| SUSE LINUX – Administration Guide Chapter 1. Installation / 1.3. Special Installation Procedures | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | 1.2. Starting SUSE LINUX | 1.4. Tips and Tricks |  | |
| SUSE LINUX – Administration Guide Chapter 1. Installation / 1.3. Special Installation Procedures | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.2. Starting SUSE LINUX | 1.4. Tips and Tricks | | |
What if a standard installation via CD-ROM drive is not possible? For example, your CD-ROM may not be supported because it is an older proprietary drive. A secondary machine, like a notebook, might not have any CD-ROM drive at all, only an ethernet adapter. SUSE LINUX offers the possibility of performing the installation on machines without a CD-ROM drive over a network connection. Usually this is done by means of NFS or FTP over ethernet. The following section describes the procedure.
No installation support is available for this approach. Therefore, the following procedure should only be applied by experienced computer users.
To install SUSE LINUX from a network source, two steps are necessary:
The data required for the installation (CDs, DVD) must be made available on a machine that will serve as the installation source.
The system to install must be booted from floppy disk or CD and the network must be configured.
Prepare the network share by copying the installation CDs to individual directories and make these available on a system with NFS server functionality. For example, on an existing SUSE LINUX machine, copy the individual CDs with cp -a /mnt/cdrom /suse-share/.
Then rename the directory, for example, to CD1, with a command like mv /suse-share/cdrom /suse-share/CD1. Repeat this procedure for the other CDs. Then export the /suse-share directory via NFS. For information, see Section 14.9. “NFS — Shared File Systems”.
Insert the boot medium in the drive. The creation of the boot disk is described in Section 1.4.1. “Creating a Boot Disk in DOS” and 1.4.2. “Creating a Boot Disk in a UNIX-Type System”. The boot menu will appear after a short time. Select . You can also specify additional kernel parameters. Confirm the selection with Enter. The kernel will be loaded and you will be prompted to insert the first module disk.
After a short while, linuxrc will appear and ask you to enter a number of parameters:
Select the language and the keyboard layout in linuxrc.
Select .
Load the IDE, RAID, or SCSI drivers required for your system.
Select and load the needed network card driver (e.g., eepro100).
Select and load the needed drivers (e.g., reiserfs).
Select then .
Select .
Select then the network protocol (e.g., NFS).
Select the network card to use.
Specify the IP addresses and other network information.
Specify the IP address of the NFS server providing the installation data.
Enter the path of the NFS share (e.g., /suse-share/CD1).
Now linuxrc will load the installation environment from the network source and start YaST. Proceed with the installation as described in the User Guide manual, Chapter Installation.
The installation is terminated before it actually starts. The installation directory of the other machine was not exported with exec permissions. Do this now.
The server does not recognize the host on which to install SUSE LINUX. Enter the name and IP address of the host to install in the /etc/hosts file of the server.
