[olug] network installations

[Mark A. Martin]

This message is my latest reply in the "another distro" thread.  I
changed the subject to make it more descriptive.

The specific instructions for performing network installations are
distribution dependent.  Below I describe the information I found
related to doing this using Debian or Red Hat.  If you want to try
another distribution, you'll have to troll around the web site for the
distribution for documentation, like I did for Debian and Red Hat.  The
bottom line is that Debian seems to discourage this type of
installation.  Red Hat is more forthcoming and provides explicit
instructions, if you exert enough energy to find them.  More detailed
information follows.

DEBIAN:

I consulted the documentation on the Debian web site
(http://www.debian.org) and "Learning Debian GNU/Linux"
(http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/debian/chapter/index.html) on the
O'Reilly site.  Debian seems to want to keep most people from attempting
this kind of installation.  Perhaps one of the Debian officionados in
OLUG could help you with this.  I took a look at the Methods for
Installing Debian Section

http://www.debian.org/releases/potato/i386/ch-install-methods.en.html

of the (Official) Installing Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 for Intel x86 Manual

http://www.debian.org/releases/potato/i386/install

In the Introduction to Chapter 5, I found that

"You can install Debian from a variety of sources, both local (CD, hard
disk, floppies) and remote (FTP, NFS, PPP, HTTP)."

but, from Section 5.3.2, that the

"...only (recommended) use for PPP (meaning "FTP, HTTP, and the like")
in the installation process is the installation of packages (rather than
installing the base system)."

although

"...certain kernels may permit you to do this (use FTP, HTTP, etc.)
earlier (in the installation process). Experts can also use these
connections to mount disks and perform other operations to accelerate
the process. Providing help in such cases is beyond the scope of this
document."

I couldn't find a document that had this procedure within its scope.

The recommended procedure seems to be

1. Boot from a floppy.
2. Install the base system from CD, hard drive, floppies, or NFS.
3. Install packages from wherever you like.

A semi-network installation would be to only download the files needed
for steps 1 and 2, which would be considerably less that downloading the
entire contents of the CDs.  Since initiating the installation from the
boot floppy requires configuring the network, it seems that it should be
fairly easy to install the base system from the Internet too.

There is a related FAQ question "Can I get and install Debian directly
from a remote Internet site?"

http://www.debian.org/doc/FAQ/ch-getting.html#s-remoteinstall

which indicates that one way to install over the Internet is to use
dselect and dpkg-ftp but doesn't provide explicit instructions on
performing a fresh installation.  Perhaps dselect and dpkg-ftp are
accessible after booting from the installation floppy but this is only
supposition on my part.

RED HAT:

A network installation of Red Hat 7.0 is possible via a text mode
installation.  Chapter 14

http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/RHL-7-Manual/ref-guide/ch-install-tm.html

of The Official Red Hat Linux Reference Guide

http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/RHL-7-Manual/ref-guide/index.html

describes how to do this.  A text mode installation is simply the old
style installation that many of us used before they introduced an
installation GUI.

Here are the steps that you'll need to follow.  As with any
installation, read *all* of the steps through *carefully* before
starting the process.

1. Collect all of the information that you'll need about your system and
network connection and the FTP or HTTP site that you're going to install
from ahead of time.  The information you need is described in Chapter 13
Preparing for a Text Mode Installation

http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/RHL-7-Manual/ref-guide/ch-before-you-begin.html

2. Make a network installation boot floppy.  See the Official Red Hat
Linux Installation Guide

http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/RHL-7-Manual/install-guide/

for instructions.  The information about making installation diskettes
is located at

http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/RHL-7-Manual/install-guide/s1-steps-install-cdrom.html#S2-STEPS-MAKE-DISKS

3. Boot from the floppy and type "text" at the boot prompt.  See

http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/RHL-7-Manual/ref-guide/s1-start-install.html

4. Choose a language for the installation.  See

http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/RHL-7-Manual/ref-guide/s1-install-choose-lang.html

5. Select a keyboard type.  See

http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/RHL-7-Manual/ref-guide/s1-install-sel-kybd.html

6. Select FTP or HTTP as the installation method.  See

http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/RHL-7-Manual/ref-guide/s1-install-sel-method.html

7. Enter the information about the FTP or HTTP site that you're going to
install from.  See

http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/RHL-7-Manual/ref-guide/s1-install-network.html

8. Follow the remaining instructions from the Reference Guide.  Just
keep following the "Next" links from the web page listed in step #7
above for the complete instructions.

As I mentioned above, you'll have to consult the web sites for any other
distrubutions that you might want to try for their instructions.  Most
Red-Hat-based distributions (such as Mandrake) probably allow network
installations following similar steps to what I've described above. 
Likewise, Debian-based distributions probably have facilities similar to
those of Debian.

Good luck,

Mark
-- 
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Mark A. Martin					Dept of Applied Mathematics
http://www.amath.washington.edu/~mmartin	University of Washington
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