Diskless Fedora Core 2 Install (2.6.5 of kernel)

Submitted by mchirico
on May 30, 2004 - 9:22am

The Fedora core 2 runs under the 2.6.5 kernel. Hopefully the following
instructions will help.

Diskless Fedora Install
Mike Chirico
Last Updated: Sun May 30 08:57:21 EDT 2004

The latest version of this document can be found at:
http://osdn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/souptonuts/README_fedora.txt

UPGRADING TO FEDORA (DISKLESS INSTALL)

It's possible to completely install Fedora by downloading the *.iso image, mount
it to a loopback device, copy the Linux kernel images to /boot, modify grub, reboot, then
have it find the *.iso image for the rest of the install.

STEP 1:

Download the complete DVD package. It's 4 GB:

FC2-i386-DVD.iso

from: http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/2/i386/iso/

STEP 2:

Once downloaded check the md5sum

md5sum FC2-i386-DVD.iso

STEP 3:

Create a directory off of root for mounting the iso image.

mkdir /iso0

STEP 4:

The DVD image file can be mounted with the following command:

mount -o loop -t iso9660 /FC2-i386-DVD.iso /iso0

STEP 5:

Copy /iso0/images/pxeboot to the /boot directory

cp -r /iso0/images/pxeboot /boot/.

STEP 6:

Modify Grub to include the following:

title Fedora (INIT)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /pxeboot/vmlinuz
initrd /pxeboot/initrd.img

Special note: Look at the other grub entries "root (hd0,1)", perhaps
it's listed as "root (hd3,0)" or (hd2,0). This must be the same, so
change hd0 above to match the other entries.

STEP 7:

Make note of where FC2-i386-DVD.iso resides by issuing the "df" command.

$ df .

You'll need this location after reboot. It's something like /dev/hda1 or /dev/hdb2

STEP 8:

Reboot. When asked for the location of the "iso" file select FILE on the Fedora menu.
put in the /dev/hda1 location above. Note if it's in a subdirectory off of this
filesystem there is a text box to enter that as well.

The install should proceed on it's own from here.

OTHER OPTIONS:

Perhaps you're running Redhat 8.0 or Redhat 9 and only want to upgrade to the 2.6
kernel from source.

Reference (This also includes information on creating your own 2.6 kernel modules):

http://osdn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/souptonuts/README_26.txt

REFERENCES:

http://fedora.redhat.com/download/