[vox-if] Installfest Hardware, etc.

[Christopher James McKenzie]

javilk at mall-net.com wrote:
>      I am considering coming to the installfest.  I've been running 
> Linux for 12 years, etc. etc.  No Windows in this house!  But I'm an 
> applications programmer, not a systems administrator.

1996?  Not bad ... were you using Yggdrasil or pillbox?  I was running 
FBSD at that time personally ... ah the days of the open internet

> 
>      I have a 2002 HP Pavilion zt1235, 1.3ghz P4... but the CD/DVD 
> reader is broken, and before that, the BIOS would issue checksum 
> failures on all recent CD's I hear the loader is larger now, than when 
> the notebook was built.  No Floppy on that notebook.

Those with small vocabularies would call this "broken".  We at the 
installfest, however, thirst for a challenge.

> 
>      That notebook is running an older Mandrake (pre-Mandriva) installed 
> before the CD/DVD reader failed.  Installation would be to a more "new" 
> hard drive which does not yet have a boot sector, etc., but is 
> partitioned for installation the way I want it.

Alright --- I recommend you drop mandriva unless you have a functioning 
system with limited scope.  Simply for the fact that more resources are 
put into distributions like Ubuntu and so therefore more of the kinks 
and bugs are worked out

> 
>      Is a network install possible without a CD boot or floppy boot?  
> Can we beat the older BIOS loader checksum issue?  

Can you boot from ethernet?

> 
>      If not, there is no point in my driving several hours to get to you 
> from Santa Cruz.  (Or do you know where else I can look for help 
> without having to drive a few hours?)

Oh, don't give up so easily friend...

We can take the drive, put it in ANOTHER laptop and then install linux 
on that machine.  Then transfer the drive back to your machine to give 
you a working system!

> 
>      I also have a desktop 2.8ghz hyper-threading desktop machine running 
> Mandriva Spring 2007 freebee, which I can't get to do NFS.  I don't 
> particularly care what installation, just as long as it supports NFS and 
> SSH logins.  

No need to blow it away.  Just elaborate a bit more and bring it in.

> 
> -JVV- (javilk at Mall-Net.com)
> John V. Vilkaitis
> 408-705-2284
> 
> 
>