Want to help me with linux?

[Paulson]

I need to know how to install the damn thing, and have no clue how.

I know you need a boot disk, but I can't for the life of me figure out what needs to be in it. (program launches for mandrake to allow you to make a bootdisk, but I have no idea what goes in there)

Sooooo, can anyone help?

 

[BurntKooshie]

If you have a bootable CD-rom, and the Bios supports it, you can boot up off of most newer distro's CD's. (that's about as far as I've gotten, so I can't help much more )

 

[Paulson]

I don't think I can boot off of cd rom....

simply because my compaq's bios was erased off the hard drive (muhahahaha)

 

[Soccerman]

?? Compaq BIOS erased off of HD? the BIOS isn't on the HD, it's on a chip on the motherboard (EEPROM chip).

anywho, Linux Mandrake 7+ (possibly earlier?) all boot from the CDROM.

 

[Poof]

Damn Paulson. I didn't recognize you at first. Thought you were Adul for a minute...

And Soccerman - the Compaq Deskpros, Prosignias, and Proliants put the BIOS on a special partition on the hardrive...
The Compaq Presarios (I have 4 of those in front of me right now... ) save it like everyone else... in the chip.

Paulson - what model is this? You can actually go get the latest BIOS, get the partition formatted, and get that BIOS back on there... OR... you can do like I did with my sister's machine and get the BIOS on a floppy and boot to that...

Anyway... Go here (or equivalent mirror) and get a boot floppy image from the "/images" directory (check the readmes). Then go into the "/dosutils" directory and copy down "rawrite" so you can make the boot floppy correctly using DOS/windoze. The boot floppy has to be done sector by sector on the disk - you can't just copy the image to it. Rawrite lets you do that.

Once that's done, then you can burn the distribution image or get it from where ever.

[EDIT: Fixed this link.]

 

[Paulson]

ummmmmm

I have ramwrite already.

 

[Poof]

And... *snicker* did you read the directions? (I can see why you got back to Goldenhood so quick... LOL )

Go to the link I provided and I think there was an image there called "cdrom". There's a possibility that if you use that one, it will try to find your CDROM drive when it boots and will let you continue the install from that...

I have an older Mandrake (6.x), so I'm not sure about the newer boot disks...

 

[Paulson]

*snicker* you're link doesn't work

 

[Poof]

/me smacks Paulson with my slipper!

How about this one

I'm trying to type on too many machines at once!!!

Grrrrr....

[EDIT: I'm hitting the "http" link instead of "FTP". It's fixed]
[EDIT: Dammit... it keeps appending HTTP on it! hang on]

 

[Paulson]

I'll just take the http:// out...

Altho, I have no idea what I'm supposed to download...

 

[Poof]

Okay - that link works now... had to use the [F=]blah[/.F]

Anyway - in the /images directory, there are things that are 1440 kbytes in size. Those are the floppy images. I think each one is geared for how you plan to install...

If you pick the "cdrom.img", then it looks like it assumes you have the CDROM that you'll use to install. If you pick "hd", it probably means you'll be installing via the distro copied to a hard drive on your machine. If you pick "network", it probably assumes you'll do a network install via FTP (which I do) or NFS. Etc., etc.

Pick the CDROM one if you actually have the Mandrake CDROM there to install from.

 

[Paulson]

ahhhh.

I get it now.

Thanks.....

 

[Poof]

Muuuahahahaha!!!!! Another one moves away from the dark side of the force...

 

[Paulson]

woah I actually got it working

hehe...

Thanks for all the help guys......

 

[Poof]

Cool! And another one joins our quest for world domination!!!!

MUUUUAAAAHAHAHAHAHA!

 

[Lord Demios]

Speaking of world domnation......

I have seen more light from that brilliant sun called Linux.

Tribes 2 for linux, Quake 3, Unreal Tournament, Half Life (yes there is a way to run half life in linux) and Many other great apps just prove why Linux is goin to give MS a run for their money.

LD

 

[Paulson]

Ok, I didn't know you had to have 2 cd's, so I'm downloading the second part of linux and going to burn it.

for now my server's down!

ack!