[vox-tech] Installing Linux from within Linux

[Bill Kendrick]

On Tue, May 17, 2005 at 06:32:41PM -0400, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> On Tue 17 May 05,  3:22 PM, Richard Crawford <rscrawford at mossroot.com> said:
> > Let's suppose you have a set of Linux CD's (in this case, SuSE Enterprise 9).  
> > The computer already has SuSE 8.2 installed.  The user cannot get into the 
> > BIOS to change the boot sequence (I don't know why, and she doesn't know 
> > enough about the BIOS to tell me).  Is there a way to start a fresh install
> > from within Linux?  Seems like it should be possible.
> 
> All you need to do to install Linux is to boot off Linux install medium.
> What OS is on the hard drive is inconsequential.  You don't install Linux
> from "within" Linux; you just boot a Linux install disk/floppy.  That said,
> I'm sure there are fancy-pants way of installing Linux.  But that would be
> needless complicated.

Oh son-of-a...  That'll teach me to read too quickly.  I read the above
and somehow parsed it as: "The machine has windows and can't boot of CD,
is there a way to install Linux?"

Ugh. Sorry >:^P


<snip>
> That said, if what happened is that she changed the "factory default"
> settinga and wants to set it back, then she can drain CMOS to reset back to
> the default setting.

Yeah, often motherboards include a jumper that allows this to be done
'quickly' (a few seconds, rather than minutes).


-bill!
PS - There are also some interesting "chroot" install tricks that MIGHT be
useful in this case.  Found via Rick's LinuxMafia page, not surprisingly:
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Debian/installers.html#chroot