Installing Linux without CD-drive nor internet!

Hello,
i installed Opensuse 11.1 on my aspire one having Windows XP on other partition (dualboot). Without having an external CD drive nor internet connection. Due i've just seen tutorials for installing linux through netinstall or external CD drives, and not everyone has these things at home, i write this small tutorial for those who want to have a real linux distribution like opensuse on their aspire one netbook just using an ISO image of linux.
If you have an external CD drive or wired connection to the internet, dont read this tutorial.....its much easier to do it "the normal way" or with netinstall...
Please be indulgent with my english, i don't write in this language very often

Requeriments:
-USB Pendrive
-basic linux knowledges

A internet connection is not needed for the installation, but you need previously downloaded files and programs for getting everything to work.

Ok first of all, you have to download the last opensuse ISO image from opensuse.org
(this tutorial may be useful for other distributions too... but would be untested)
you're gonna need a tool called unetbootin from http://lubi.sourceforge.net/unetbootin.html

ok now that you have theese 2 things, if you are in windows, create a new 5GB ntfs partition. you can use partitionmagick for that or any other software. You are going to need to resize your windows partition too, so you have enough space for installing linux in the remaining free space. Put the iso image on the 5gb partition. If you want to ensure the installation process, extract the iso image (with winrar for example) into a folder in your windows partition too, for example in C:\ISO\
Dont worry about all the space you are using, you are going to be able to delete these files after the installation.

Now you need to create a bootable pendrive. We are using unetbootin for that. Execute it and select the Opensuse distribution and the letter of your pendrive. Its very simple to use so im not going to go further explaining it.

OK, now lets install a real operating system on our laptop!
reboot your computer with the pendrive plugged in. press f12 and select the usb drive for booting. You are gonna see a menu, select your language and keyboard settings. I dont remember exactly the steps to follow but you have to enable the ntfs modules to the kernel so you can read the ntfs partitions. It is possible that you dont need to do this because it does it automatically, but i dont know. Now open a shell and mount the partition where the iso image is and the windows partition (they may be allready mounted but you have to know where they are).... im gonna continue using the following configuration:

Code:

#mnt
/dev/sda1       /mnt/winxp
/dev/sda2       /mnt/isopart
...

Now exit the shell, select "Hard Disk" as the installation source. then type /mnt/isopart/theisoimage.iso where theisoimage.iso is the iso image of linux...you have to change the name with the real one.

Now you if you did everything well, you'll see the beautiful installation program for opensuse (yast).
I had a problem while selecting the packages sources, thats why i unpacked the iso image in my C drive... when i was prompted for the packages source, i simply writed /mnt/winxp/ISO/ .

So thats all ! i hope i helped somebody because i didnt have any help and wasted precious hours figuring out how to install my favourite distribution with these limitations....

Dont be afraid to ask if you have any doubts.

Sebastian Breit.-

 

I would really like to know if this post helped someone :roll:

 

Might give this a try at the weekend. only got 1meg internet, so its kinda like having no internet... *sigh*

 

ok good luck!!