2

Suppose I have computer with no USB boot option; no CD/DVD drive; an unformatted HDD; and a working connection to the Internet (via a local network segment with a DHCP server etc)... and an FDD.

Can I use a floppy disk to trigger an installation of a Linux distribution? I'm specifically interested in vanilla Debian and in lightweight distros such as Trisquel Mini, Damn Small Linux (is it still maintained?) etc.

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
  • 807,993
  • 194
  • 1,674
  • 2,175
einpoklum
  • 8,772
  • 19
  • 65
  • 129
  • any distribution, such as ubuntu, debian, centos, suse, arch etc. can be booted and installed via the network – Ulrich Dangel Jul 19 '14 at 21:58
  • @UlrichDangel: I didn't ask for network booting, I asked about booting via a floppy. But... an answer about using PXE with these distributions is also welcome. – einpoklum Jul 19 '14 at 22:26
  • 1
    this is why this is a comment and not an answer, and pxe boot is a solution to the problem (install a system without usb/cd/hdd) and is covered in the documentation of the distributions. using floppy disks for such tasks is unnecessary and nowadays not many distributions support floppy disks. – Ulrich Dangel Jul 19 '14 at 22:48

1 Answers1

0

Arch Linux can do that. You need a wired Ethernet NIC that is compatible with iPXE.

Arch is well-suited for this sort of task, since it is specifically aimed at building up a system from the most minimal starting point. It's a lot more work than installing Debian from a USB key or CD, but Debian is aimed at current hardware, which means they're coming from a perspective where even a 512 MB USB key is throwaway technology, whereas from your perspective, that's unattainable dream-level technology. See? Totally incompatible world views.

In principle, you could build up a system based on any Linux distro this way. The trick is that crafting that floppy takes time and expertise. You're not going to find truly generic floppies for ready download, if only because you'd need more space than is available on the floppy for network drivers. So, someone has to cull the set of available Linux network drivers to a reasonable subset, or build the disk specially for the one NIC you happen to be using.

The only reason you don't find Debian netinstall boot floppies on debian.org is that there isn't someone with:

  1. the time

  2. the interest

  3. a floppy drive, and

  4. the technical expertise

Bring all four of those together, and it's a solved problem.

If Arch doesn't work for you, there are a bunch of floppy-based Linux distros. This is not the same as one that boots to a network installer, I know, but once you have a network-connected Linux system up and running, you could build up a Linux system on the HDD from that. It's a stone knives and bearskins sort of task compared to building up a Linux system based on Arch, though.

Warren Young
  • 71,107
  • 16
  • 178
  • 168
  • So, is Arch the only one? Also, it seems like "not such a big deal". I mean, you need a kernel with not-so-many drivers (the ones right for your system - making it hard to have a generic floppy for everyone), the minimal bunch of packages which used to exist on boot floppies in the past, and with a network connection, apt, fdisk, mke2fs and chroot I should be done. Right? – einpoklum Nov 22 '15 at 19:31
  • It was once easier. If you supported only a few 3Com NICs and the NE2000 clones, you covered 95% of the installed base. Today, there are more variants of Intel NIC floating around alone, and that's not even considering wifi. – Warren Young Nov 22 '15 at 20:12
  • So essentially you'd need a custom floppy generator, based on what MB and NIC you have. – einpoklum Nov 23 '15 at 00:19