro-specific kernel and initrd files out of UNetbootin packag

    Quote Originally Posted by ossguy View Post
    Because of the large number of distributions that UNetbootin supports and since UNetbootin has separate releases for each distribution that contain that distributions kernel and initrd files (usually), there are a ton of released files to choose from when downloading. This could turn into quite a headache for the maintainer of UNetbootin as a change to the core of UNetbootin requires all of the packages to be re-made, for example.

    I suggest that the core UNetbootin functionality be confined to a single package for each host distribution (so there would be one .deb, one .rpm, one .exe, etc.) that knows how to handle the installation of any target distribution (ie. FreeDOS, Ubuntu, etc.). This core package would know how to grab the necessary minimal ISO files from the web as needed (when the user selects which distro they want to install) and then take the necessary files from the ISO and stick them on the hard drive.

    There could also be an option for the user to specify their own ISO to UNetbootin. This would allow users to test new distributions that UNetbootin doesn't know about yet. It may require UNetbootin to include a mechanism to search for the kernel and initrd image and prompt the user if it can't find them in the ISO.

    Since I haven't really looked at the code, I'm not sure how feasible this would be, but it seems like the sort of thing that would be good to move toward.
    Yes, I've considered the idea before, and while it would work well for the Windows version, it's rather infeasible on Linux, due to the lack of a standard user interface that works basically universally on both platforms, preinstalled without needing excessive dependencies (I'd rather not maintain 2 incompatible codebases), not to mention that the install-and-reboot simplicity wouldn't go as smoothly. As for mailing lists, I tend to avoid them due to the sheer amount of spam they tend to get, and I'd rather not bother with the hassle of managing a mailing list. As for EEE PC and Mac OSX, I don't have the hardware, though that link to the emulator is certainly going to be helpful. Anyhow, thanks for the advice, I'll see if I can get any of those suggestions implemented as soon as I have time (aka spring break), it's finals season here so I must get back to studying.

  10. #300
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
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    3

    Re: Howto: Install Ubuntu without a CD

    Hi,

    everything runs well,except i can't fling off the Linux boot loader,despite the fact I've already uninstall it when i log in my Windows XP Home.

    Any help!!!!

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