Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Stop
Wasting CDs
Install Linux Straight from an ISO
You download the brand new Debian 5 (when it’s released) after waiting for so
many months, and discover you don’t have a single blank DVD to burn the ISO
image! Why worry, when there’s a simple way out!
G
NU/Linux comes in many is that you should have a pre-installed
different flavours, apart GNU/Linux system—which you already
from the fact that each have, otherwise where did you download
individual distro has a new the ISO image from?
release almost every six months, if All Linux installers use two files to boot
not less. I have a habit of trying a computer: a kernel and an initial root
out every new version the filesystem -- also known as the RAM disk
moment it comes out, or initrd image. This initrd image contains
and I’m sure many of a set of executables and drivers that are
U X
LIN you do too. needed to mount the real root filesystem.
Now, let’s assume When the real root filesystem mounts, the
you have downloaded initrd is unmounted and its memory is
a new version of a distro freed. These two files are named differently
and are in the mood to try it out in different distros—refer to Table 1 for
right away. It’s past midnight and you their names.
realise that you’ve run out of blank The first thing you need to do is place
CDs/DVDs. So you will have the ISO image(s) inside a directory. Some
to wait till the morning installers are not able to read the ISO
when the shops open, images if they are placed inside a directory.
to be able to burn the So, just to be on the safe side, place them in
distro image in order the root of the file system. The partition on
to install it. I’m sure the hard disk holding the ISO files must be
a lot of us often face formatted with the ext2, ext3 or vfat files
this problem. In this system.
article I’ll share a In our example, let’s go ahead and do
simple trick by which it with an old Fedora 9 ISO image. Follow
you can install the new these steps to begin with:
distro without burning it to a
CD/DVD. The only requirement # mkdir /fedora