Howto: Install Ubuntu without a CD

[Kobalt]

As far as I know it's not possible yet to perform a netinstall of a Linux distro from a wifi connection...

[tuxcantfly]

Before I am going to try out I wondered wether this would make it possible to bypass the restriction on my school-laptop, which makes it always to boot from the hard drive (and the bios is of course pass protected). Yet the second problem would be still then that I only have wlan, and I don't expect this to work with wlan... am I correct?

For question 1: Yes, assuming you have admin privs, you won't have to do any tinkering with the BIOS settings to get it to boot. (and of course make sure you aren't violating any school policies by circumventing their security systems)

For question 2: Probably won't work on wlan, though you could also pre-download the packages to your hard drive and use those by selecting "Hard Drive" as the installation source. (note that that'll only work on the Fedora, openSUSE, Mandriva, and Archlinux installers, not the Ubuntu one). If you have a CD though, and just want to boot that, you can boot from the CD through GRUB, by adding this to the menu.lst:

title Boot CD
cdrom --init
map --hook
chainloader (cd0)
boot

More details at http://grub4dos.sourceforge.net/wiki...n_GRUB_for_DOS

[tommytabib]

Hello,

I have the mandriva one 2008 kde iso downloaded and i want to use unetbootin to install it. I select 'hard disk' installation method and direct it to the right directory of the iso but it says its not there (when i know it is).

Heres what im typing under directory "/home/xxx/downloads/" and it didnt work, so i tried "/home/xxx/downloads/mandriva-one-2008-kde-i586.iso" but that didnt work either.

Is it because this only works with mandriva free and not with mandriva one?
And do the iso files have to be extracted or can they just be as an iso?

Thanks

[tuxcantfly]

Hello,

I have the mandriva one 2008 kde iso downloaded and i want to use unetbootin to install it. I select 'hard disk' installation method and direct it to the right directory of the iso but it says its not there (when i know it is).

Heres what im typing under directory "/home/xxx/downloads/" and it didnt work, so i tried "/home/xxx/downloads/mandriva-one-2008-kde-i586.iso" but that didnt work either.

Is it because this only works with mandriva free and not with mandriva one?
And do the iso files have to be extracted or can they just be as an iso?

Thanks

Yes, you can use only the mandriva free, not the mandriva one; you need actual packages, not the liveCD disk image like mandriva one provides. The packages must also be extracted from the iso (or separately downloaded from the ftp mirror).

[guyver]

I'm not aware of any floppies that can boot from external usb cd drives (SBM can't), so what I'd do is install a minimal debian system using netboot floppies, then subsequently apt-get yourself an ubuntu installation...

Guide on installing debian using netboot floppies:
http://linux.simple.be/debian/floppy

Detailed procedures on creating floppies from image files (since you can't boot your computer, you'll have to do the floppy creation process on another computer):
http://www.debian.org/releases/stabl...h04s03.html.en

Then, after you're done installing a minimal debian system, to turn it into an ubuntu system, this should do the job (enter these in the terminal of the minimal debian install):

su root
echo \
"
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ feisty main restricted multiverse universe
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu feisty-security main restricted multiverse universe
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ feisty-updates main restricted multiverse universe
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ feisty-backports main restricted multiverse universe
" > /etc/apt/sources.list
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade
apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

Then reboot and you should have an ubuntu install, though note that I've never tested this procedure myself, so I can't guarantee that it'll work...

If I change the path locations to say archive.xubuntu.com will this work? I would like to install Xubuntu instead. Preferably I would rather do the Gutsy Xubuntu, but I can settle for Feisty now. Thanks in Advance.

[tuxcantfly]

If I change the path locations to say archive.xubuntu.com will this work? I would like to install Xubuntu instead. Preferably I would rather do the Gutsy Xubuntu, but I can settle for Feisty now. Thanks in Advance.

keep the repository lines the same, just change the "feisty" to "gutsy", and change the apt-get command to "xubuntu-desktop" instead of "ubuntu-desktop"

[Donkor]

Just wondering, are there any plans to allow an option that isn't as automated? I'd like to select the packages I install instead of having seemingly everything installed. Things like OO, Firefox, etc I don't need and just take up hd space.

Other than that, it's great. I used it twice on two laptops with feisty and I'm going to try it with gutsy now.

Edit: Looks like Gutsy's installer has it now, though not as customizable as I'd hoped. It still installs openoffice, games, firefox, thunderbird, pidgin, etc which I didn't select.

[tuxcantfly]

Just wondering, are there any plans to allow an option that isn't as automated? I'd like to select the packages I install instead of having seemingly everything installed. Things like OO, Firefox, etc I don't need and just take up hd space.

Other than that, it's great. I used it twice on two laptops with feisty and I'm going to try it with gutsy now.

Edit: Looks like Gutsy's installer has it now, though not as customizable as I'd hoped. It still installs openoffice, games, firefox, thunderbird, pidgin, etc which I didn't select.

Ubuntu's official netboot installers don't provide package-by-package customizability (so I can't add those features without diverging from the official netboot installer, which I'd rather not do for maintainability reasons). If you want to have a greater degree of control on your install process, try the Fedora or openSUSE versions of UNetbootin (which provide individual package-selection options in the official netboot installers), or if you absolutely must use Ubuntu, just select the base system install option, and use apt-get to install the packages you need.

[reisyboy]

Hi well i have a small question, i want this i really do i want to install ubuntu on a PC with no Floppy or CD Rom or bootable usb so this is great.... but what i really want is this in a very small install package, that i can leave on the HD in another partition. That can do just this, incase the OS i am going to put on breaks or dies or i want to change it. Then i could boot to the loader an select UNetbootin an do another install... is there anything like this? a micro-distro that has UNetbootin or another such tool that can either fetch the install from the net an let me install, or boot an extracted ISO like UNetbootin can that is designed to be left on the HD in a little partition on its own do it can be booted to do recoverys etc?

[tuxcantfly]

Hi well i have a small question, i want this i really do i want to install ubuntu on a PC with no Floppy or CD Rom or bootable usb so this is great.... but what i really want is this in a very small install package, that i can leave on the HD in another partition. That can do just this, incase the OS i am going to put on breaks or dies or i want to change it. Then i could boot to the loader an select UNetbootin an do another install... is there anything like this? a micro-distro that has UNetbootin or another such tool that can either fetch the install from the net an let me install, or boot an extracted ISO like UNetbootin can that is designed to be left on the HD in a little partition on its own do it can be booted to do recoverys etc?

Not exactly sure about what you mean by "very small install package", UNetbootin at ~10 MB should comfortably fit on even a small hard drive. What you could do is just install the UNetbootin loader to the hard drive, don't remove it after Ubuntu has been installed and should Ubuntu break, just select the UNetbootin option. Should your bootloader also break, just use the Super Grub Disk http://supergrub.forjamari.linex.org/ and that'll let you start up UNetbootin through the Windows bootloader.