linux2portege

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| LAPTOP LIMBO |

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Installing Redhat linux version 7.2 on a Toshiba Portege 3010CT laptop

without either a boot floppy drive or a boot cdrom drive.


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SPECIFICATIONS:

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Ram : 32 MB

HDD : 4.2 GB

O/S : Windows 98

Acc : Power cable, Dock, PCMCIA-cdrom, USB-floppy.


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AIM:

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I wanted a laptop with 2 partitions running windows on one and linux on

the other.


WARNING:

This document was written after the event ... it is a transcription of

my handwritten notes so I could easily have forgotten a crucial step

(like "ALWAYS ... no wait ... NEVER type \rm -rf * as root".)

:END_WARNING


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METHOD:

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0. Read, read, read ... then read some more.


1. Obtain a copy of fips and copy it to the harddisk.


2. Defragment the harddisk.

(This is important and maximises the chance of success at step 6.)


3. Reboot into DOS mode.

(This was trickier than I thought. Hold down the F8 key and then turn

on the power --- otherwise you need a 215 millisecond reaction time.

You can then select "safe mode dos".)


4. Run "chkdsk"


5. Run "scandsk"


6. Run "fips" and make the changes you want.

(I chose 2.5GB for Windows and 1.6GB for linux. Type "c" to check that

everything is OK. Type "y" to write to disk. This, of course, is the

*REALLY* exciting part ... apparently the normal practice is to run

"fips" from a floppy disk, however this laptop didn't have a boot floppy

or boot cd so I bit-the-bullet and it worked.)


7. Reboot immediately into DOS mode and run "fips -t" to check that all

went well. (If not discard the HD---I did warn you!)


8. Copy the contents of the Redhat 7.2 disk #1 into a directory called

"c:\redhat". (I guess I did another reboot into Windows and used the

pcmcia/ide cdrom supplied with the laptop.)


*** I got the following 3 steps from Ben Edgington's site --- thanks

heaps Ben! Ben actually describes how to dual boot from the windows

partition using "loadlin" but I really just wanted it to bootstrap the

Redhat installation process.***


9. Create a file called "c:\redhat\linux.bat" which contains:

c:\redhat\dosutils\loadlin c:\redhat\linux root=/dev/hda2

(Of course you need to replace "hda2" with your linux boot partition name

which you find with "fdisk -l". I initially tried using fdisk myself to

format the appropriate linux partitions but since I didn't really know

what I was doing I eventually let the redhat installer do it automagically.)


10. Move "c:\config.sys" to "c:\config.sys_orig" and create "c:\config.sys"

containing:

[menu]

menuitem=Linux

menuitem=Win98

menudefault=linux, 60


[linux]


[win98]


11. Move "c:\autoexec.bat" to "c:\autoexec.bat_orig" and create

"c:\autoexec.bat" containing:

goto %config%


:linux

call c:\redhat\linux.bat


:win98


12. Reboot into "safe mode dos" and cd into "c:\redhat\dosutils" and

type

run autoboot.bat

(This should start the redhat installation process. Of course the crucial

point comes when you are asked to "INSTALL A BOOT LOADER" ... this will

overwrite the master boot record and possibly turn your laptop into a

chunk of molten magnesium. If you are feeling nervous you can say no at

this point. Luckily, all went well for me.)


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CLEANUP

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You will need to move the saved "autoexec.bat_orig", "config.sys_orig", and

"msdos.sys_orig" back to their original names and probably delete the

"c:\redhat" directory.


Ralph Buchholz

2002

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