When I first set up my laptop I borrowed a pocket adaptor, downloaded
the packet driver from the vendors WWW site and wrote a netboot boot
floppy. I then made a boot image with a kernel and compressed root FS
and put that on my main machine and set that up as a boot server.
Unfortunately there wasn't a kernel driver for the pocket adaptor, so
I had the wierd situation of booting the system from the pocket
adaptor (not very fast as it plugs into the serial port and doesn't
support EPP) and installing the system itself over my PCMCIA EtherNet
card (I do a network install). This system is better than the
PLIP-based install I've done in the past.
> Sure, maybe there's a third and even better way of installing Linux
> on one of these things. I couldn't come up with one. I'd love to
> hear how you'd do it - any tricks are acceptable, even recompiling a
> special kernel on another machine and booting from a BIOS-only
> floppy. Burning your own custom installation CD-ROM with a custom
> initrd etc is _not_ an acceptable solution, I'm afraid.
Network booting via a pocket adaptor is your third option. It's
effective (for those of use who can set up a boot server), but
obviously painful. I've since given up on that and burned my
distribution onto CD-ROM. Fortunately for me, my laptop has a CD-ROM
drive bay (no special PCMCIA magic required). The bay also takes the
floppy or a second battery, so I have the option of leaving things at
home if I want to travel light.
Although painful, pocket adaptors have one advantage: parallel ports
are ubiquitous. Boot servers aren't, though :-(
> And the thing is, that every new laptop I see I can also see having
> the exact same problem. And I do NOT want to go through that the
> next time I install. I doubt anybody else wants to, either.
It's not just the next time you install. If your HDD dies like mine
has (twice since November!), you're back to a virgin install. The
whole process is very painful.
Regards,
Richard....
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